Tag: news

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Why do our poor needs so little help and the rich are constantly needing help? If we don’t give the rich more, they just can’t produce the needed wave to lift all boats. The poor, on the other hand, must suffer or else they won’t come to their senses and invest their money in the Stock Market, vacation homes and crypto currencies. Right?

There are two ways to get government assistance. Government can give you assistance through programs and services or government can reduce your tax bill through tax breaks. People who have less money tend to get their assistance in government services while people who have more money receive their assistance through tax breaks. Both, however, are handouts.

But only one carries the weight of does this person deserve to be helped. The idea that if you receive government benefits you also need to prove you are deserving of these benefits. So, for example, a person who receives SNAP benefits are unable to buy alcohol and cigarettes with the money they receive while a person who receives a tax break can buy as much alcohol as they want. Nobody would dream of questioning their purchases.

Why? They are getting money from the government. Why isn’t it monitored with the same vigor that SNAP benefits are watched.

They even get a different spin on their handout — the rich are job creators who need that extra money to power the economy while the person who receives benefits is a welfare recipient — a non-productive member of society, a taker. This glaringly different view of these two handouts also has an effect on how government benefits and tax breaks are perceived so that if belts need to be tightened, it is the poorer people who are squeezed.

Tax breaks, on the other hand, are sacrosanct. Why?

Taxes are an obligation. Now, you may not like paying taxes nor the programs that taxes are used for but this doesn’t take away from the fact that taxes are an agreed upon method for us to pay the government bills. If you don’t like they way taxes are collected or the programs the government uses them for, you can take your position to the public during an election. It is an imperfect system, especially if your position always loses, but it is the one we have and, unless someone has a better idea, the fairest way for government to work.

I am not against tax breaks. I do, however, think that there should be a real verifiable return for the government for any break given. The tax breaks need to prove they are indeed more beneficial than the financial loss to the government tills. So my question is how are tax breaks measured as being successful — good for society or a good return in additional taxes. And, if they aren’t producing the desired effect, why not cut them instead of programs that help our most vulnerable citizens.

The tax breaks will, or so we are told, pay for themselves because the rich will invest in the economy which will eventually raise all boats. But, if this was the case, shouldn’t the government be rolling in dough. This isn’t the case. In fact, the biggest single expenditure in the Federal Government is tax breaks. Since the Reagan years, government has given tax breaks and cut taxes numerous times and yet we are further in debt. The income from tax breaks and tax cuts have failed to raise the promised revenue.

To get rid of these tax breaks, even some of them, would bring in enough additional money to offset some of these expenses. But, eliminating tax breaks is nearly impossible because you are hurting the job creator. They need help. But, then, so does the mother using SNAP. Who needs more help?

Herein is my question then, why do our richest citizens always seem to need so much help? Why can’t they stand on their own two feet, pull themselves up by their boot straps and just pay their taxes without any breaks? It is really sad that the rich have sunk into such dependency on government handouts. It isn’t really helping them they continue their proliferate ways — drinking alcohol, taking vacations — on the government dime. They just need to learn how to live within their means.

All I know is I am getting tired of their constant whining about how difficult it is for them as I have seen very little evidence that they are having a difficult time.

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You don’t press unpopular issues if there is little chance of winning. For example, Barack Obama did not support gay marriage when he first ran for president. Now, in my mind, a gay man, I realized that Obama could give a rats’ ass about gay marriage and was opposing it in order to win an election where a significant portion of the American public opposed gay marriage. It doesn’t make sense to lose an election for an issue, gay marriage, that would surely go down to defeat in most state legislatures. Gay marriage had to wait for another time because Obama could do other things that help me and, more importantly, every other non-gay citizen who, by the way, make up 90 percent of the population.

One of the great lessons of age is you realize that you don’t get everything you want. It is better to get some of what you want than to get nothing. You have to win elections in order to govern, this means compromise. This is how democracies work. Some changes have to wait. You have to deal with the reality you are in.

Which brings me to the New York legislature’s recent passage of a law that replaces mother and father with gestating parent and non-gestating parent in the law books. This change was necessary to make sure that the very few women who are transitioning into men (and vice versa) know that New York law is aware of their non-binary status and included in New York law.

I have numerous problems with this fishing expedition in an empty lake.

