Home

Details

I urge anyone who reads this to follow this link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/03/risk-us-coup-next-us-election-greater-than-under-trump and take careful note of the author and his eminent credentials. Urge all your elected officials to resist the Republican attempts to facilitate a coup d'etat in the United States.

January 6, 2021 was a demonstration of intent. Lessons learned then are being honed into legislation to make the next one work as intended: to finally put democracy to death. This is serious, and it needs to be stopped.

Details

It's an interesting thought experiment to see how or if every piece of data collected about a person could itself be tracked through every entity that possesses it, whether or not the entity sells or (another breadcrumb on the trail of the datum), saves it (I'm looking at you, NSA) or gives it away (CIA to MI5/6 to ?). If an entity sells it twice, a fork is born newly to be tracked. IIRC the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates that an individual has the right to know what other entities have accessed their Protected Health Information (PHI, defined in the act), but I don't know if a) that may have been watered down since 1966, or b) anyone has ever asked to see such records.

If it is feasible to put an audit trail on a datum, it should be feasible to put a cost figure on each data transfer to, say, tax it or pay the "provider" from whom the datum originated a percentage of the transaction cost. I can hear the screams of "stifling innovation", "burdensome government regulation" and the like. But it seems these transactions are currently completely free of oversight or meaningful regulation, and in terms of the initial collection and subsequent dispersal, totally opaque except for the occasional researcher who notices and at least tries to document the initial collection.

Where it goes once into the maws of Google, Facebook, et. al., all we know is it's magically turned into money. The alchemist's dream of gold, not from lead, but from thin air.

Details

If you have ever wondered how bribes campaign contributions are considered to be "free speech", there's a pretty good explanation.

First, the teaser:

"Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. How exactly did corporations come to be understood as “people” bestowed with the most fundamental constitutional rights? The answer can be found in a bizarre—even farcical—series of lawsuits over 130 years ago involving a lawyer who lied to the Supreme Court, an ethically challenged justice, and one of the most powerful corporations of the day."

And here's the complete article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852

And now you know.

Details

I recently used the congressional websites of my alleged US Congresscritters to largely echo this fine piece from the Salt Lake Tribune, to the effect that Social Security and Medicare are not "entitlements" in the sense that they just fall out of the sky and into my checking account every month. 

Social Security was deducted from my first paycheck of my first full-time job in 1962, and my last paycheck of my last full-time job in 1999. It was supposed to be paid into the "Social Security Trust Fund", a separate account maintained by the government to finance future, post-retirement payouts, and supposedly not to be used to fund government operations, which were funded out of general tax revenues, e.g., income and corporate taxes. During the 38 years I paid in to it, the promise was that I could rely on a modest income from Social Security to supplement the savings I accrued on my own to ensure a secure retirement. The payments I have been receiving since retiring are not magical manna from heaven, they are a contractual payout of my career-long pay-in. They are not an entitlement but a repayment.

Likewise, when Medicare was established in 1965, a small premium was deducted from every one of my paychecks to pre-pay Medicare Part A insurance, for hospital and hospice services. Part B insurance is paid through income-based premiums deducted from my Social Security income. These payments have been, and are being used to provide basic healthcare services to me and millions of other Americans. The payments are compulsory and the expectation is that they will cover the costs of these services. Medicare is not, therefore, an entitlement, it is a contractual agreement of long standing between the US Government and me.

Recent public statements by congressional leaders have made it clear that in 2018, "entitlements" are to be "reformed" (translation: "gutted"), with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security targeted for "reform". I foolishly wanted to advise my congresscritters, Sens. Burr (R) and Tillis (R) and Rep. Walker(R), so sent them all an edited version of the Salt Lake Tribune article linked above. Five days later I received an email from Sen. Tillis and another from Rep. Walker. Sen. Burr did respond with a relevant discussion of issues and a promise that he was solidly behind Social Security and Medicare. The Tillis and Walker emails were both filled with the ongoing attempt to mythologize and sterilize the recently passed Rethug Tax Giveaway to the Rich and Powerful as a boon for the middle class, rife with outright fabrications, misdirection and misplaced optimism. And of course, neither addressed the concerns in my recent communication to them.

