Putting a name to a story

I work in an area of the city where there are a lot of homeless people, and a lot of people living on the edges.  Over the past few months, I have slowly become acquainted with one of them.

She is older than me, a while ago she mentioned that she is 74.  I see her outside the building where I work most days.  She is standing there with a paper cup soliciting spare change from the people waiting for the bus.  I try to always have a dollar to give her when I see her.

Unlike many of the people I see begging in the neighborhood, I never see her smoking or drinking, and she never appears intoxicated.  She is never carrying a load of possessions, so I suspect that she probably at least has a roof over her head.  There are an abundance of residential hotels in the neighborhood, so perhaps whatever social security she receives covers all or part of that.

When I arrived at my building last Thursday, she was already there.  It was before 7 o'clock in the morning.  I don't recall her ever being there so early before. When I saw her I stopped a moment, and got out my wallet, pulled out a dollar bill.  Then I walked up to her and handed her the dollar as I prepared to enter my building.

Reaching inside of her coat, she pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.  She wished me Merry Christmas and I think I thanked her, I don't remember exactly what I said.  I put the envelope into an inside pocket of my overcoat.

When I got to my desk, I pulled out the envelope.  It was a little crumpled, closed with a piece of tape.  Inside was a Christmas card.  The only thing she had written inside was to sign her name.  It was Barbara.

Maybe her name is not Barbara, and she found the card already signed.  I don't know.  But I am am pretty sure that it was me she was waiting for to give the card to,

What kind of a world have we made, where just giving someone a dollar three or four times a week is so important to them?  And what sort of a monster really believes that we should be solving our financial woes by cutting social security, and throwing more people out onto the street?

The Devil's greatest trick

My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist.

This was from a short story by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. And it was never more true than today, although not quite the way he meant it in that story.

In 1985, Rupert Murdoch became a US Citizen. He was not an immigrant in the traditional sense, coming to the United States to forge a new life for himself. There was no loyalty or patriotism involved.  This was a business decision, as US law dictated that only citizens could own television stations.

Back in 1996, Rupert Murdoch offered cable operators $11 per subscriber, to place his soon to be launched Fox News Network onto basic cable. He understood that getting his station on basic cable gave him a wider audience. Over the course of time he has also entered into contracts with hotels, trucks stops, etc, paying to have Fox News on the TV's playing behind the counter, in lobbies, wherever there was a captive audience.

So it should come as no surprise when the emails revealed that news reporters have been directed to slant the news, regardless of the facts. It does put a lie to his 'fair and balanced' slogan, and shows that the network is what many have been saying for years. It is not a news network, but a propaganda machine. Opinion, or in the case of climate change, outright lies, have become a substitute for information and news.

So the devil is revealed  for what he really is.  Fox News exists for the sole purpose of molding America into Rupert Murdoch's idea of what America should be. And no, it is not conservatism he espouses. It is feudalism.

How many times should you pay for the same thing?

Access to the Internet is not free.  Yeah, you can go to an Internet cafe or Peet's Coffee and get free WiFi, but that does not mean it is free.  That just means somebody else is paying for it.  So this is the part I never hear people talking about when they argue for Net Neutrality.

Look at the latest uproar with Comcast extorting money from Level 3 to continue carrying the Netflix streaming videos.  What does not get mentioned?  Comcast customers are already paying Comcast, to get those streaming videos!

So, do you want to pay your Internet service provider to decide what content they will deliver?  Or do you expect that having paid them, they will deliver that content to you, at the speed that you have contracted for?

So do something about it.  You could start here by telling the FCC that you believe in Net Neutrality.

Blood on who's hands?

I keep hearing that Wikileaks has 'blood on their hands'.  So let me get this straight. 

Dick Cheney outs one of our CIA agents, essentially passing a death sentence on any of the contacts she had been working with. Bush and company lie us into a war that costs Irag the lives of about a hundred thousand civilians, as well as costing the US the lives of a couple thousand soldiers, strengthens our biggest rival in the region (Iran), drives thousands of Muslims into the hands of the jihadist radicals, oh and bankrupts our country in the process, and it is Wikileaks that has blood on it's hands?