  1. 1.The binary division of man and woman has dominated Western Culture. It is still to be determined how this view might change but Trans activists are under the impression that they have won the battle. The vast majority of people, even in the liberal circles, still fall back on the terms like man, father,woman and mother. More to the point, nobody I know uses the terms gestating parent and non-gestating parent. None. So, why is this piece of legislation even necessary when no one uses the terms or even knows what these terms mean. But OK, I guess, gestating parent.
  2. Because no one uses gestating parent and non-gestating parent, it seems like a bad idea to incorporate such words into the law books when the more popular terms — mother and father are working without complaint. Why change them? Who requires this change? Oh, trans activists want this.
  3. Well, if Trans activists could deliver votes, I might be inclined to give them this change without complaint but they can’t. In fact, Republicans are using this issue as a cudgel to defeat Democrats. So, then, it might be bad idea to be pressing the issue. If they are demanding it, they don’t seem to have a grasp on reality. I would never have expected any Democratic body to push for gay marriage during the 1990’s. It would be political suicide. Are Trans activists so short sighted to see this an unhelpful in the struggle to defeat Trump and the Republicans.
  4. The Democrats control New York. How did this pointless and damaging piece of legislation get through these bodies when someone with power should have killed it long before it ever reached the governor’s desk? It is both shocking and depressing that Democratic power brokers were more interested in distributing symbolic prizes to loyal constituencies instead of winning elections. It is almost as if there is some Trump mole working at a high level in the New York Democratic Party.

I don’t want to lose this election but if it were to happen, I want the defeat to be about something big — something like Medical Care or the War in Iran and not whether to rename Mother’s Day to Gestating Parent’s Day.

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The Right Wing Echo Chamber are using the Henry Nowak murder as evidence that DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) is not only bad, but it also is deadly. For those who don’t know about the Henry Nowak case here is a brief rundown of the events. Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh man living in Southhampton UK, stabbed Henry Nowak, an 18 year old university student. Digwa’s brother called police and told them that Nowak had attacked his brother for racially motivated reasons. When police arrived they handcuffed Nowak who repeatedly told them he was wounded. An ambulance was called but unfortunately to late to save Nowak.

The key discussion going on is that the police were so infected by DEI training that they allowed a White man to die because they believed the Sikh man over the White man thus causing the police to mistreat Nowak and, for this, DEI is responsible for Nowak’s death.

It is depressing that rabble rousers are using this unfortunate incident as a call to action. The facts don’t support their contention.

Digwa’s family made the first contact with the police. They claimed that Nowak had made racists comments before attacking Digwa. The police were looking for a violent man. When the Police arrived, Digwa and his family was able to tell their story first. Thinking they had a potentially violent person, they handcuffed Nowak. This is a common police practice. Police handcuff dead people, particularly if the person is suspected of a violent crime. This is for the protection of the police. A wounded person can still be violent.

Once the police learned more about Nowak’s wounds, his handcuffs were removed and his wounds attended to. Unfortunately, all this came to late for Nowak who died at the scene. The media accounts make this time lapse seem like a long time. It wasn’t. From the police handcuffing Nowak to the police administering first aid, took somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 minutes.

How DEI killed Nowak though somehow eludes me. The cops weren’t saying we have to believe the Digwa’s because they are Sikhs and ignore the wounded screams of Nowak because he was White. The police were acting on the information that the Digwa’s first provided and when they saw Nowak’s condition, they changed their tack.

It it makes no sense, as Konstantin Kisin does in the above linked article, to compare it to the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. Floyd was arrested by cops who then used holds that were known to be dangerous when applied and have subsequently been banned. The cop’s actions were responsible for Floyd’s eventual death.

Lets be clear — the police were in no way involved in the murder of Nowak. Digwa stabbed Nowak. Digwa then lied to the police about Nowak’s and failed to inform the cops he had stabbed Nowak. As the police learned more, they released Nowak and worked to save his life. Digwa lies are the problem here and not DEI. The police had to traverse this chaotic situation and the Digwa family’s misinformation and rather quickly came to the right conclusion.

We live with imperfect systems. They will always be imperfect. Every time terrible things like this happen, they should be investigated and any information that can improve police procedures should be made. These are reasonable actions in the face of this or any tragedy. On the other hand, Farage is taking advantage of this tragedy to make dubious claims about the mistreatment of the Whites which is both dangerous and unwise. Sowing discord is apt to create even more discord and division which, I am afraid, is the actual reason Farage has latched onto this particular case.