It is as I have been saying for years: Today, if you want one of your misnomered representatives to listen to you you'd better let your 5-6 digit bribe compaign contribution be your introduction. What a sorry fate has befallen our nation. Which is now, in fact, their nation.

Details

A few days ago I read an article by Paul Krugman (Remember him? Nobel economist?), the title of which is - no joke:

Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies

The aticle was about the ten selling points the Republicans are (and have been for years) using to sell their snake oil cure-all, "Tax Cuts". The ten biggest lies in Mr. Krugman's article:

  1. America is the most highly-taxed country in the world. It's not. Not even close.
  2. The estate tax is destroying farmers and truckers. No way. It's likely that only 2-3 American truckers and NO farmers will pay any estate tax this year.
  3. Taxation of pass-through entities is a burden on small business. Not so with small buisinesses. Wealthy business owners pay business taxes in accordance with their overall income. Yo kno, progressively?
  4. Cutting profits taxes really benefits workers. So if you lower taxes on a business's profits, they will turn around and give all their workers raises? Under the workers' pillows like the tooth fairy? Or might they just return it to their owners (investors) as dividends?
  5. Repatriating overseas profits will create jobs. Wrong. Studies have sown that "repatriated" funds don't increase employment, investment or R&D.
  6. This is not a tax cut for the rich. Lie. Almost every provision of this proposal will benefit the very hiesg income Americans, with pennies tossed to the rest of us.
  7. It’s a big tax cut for the middle class. Valse. See above. 80% of the tax cut goes to the top 1%.
  8. It won’t increase the deficit. Another whopper. This is a multi-trillion dollar budget buster.
  9. Cutting taxes will jump-start rapid growth. Remember Reagan's Laffer Curve? Economists laugh at Laffer. Remember the Clinton tax hikes? They were followed by robust growth and, until Bush took over, actually were on track to eliminate the spending deficit.
  10. Tax cuts will pay for themselves. From Krugman's article: "Reagan’s tax cuts led to deficits, Clinton’s tax hike to surpluses; Jerry Brown presided over California’s fiscal revitalization, Sam Brownback over a fiscal crisis that eventually prompted the legislature to overrule him and raise taxes again."

 The original article (may be pay-walled) is here.

Details

I ran across this article from the Guardian, a British newspaper. It seems to confirm what I've come to believe: American democracy is under seige and has been for decades. The "haves", the 99% or whatever you want to call them, personified by the Koch brothers, have instituted a long-term, stealthy (by design) war on democracy, and by all measures, they are winning. Here's the link to the article:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/19/despot-disguise-democracy-james-mcgill-buchanan-totalitarian-capitalism

And this is the book on which the Guardian article was based:

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/9781101980965/

I just finished the book.  I recommend it highly to anyone who thinks the "free market" is the be-all and end-all of economics and economic politics. It is a heavily researched and footnoted, yet very readable account of how the "economic freedom" crowd is incrementally taking over the USA using diabolical strategies hatched over the past 70 years or so. The funding is largely Koch in origin. My reading staple lies in the genre of mysteries, horror and the like, but I will say that MacLean's book is the scariest thing I have ever seen.

Hey y'all frogs: enjoy the warm bath! (Reference)

Interesting that the book's author is almost a neighbor. She's the William Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University and she lives in Durham, NC. She is speaking here in Fearrington Village on September 14 as part of the "Great Decisions" lecture series! I'll  be there "ferr sherr".

Related article (added 10/31/2018): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/30/billionaire-stealth-politics-america-100-richest-what-they-want.

  1. An Idea for Our Times
  2. Proud to be an American!
  3. Net Neutrality - Give a Hoot!
  4. What about Labor Day?
  5. Republicans Control NC!
  • You are here:  
  • Home