Access to information is what allows us to to see past the propaganda.  That is the job of news organizations around the world.  If a news organization is not pissing off governments and politicians, then it has become a just another propaganda machine itself.

Wikileaks is a news organization.  They did what they are supposed to do, which is publish the truth.  And the only people that are bothered by the truth being published, are those who count on lies to convince people to follow them.

Yes, there are death panels

Do you have health insurance?  Have you been taught to fear a government option because of the 'death panels' that would condemn grandma to a horrible death because it was cost effective?  Well surprise, there is a group of doctors, paid for by your insurance premium, who's sole purpose in life is to find a way to deny you care when you need it most.

Read for example the testimony before congress of Linda Peeno, in May of 1996, or that of Wendall Potter in June 2009.  Thirteen years apart they were describing the same thing.  The goal of for-profit health insurance companies is to make money, regardless of who dies in the process.

In many states, the Blue Cross companies have gone from non-profits to for-profit companies.  Think their care has gotten better?  Why do you think health care companies are such a great investment?  Yes the cost of health care has gone up, but what has gone up are the profit margins of the health insurance companies, not the amount of money being made by doctors.

There are a lot of doctors, especially primary care physicians, who years after graduating from medical school are still trying to pay off the student loans they used to become doctors.  No, I am not trying to say doctors are poor, most make more than I do, but when you go to school for as many years as they, work as hard as they do to become doctors, I do not begrudge them making a substantial living.

The raising cost of your insurance is not going to the cost of treating you, it goes into the pocket of the health insurance companies.  And denying you coverage when you are most in need of it, is the dirty little secret of the industry.

The concept of 'death panels' in a public option was based on this:  A public insurance option would negotiate with providers and drug companies to obtain the best possible prices for products and services.  The only leverage the public insurance would have to obtain a better price would be the refusal to buy certain products and services.   Therefore, they would be restricting what they covered to only those products and services that would give the agency a good deal.  In other words, a death panel is doing exactly what the insurance company that you already have is doing, using its buying power to extract concessions from vendors.

But the real death panels, attempting to find excuses to drop you from your insurance if you become sick, or to deny treatments that are in fact covered by your policy, by claiming they are not 'medically necessary', well those don't count.

What did you think it was for?

You are constantly hearing the right talking about limiting government, as though everything would be fine if only the government would just stop getting in the way of business.  So let's just look at some of those crippling regulations that business and the right fought so bitterly against.

As you walk through the supermarket, throwing  items into the shopping cart, your are checking the labels.  Your child is allergic to nuts, and you know that selecting the wrong product could be the difference between life and death.  Did you think that listing the ingredients on the labels was something the manufacturers did out of the goodness of their hearts?  They do that because the law requires it. The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 established labeling standards that were bitterly fought by industry.

Do you work an 8 hour day?  Do you expect to be paid overtime when you work more than 8 hours a day?  Although 8 hour work days had been won in pockets throughout the country over the years, through strikes dating back to 1835, it was not until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was enacted that the federal government got into the business of enforcing standards and working conditions.  That established a 44 hour work week for a considerable portion of the nation, a minimum wage, time and a half for overtime, and outlawed "oppressive child labor".

When you have a cold, a fever, an ache, you can reach into your medicine cabinet and find a number of non-prescription drugs to treat the symptoms.  And you can do so knowing that none of those medicines contain poison or heroin or cocaine.  That all began with the Biologic's Control Act (1902) and The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906),  These two pieces of legislation were the foundation upon which the Food and Drug Administration was eventually built.  It is because of the FDA that pharmaceutical companies actually have to prove that a new drug works, that it does not do more harm than good, and that they have to tell you when the potential side effect are.

It is cheaper to sell contaminated food and medicinal products than it is to maintain a safe and clean facility, and to monitor for contaminants.  It is cheaper to dump your toxic waste where it will contaminate the drinking water of the surrounding community, than it is to properly dispose of it.  And if a small group of manufacturers do that, then others must do the same to compete.