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Michael Golden, in Real Clear Politics, wants the media to stop publicizing the names of serial shooters as a way of denying the shooter the infamy they desire. He believes it will discourage other shooters from seeking the same fate.

While I can support Golden’s proposal to quash any media attention these people are seeking, I doubt very much that anything significant will come from implementation of it. Mostly because, the shooter is already dead — either by suicide or by police action. What ever thrill the shooter was seeking was experienced in the shooter’s mind prior to the shooting. So I am unconvinced that such a media ban would have much effect at all on future shooters. It is worth a try but I would be surprised to see any change in the number of shootings

The problem with mass shootings, as Golden acknowledges, is the division in the country on what to do about them. One side wants to restrict access to guns; the other side thinks the problem is mental health. Since there is little areas of agreements, nothing much gets done despite the number of shootings. Golden, probably correctly, thinks that a media ban on naming the people who kill during a mass shooting would be something that both sides can agree on and get implemented.

But does it solve the problem? Not even close.

These people are well-armed and crazy. They are facing almost certain death. They know that they probably will be dead by the time the media begin discussing their actions. How does not mentioning their name going to stop them? The shooter is still crazy and still has a gun.

If people want to give it a try, fine, give it a try. But it changes nothing about crazy people still having access to guns. It is a way of looking like you are doing something while you are doing absolutely nothing to address the problem at hand. In other words, a waste of time.

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Another assassination attempt was made on Donald Trump. The Secret Service shot the man down. Early reports about the shooter are depressing. He thought he was God so I am not sure whether he had a coherent world view which prompted him to take this action but I doubt it. People who think they are God are uniquely incapable of coherence so this leaves us with crazy.

Early in the week two teenagers stormed a San Diego mosque — killing three people and then themselves. They hated about everybody, given the way it turned out, even themselves.

I don’t know what to do about the crazy people in this country. As a nation, we have pretty much decided to lump them in with the regular citizens which means they are left to their own devices. They can own guns, sleep on the streets, do whatever the Hell they want until they cross a line and then, in the worst case scenario, they are gunned down.

This is how we want to live and, lets be clear, no decision is a decision. We would rather have the occasional blood letting to addressing why unstable people with guns keep creating such havoc. Limiting gun availability is off the table. Let’s face it the 2nd Amendment makes this impossible. Furthermore there are too many guns out there now and there would be way too much resistance to confiscating guns to make it worthwhile. It is, for now, off the table.

But what about the other part of the equation dealing with all the crazy people. Well, this would require political will and money. Why this is controversial is beyond me? Mental health requires some level of preventative measure. Identify the people who are sick and get them the help they need before they break.

Think physical health. For example, we can control high blood pressure through medication. The first step, though, is identifying people suffering from it before we can help them. The same practice apples for mental health. We need to know who needs help.

But freedom, people shouldn’t be forced into a psychological check. We could require a yearly psychological check as a part of having health insurance. This would, at least, help us address the vast majority of the population.

Who is going to pay for all these checks? The government or the insurance companies? Forget I said anything.

So you see nothing is going to happen. We just have to accept that mad men with guns will be walking the street until they break and then after they are done killing, we will kill them or they will kill themselves. A little messy but the problem is solved without raising taxes.

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I am sure there are more awful human beings than Alex Jones but, as far as I can see, they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut to hide how awful they are. Unfortunately Alex Jones is an asshole who can’t keep his mouth shut . So here is Alex Jones, even after losing law suits where he questions the shootings at the Sandy Hook School, spouting the same unsubstantiated garbage about it being a false flag operation from anti-gun rights organization. He is doing this even after changing his story in court and saying that Sandy Hook shootings did happen as the police claimed. Doesn’t this make him an admitted liar.

Never mind. Now, since he is losing his empire to pay the Sandy Hook parents for his lies, he is going back to spreading his lies about Sandy Hook. Yes, he is accusing 20 sets of parents of willingly sacrificing their first grader in order that their deaths would galvanize sympathy for anti-gun legislation. I don’t know about you but I don’t know of many, if any, parents who make such a bargain — much less 20 sets.

And it gets worse, because Alex Jones so passionately spread these vile lies, his listeners believed him and began to harass the grieving parents of these children in order to get at the truth. Parents who lost their children had to listen to people telling them that they are lying about how their child died. Who would encourage people to behave like that. Oh, that’s right, Alex Jones.

I only wished I believed in Hell because I would surely love to see him rotting there. If anyone deserves an eternity of the flaming fires of Hell, it is surely Alex Jones.