Who's job did you think it was to enforce that the bottle that says 'Asprin' on it contains aspirin?  Would you rather go back to the days when you might work in a factory where the air was filled with asbestos?  If you get sick, and cannot work for a week, do you still want a job when you get back?  Did you think the only purpose of the government was to invade relatively weak countries so that US companies could do things there that would be illegal here?

The purpose of our government is to protect us from those more powerful, those we cannot fight on our own.  That includes, of course, foreign governments, that's why we have a military, but also from companies that would control our lives the way mining companies that ran 'company towns' in the 1800's did.

What 'Aqua Buddha' really tells you about Rand Paul

When GeorgeW was running for the presidency, he had a stock answer for questions about his history of moronic behaviors.  They were youthful indiscretions, and they were in the past, and he would not go into that.

Yeah, that is sort of a copout.  Without acknowledging anything in particular, he admitted that when he was young and stupid he did the sort of things that young and stupid people often do.  But at least he responded to the question, where the answer actually had something to do with the question.  He did not pretend to be someone else. 

Rand Paul, however, did not take this path.  Rather than defuse the issue he became irate.  He wouldn't admit to doing anything that might be in character with the imbecilic stoner that the story seems to describe.  Here is why that is a problem for me.

Paul has an image of himself.  Fine, we all have that.  But, if something, say facts, contradict that image, even in his distant past, rather than face those facts he becomes belligerent.  It says that what he believes is much more important than what is true.

Every day in life, we face things that were not part of our plan.  There are several ways we can handle this.  Let's take a simplistic example.  We have saved our money to buy a specific car, enough to pay cash for it.  We go to the dealer, and find out that the price has gone up, and we no longer have enough.  What can we do?
We can change what we are doing, to try to adapt to the new circumstances.  Get a car that we actually can afford. We can try and change the environment itself.  Go back and save some more money, come back when we have enough.  Or we can take the approach that Rand Paul is trying to take.  You keep trying to put the money into the salesman's hand, and snatch away the keys.  Eventually you try assaulting the salesman and they call the police and you are taken away.  Because you not having enough money is just not in your view of things,so you cannot accept it.

It is not that he did stupid shit when he was a college student that is important in all this.  It is that pointing out something that does not jive with his view of himself and how he relates to the world causes such an inappropriate reaction.  And it reveals how he will react when other facts do not agree with his prejudices.  He is not interested in the truth, or what is right, he is interested in what he believes.

Unfortunately, that is a common trait of many tea bagger types.  And that is why they are not fit to hold public office.

The Democrats Surrender

I was listening to the news last night, and it was reported that congress is going to defer voting on the tax cuts till after the election.  This is the Democratic Party essentially conceding the election.  Their absolutely best campaign material would have been forcing the Republican Party to vote against tax cuts for the middle class. 

In protecting the interests of their masters, the wealthy elite, they are working against their own self-interest.  Sounds a lot like the Tea Baggers, right?  You would expect a little more intelligence from our elected representatives.  OK,  maybe not.  Or perhaps there are promises of well paying lobbying positions for those committing political suicide.

This means, of course, that after the election, the wealthy will have their cuts extended, perhaps indefinitely.  They have handed a majority to the Republican Party who, while they may lack a veto-proof majority, will nonetheless attempt to dismantle the few protections for the American people that have been enacted during the prior two years.

Boy, do we need a strong Green Party in this country to counterbalance the Republican and Republican Light parties.

The other September 11th

If you live in Latin America, then September 11th has a very different meaning than it does to those of us living in the United States.

Between 1932 and 1973, the Republic of Chile had a vigorous democracy.  They had a well informed electorate, and turnouts of 80% of the registered voters.  That all changed on September 11th, 1973.  On that day, a military coup, led by General Augusto Pinochet led to somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 being killed, and up to 40,000 being detained, many of them tortured.  A reign of terror that was to last for many years fell over what had been one of the few stable democracies of Latin America.