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It always irritates me when I read articles like Barton Swaim in the Wall Street Journal (paywall though you can get a free article if you get a log in). Swaim thinks that the adherence to the Protestant Work Ethic is in decline and he pins this decline on Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and every other helpful thing ever done for poor people since then because the poor have no reason to work hard when they can get so much free shit from the government. The USA has just made it too easy for poor people to goof off instead of work.

Those retched poor people are just too God damn powerful and greedy as opposed to those put upon rich people who everybody keeps picking on. Swaim’s thinking is that we need to make the poor more miserable than they already are. They will never understand the value of hard work because they are given too much. His search for a villain in this story stops directly where his prejudices end — the poor.

Where to begin? First, we have to take him at his word that people would rather not work. It is mostly word of mouth drivel about adult men living with their parents, COVID subsidies and Somali refugees. Some of these may be problems but Swaim doesn’t really give much insight on how these unrelated problems have undermined the Protestant Work Ethic or how they are related to Johnson’s War on Poverty. He is flinging them out like a mad ape throwing shit at patrons at a zoo. He is hoping one of them will hit the target. They don’t. Adult men living off their parents, I am afraid to say, are living off their parents and not the government. COVID subsidies are long gone and no longer an issue. Which leaves the Somali refugee scandal which may or may not be a problem (it is still under investigation) but hardly a reason to eliminate a whole system. You wouldn’t call for the end of Corporate Capitalism based on the bad behavior of Bernie Madoff or Enron now would you? Why apply a different standard to government assistance.

Swaim also mythologizes life in pre-War on Poverty America. It was not sweetness and light. It was grinding poverty for most Americans — with estimated poverty rates between 40 to 60 % of the American people. And I am not talking the Great Depression either because even before the Great Depression an awful lot of Americans lived in poverty. It was only after Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that this rate came down to about 20% in 1960. After Johnson’s War on Poverty, the poverty rate now hovers around 11%. So government services lifted many poor Americans out of poverty.

Next lets look at those patriotic Capitalists who, in order to avoid paying higher American wages, brought to you, thank you very much by unions, fled the country in order to pay lower wages to workers outside the country. These “good” Americans pulled the rug out from under high wage workers in order to make more money with absolutely no concern for how this affected their now out-of-work employees. Nobody, by the way, stopped them. They were free to undermine union workers wages and unions themselves with nary a complaint from anyone.

This left getting a good education which has turned out to be bit of a trap for some. Many took out loans for educations that turned out to have very little benefit in the job market. People came out of college owing a bundle of money with little chance of recouping on their investment. So much for a home and a family.

Now AI is whittling away at the functions in the better jobs so that workers even in medicine, law and engineering are being threatened. What type of jobs does Swaim have to offer these young people with the advent of AI? Even a $15 minimum wage is insufficient to pay the rent in most states. The lowest possible wage can’t provide a meaningful income for survival. Some companies like Walmart and McDonald’s encourage their workers to use government benefits to supplement the low wages they pay their employees.. People actually are working full time jobs while receiving government assistance. Then these same assholes are trying to take away these benefits from full time workers because it discourages them from hard work.

Fuck them. Talking about how government benefits discourages people from fully engaging in the Protestant Work Ethic is just bull shit. People can see their reality. Hard work without a pay off is a meaningless exercise. I am surprised that so many low wage workers are still punching a time clock.

If only the poor worked harder, the world would be a better place. Maybe for the rich but there is little evidence that it would help the poor. The corollary to this rule is that rich people need even more money or else they will stop working so hard. Do you see the problem here? Rich people need more money are they won’t work while poor people need less money are they won’t work. Genius.

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I wrote about this the other day so I thought I had vented my spleen sufficiently but then I stumbled across Erick Erickson’s lame rejoinder regarding Trump’s threat to destroy a civilization and the spleen became inflamed again. Erickson rather blithely said he would have preferred that Trump had not said it but if it was between that and Trans Recognition Day then well wink wink nudge nudge. Get it.

Fuck you, Erick Erickson. How was this the choice? The choice was between Trump making a measured comment about the American involvement in a war (or military operation if you will) and one where he threatens to destroy a whole civilization. On Easter — the Christians holiest day. Trans people were no where in the equation until Erickson dragged them out.