In 1970, Salvadore Allende, a Marxist, had been elected president of Chile in a three way race, despite U.S. attempts to defeat him by providing financial support to the opposition candidates.  When they were unable to defeat him, the U.S. resolved to have him overthrown in a military coup.  One major obstacle in their way was the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean army, General René Schneider.

General Schneider had publicly reassured the nation that it was not the role of the army to overturn legal elections.  He stated that "the armed forces are not a road to political power nor an alternative to that power. They exist to guarantee the regular work of the political system and the use of force for any other purpose than its defense constitute high treason". He also said "there were no options that would invite the armed forces to undo what the politicians had wrought in Chile", adding "the only limitation is in the case that the State stopped acting within their own legality. In that case the armed forces have a higher loyalty to the people and are free to decide an abnormal situation beyond the framework of the law".

Needless to say, having man in charge of the Chilean military who believed in the rule of law did not sit well with the Nixon administration.  On October 22, 1970, General Schneider's car was attacked by men who had been armed and paid by the CIA.  Their goal was to kidnap him (this was their third attempt) but he drew his own gun and attempted to resist.  He was shot, dying in the hospital three days later.

He was replaced as the commander of the Chilean military by General Carlos Prats.  General Prats was later replaced by General Augusto Pinochet, and we all know where that led.

In order to protect the interests of Anaconda and Kennecott Copper companies, and ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph), the United States destroyed a democracy, condemned thousands to torture and death.  Yes, we had some serious disagreements with many of his policies, including his recognition of Cuba, and his improving relations with China and the Soviet Union.  All of those are legitimate reasons to for the United States to have serious disagreements with the the government of Chile.

At the time, the Chilean constitution limited a president to a single 6 year term.  So although he could seriously impact US commercial interests in the country in that time frame, any long term changes to the countries foreign policy would require the continued consent of the Chilean population.  So essentially, he was no long term threat.

Chilean presidents had been trying to extract a larger percentage of the profits from the foreign corporations that controlled the majority of Chile's natural resources for a generation.  Finally one was succeeding.  That could not be allowed to happen.  This was US and multinational businesses exerting the kind of pressure on our government that they have been asserting for over a hundred years.  Thousands of people had to die so a few companies could continue to extract wealth from Chile unimpeded by a government that was looking out for the interest of its people.

This view is of our actions against the Chilean government is not confined to some radical few.  The main architect of the US involvement of the overthrow of  Salvadore Allende, Henry Kissenger, can no longer travel freely throughout the world.  He must consult with an attorney, to determine if he risks being arrested before making his travel plans, as there is a warrant against him for crimes against humanity in a number of countries.

When the jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center, there was an outpouring of sympathy from around the world.  We had an enormous amount of international good will at that time.  And we had a president who willingly just pissed it all away with a senseless invasion of Iraq, and a network of secret prisons around the world, where suspects could be tortured free from the prying eyes of those who believe in the rule of law.

We did not become a world leader on the basis of our military and economic might.  Oppressed people around the world did not look to the United States because we were powerful.  They looked to us because they thought we stood for something.  Standing for something, that is what matters.

So every now and then, we need to acknowledge our dark side, how we have allowed truly evil things to be done in our name.  Then we have to remember what it is we stand for, and resolve to be more vigilant about what we do allow to be done in our name.

Sharing the Wealth

One of the things that Sarah Palin has been know to speak proudly of, is how every man, woman, and child in Alaska receives a check each year, proceeds of the oil revenue.  I find that a little odd, as I am sure if the discovery of oil had occurred while she was governor, there would be no such payment.

It has always been the Republican philosophy that when natural resources are extracted from public lands, the company doing the extracting pays minimal fees.  The idea is that you do not want to place any conditions that might discourage a business from exploring and extracting resources, anything that would effect the bottom line.  The concept that the nation's natural resources, even those on public land, should be for the benefit of the nation as a whole is foreign to the right.

It has also been our policy that those we do business with live by the same rules.  Our current problems with Iran can be traced to our complicity in the 1953 Iranian coup, where a democratically elected government was overthrown for having the temerity to expect to demand a larger (50%, what Saudi Arabia was getting at the time)  share of the oil revenues.  When the British company (predecessor to BP coincidentally) refused to negotiate, the Iranians nationalized the oil industry.  Although President Truman refused to participate, Eisenhower was more than willing to aid the British in the overthrow of the only democracy in the Muslim Middle East.  The fallout from that plagues us to this day.

Closer to home there are many cases where the US intervened in Latin America to protect business interests.  In Nicaragua alone, we intervened 7 times between 1894 and 1912, the last time being an occupation that lasted until 1933.

So, is it any surprise that corporate profits are up, wages are stagnant, and unemployment remains high?  This is just how it is.  You are not important, you never have been.  What is important is that the businesses that buy and sell the politicians maintain their profit margins.

So when Sarah Palin  speaks proudly of  the oil revenues shared by the Alaskan people, remember, if she had been in charge when they built the pipeline, the Alaskan people would be getting squat, except perhaps toxic waste dumped into their rivers.  And it is not just the Sarah Palins of this world.  A lot of the administrations that aided in the looting of Latin America were Democrats.

So don't feel bad that you are getting screwed.  It is not just you.  They do this to everyone.

Get used to it, we don't have any oil

We always hear about what a great thing it is to drill for our own oil, how having domestic oil supplies is such a good thing.  There is one thing that is often overlooked in this argument.  It doesn't matter whose ground the oil is under, it will still not be ours.

This is not some "we all share the earth" philosphy or anything like that.  The is about business, how things work, how things are.  And how things are is that the oil will always be sold to whoever wants to pay for it.

The oil companies are multinational corporations.  They have no loyalty to any nation.  Theoretically, they are loyal to their shareholders (and this is a whole topic in an of itself, perhaps later) but mostly they are loyal to their own entrenched management.  So if an oil company pulls oil out of Saudia Arabia, or the Gulf of Mexico, or Alaska, or your back yard, it all gets dumped into that company's supply, and sold for whatever they can get for it to whoever will pay.

The price is set by a combination of supply and demand, and speculation.  Traders buy and sell oil every day.  Now different qualities may have different prices.  The price you hear quoted in the news all the time is what they call 'light sweet crude', the easiest to refine.  But where it came from?  Means squat.

So the next time you hear someone saying how important it is to increase our domestic oil supply you know they are taking you for a fool, or they are ignorant themselves.  In either case, they are missing the point.

News Flash! Muslim, marxist president!

There is a story circulated about Lyndon Johnson.  I don't know if it is true or not, but it makes for a good illustration.  Johnson was in a congressional race, and he told his campaign manager to leak a story to the press that his opponent was a homosexual, or made it a habit of having sex with farm animals (I have seen both versions of the story). 

His campaign manager was shocked.  'We can't say that, Lyndon,' he said. 'It's not true.'

Johnson replied 'Of course it's not, but let's make the bastard deny it.'

Anyway, the current round of rumors makes me think of that.

I always thought that Marxism is essentially anti-religious.  Now be it far from me to let a little thing like truth spoil a good rumor, but I think we can leave that Marxist part out for now.  But it is the denying part that I wonder about.

Lets invent a few rumors, just for the sake of discussion.

Sarah Palin is a closet lesbian.  She has known about this since she was a teenager, but made the decision to try and blend in because she feared being ostracized by her family and friends.

Newt Gingrich is a pagan.  Despite courting the religious right, he has been a pagan since his college days, and still meets at solstice to dance naked in a circle with a group of trusted friends.

George Bush is actually half black.  Even his brother Jeb does not know he is the progeny of an affair that his father had with a household servant.  When the baby was born with white features, George W and his wife came to an accommodation with the servant, and the baby was raised by the two of them.  George knew his mother as a family friend until his 21st birthday, when his father revealed the truth to him.

OK, these are all interesting rumors.  They would all stir up a huge amount of press.  But this is the important point.  Whether they were true or not, it doesn't matter, and the act of denying them, attaches more importance to them than they deserve.