This is yet another example of Trump supporters dismissing Trump’s terrible behavior. I don’t like what he said but it is better than the alternate. The alternate, in this case, is a president savvy enough to talk reasonably about a dangerous situation that he is responsible for. What needs to be addressed is Trump’s statement. Erickson needs to give critical feedback without the additional little zinger about Trans people which suggests, I might add, that there are no limits to Erickson’s support of Trump. This might have been a good time for Erickson to stipulate these limits instead of giving him limitless support for fear of what was it? Oh, yeah, Trans Recognition Day.

Trump has always been an asshole and will continue to be an asshole. He is what he is. But his supporters are a different story. To continue to support a careless president is madness particularly as he continues his dangerous meanderings through the world. Republicans and Conservatives must draw the line because they hold the power in Congress to stop him.

Just for the record, and I can’t believe I am suggesting this, the alternate is J.D. Vance. When that weasel starts looking good to me, and he is, you know we are in desperate times.

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Donald Trump acknowledged that he calls the Iranian military operation instead of a war because of legal reasons. Congressional Authorization, then, boils down to what the President calls his action rather than a universal understanding of what war is. You say potato, I say … Sorry, that old saying does work in writing but you catch my drift. Also, just as a reminder to the President, parsing phrases to avoid the unlikely retribution of Congress only really works if you don’t tell everyone what you are doing otherwise, in legal terms, this is known as a confession.

But, never mind — a military operation it is. This military operation has been going on a good month. Now I can quibble, and I will, about bombs and targeted assassinations being acts of war, but, say I wanted to be generous to Trump here, and agree with his characterization of those actions as being a military operation instead of a war.

When does a military operation become a war? And, just like that, an answer appears — when you send 50,000 ground troops. Bombing plus troops surely adds up to war. Or are we in some semantic Hell where Trump can call a war anything he wants and the Congress will agree to in order to avoid the wrath of Trump’s more rabid supporters. Apparently it is semantic Hell.

This whole operation is caught up in different definitions of words. Trump supposedly can only act without Congressional Authorization if it is an emergency. The USA would have to be in immediate and grave danger. My understanding of this power would be an impeding attack of USA was about to take place. There is absolutely no evidence that this was the case.

But the Iranians were trying to restart their nuclear program. No doubt, however, according to Trump the Iranian nuclear program was destroyed in a previous attack so the idea that so the idea that the Iranians had miraculously resurrected their nuclear capability to the point of an immenent attack is unbelievable. I am fairly certain there was more than enough time for Congress to review the problem and give its consent.

The Iranian, dare I call it, War is a disappointing display of hubris on the part of Trump and cowardice on the part of Congress. The whole point of Congressional Authorization for wars is that war is a serious business for a country. If we are going to take on such a responsibility it needs to come after careful consideration from the body that represents the all the people of the USA. For wars, particularly messy and potentially long term commitment wars to be won, everyone needs to be on board. This has not happened.

Instead we have semantic parsing of words so one man can drag a nation of 300 million plus people into a war dressed up like a military operation.

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Every day, every new outrage, and I think is this the one that is going to bring the whole rotting edifice down but, to my surprise, the rickety all structure is still standing.

Yet the rot is so pervasive that almost anything could bring it down. It is both remarkably sturdy and remarkably vulnerable at the same time. How does it survive all this rot? Then I take a deep breath and remember, oh, right, now I remember — I am the problem. The present system, as configured, is all I know. Whatever comes next is unknown. This mystery is more than a little frightening. I want the system, with all its flaws, to survive.

It isn’t encouraging that every idea I have heard regarding change now seems to involve a bit of violence. It is mostly this fear of violence that keeps me firmly on the side of the present system for all its problems. There still is the notion of democratic give and take as the best way to resolve our problems despite the rot. I maybe wrong but the risk of political violence seems, at present, unwarranted.

What I fear though is this reflexive support for democracy is waning. To what I do not know. I do know that blood on the streets is to be avoided mostly because the idea is always that it will be the bad guy’s blood (read here the people who disagree with me) and not the good guy’s (read here the people who agree with me) blood. But we all know that once blood starts flowing, both good guys and bad guys bleed the same color and it is horrible.

I don’t have the answer but I do know this — the present approach seems to be a shouting match where the only way to win is to outshout the other guy. The gerrymander wars shows two sides with little confidence that either can win through the political process so they redraw the lines to keep their power. People appear to be giving up on changing minds through persuasion and creating imperfect but workable institutions through compromise.

And all we have is the rickety and rotting system to defend us in the coming political storm. It is a bit unsettling to think about.