So what if Sarah Palin was gay?  Well sure, there are elements in our society that would have a problem with that, but that would be their problem, not based on any fact.  Sarah will still be a shrill, brainless politician lacking the courage and will to do the job the Alaskan people elected her to do.  Being gay would change nothing related to her abilities,qualifications, or suitability to hold higher office.

Newt Gingrich a pagan?  Well, he has already demonstrated he is a hypocrite, preaching family values while serving his wife divorce papers as she was in the hospital with cancer.  So pretending to be a Christian to pander to the Christian right is no different.  It doesn't mean anything, it neither qualifies nor disqualifies him for anything.

George Bush half black?  What would that have to do with anything at all?  Would anybody even care?

Now I don't think that Obama is a Muslim.  But why should being a Muslim be an issue?

Oh, and the first major terrorist attack on American soil, wasn't that the Oklahoma City bombing?  Wasn't the bomber a Christian?  Should I be concerned if Obama is a Christian?  After all they blew up a building with a day care center in it!

It is the fact that anybody cares one way or another, that is what bother me.

Sending our children off to war

Last Sunday, my wife's younger son left his new wife to go off to training.  A few months training, followed by deployment in Iraq.

This by itself is not all that unusual, military families have been dealing with this for quite a while now.  My wife has too, has had to deal with this.  This will be his third tour.  He is not regular army, he is in the National Guard.  He continues to stay in the guard because they are helping pay his way through nursing school.

I wonder, would this still be going on, this perpetual state of war, if we had a draft?  If everyone's (and I mean the children of the rich and powerful, the children of our elected officials, everyone) children were exposed to a draft, could be taken from their lives and families and sent off to war, would it be so easy to tolerate?

Of course, men and women putting their lives at risk is not the only consequence of these wars we fight.  The combination of letting the rich pay less in taxes, encouraging US companies to export their jobs (and the accompanying payroll taxes) to other countries while spending money we did not have on our military is a big part of our ruined economy.  Of course those on the right choose to ignore that part focusing instead on the fact that Obama has not undone the damage of 8 years.

I was drafted, and did not find it a happy experience.  All in all, for me at least, there were no negative consequences.  Nobody shot at me and I got an education on the GI Bill when I got out.  But I am not saying that a draft is a good thing.  Quite the contrary.  But it is a bad thing that, if everyone experienced it, would provide the impetuous to keep us out of some of these really stupid mistakes presidents with a desire to enhance their image in the history books are prone to.

If the children of the senators and congressmen were subject to a draft, perhaps the vote on Iraq would have been a little more carefully considered.

What would you say?

OK, I copied this from the website for the Ed Shultz show.  I heard this when I was listening to the radio on my way to play some softball, and I found the idea intriguing.

You're downtown, in a major hotel. You step into the elevator at the lobby level. You press 7. The elevator stops at 2. The doors open. In step four tall men. Black suits. Crew Cuts. Earpieces. And behind them, The President of the United States. He's moving from a holding area on the 2nd floor, to his speech in the ballroom on the 10th floor. You're getting out on the 7th floor. The president smiles and reaches out to shake your hand.
And the question posed was this.  You got at most two minutes where you have the undivided attention of the President of the United States.  What do you ask him or tell him?

So I thought about for a while.  What would I say?  There is so much to say and two minutes are such a small amount of time.  So I settled on this.

Mr. President, when you took office, we were in deep shit.  The economy had been driven to ruin with a completely unnecessary war and massive deregulation, compounded by ignoring many of those regulations that remained.  It was a process begun by Ronald Reagan and continued by each successive administration.  The American people needed someone to kick ass and take names.  Instead they got a health care bill written to benefit the insurance companies instead of the people who elected you.  You backtracked on Guantanamo and the Patriot Act.  You have not reinstated the Glass-Steagall Act, and the loan modification program has been a dismal failure.  We needed FDR and you gave us Jimmy Carter.   Mr. President, if you intend to implement any meaningful change, you are running out of time.

So, there you have it, my elevator speech.

Commenting and making points

There was a news article making the rounds the other day.  It was about how GM was posting a quarterly profit, and may be headed for an IPO soon.  Of course there were a lot of comments, and a lot of those referred to the bailout.

One poster in particular made the following points:

• Bailing out GM not only saved jobs at GM, but at the employees of many suppliers around the country.  So that bailout alone saved a huge (he gave a number, but I don't remember what is was) number of jobs at companies other than GM.
• GM has already paid back the cash portion of the bailout.
• With the IPO the government will be able to sell the stock it holds in GM, getting the rest of the money back.

A responder said something like "You must work for GM".

Facts can be checked, they can be disputed.  Other facts can be reported that show how the original statements may be only half truths.  The responder instead chose to be a spoiled child, pouting for not getting his own way.  He didn't even say something like "I don't think that many jobs were saved" or make any claim at all the the original poster was somehow inaccurate.

Now this is not to say that a little healthy name calling does not belong in an intelligent discourse.  After all, if I felt that the right wing had any honor at all, were anything other than whores in the service of corporate feudalism, then I would be more restrained in my speech, but alas, that is not the case.  So I suppose that those who might disagree have to be given the same latitude.  But only if they have something to say.

Now if I had written that post, and gotten a comment like that, I would have done one of two things.  Choice A, I would just toss it.   Choice B would be a response something like this.

Thank you so much for your generous response,  I was pleased to see you did not disagree with any of my points.  Yes, I imagine you would think I would need to be a GM employee to know any of that, but in fact all I had to do was open my eyes.  You see, everything I said was a matter of public record.  So you can find out things like that too, just as soon as you take your head out of your ass.

So, I don't mind if people don't agree with me, but actually say something.

P.T. Barnum would have been proud

The right has been having a lot of fun with the immigration issue.  Now if you are in politics, and you spot a weakness in your enemy, you would be foolish not to exploit it.  No, I am not talking about a weakness in the Democratic party, or in the Obama administration.  The enemy of the right that I am talking about is the American working class.

I know, class is a dirty word.  I'll get into that in some other post, that is not my point here.  The topic here is illegal immigration.  Let's think about this for a change, instead of just parroting someone's party line.

Question: Why do people sneak into the United States?
Answer: To get a job.

Still with me here?

Question: Why can they find jobs here?
Answer: Because business will hire them.  They work cheap, and if there is any messy problem like paying for overtime or wanting protective clothing when working with toxic stuff, hell, you can just call immigration and have them deported.

Question: Why would I care?
Answer:  First of all, this is bordering on slavery, and therefore immoral.  But as most of these people don't look like your neighbors, you could care less.  So let's try something you might care about.  They drive down pay and benefits for everyone else.  They will work cheaper than you, with no benefits.

Now here is the part where they get you.  The "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" part where the tea party types and the others clamoring for building fences and deporting millions and militarizing the border lose touch with reality.

Question: Who benefits from illegal immigration?
Answer: The same people who supply the money to the Republican Party.  They look at you idiots and see "cheap labor" and "consumers".  They distract you with "Control our borders" while they are the ones hiring illegal immigrants, and holding them over your heads.  And you say, "Please sir, may I have some more?"
.
Do I have an answer to all this?  No, I don't.  I am not sure what the right thing to do is.  And yes, I think what is right is more important than what is expedient.  But I do know this.  The right has no interest in a solution.  They are the ones who benefit from keeping things exactly as they are.  Perhaps making it a little easier to threaten and get rid of any illegal workers who might get too uppity and think they should be treated as human beings, but other than that, the system is working just fine for them.

And as long as they can keep you distracted from their hypocracy, by vilifying people just trying to feed their families, you won't notice that they are screwing you.  Oh, and you will keep voting for their puppets.

Bruce got a tax cut

Ok, so this is old news.  Back when Cheney was in charge, I got a tax cut.  I make a comfortable six figure income,  always get to go someplace nice on vacation, in general, I have a comfortable life.  Like I needed a tax cut.

My kids, however, all of them have a more hardscrabble life.  None of them are starving, but none of their lives are anywhere close to as easy as mine.  They didn't get a tax cut.

What's wrong with this picture?