Fundamentals
FUNDAMENTALS
SIMPLE MATHEMATICS and THE EARTH
The health, livability and usability of the planet is the most determining factor of all for ourselves and society.
Whether Capitalist, Socialist or Communist, virtually all economies are based on the production and consumption of resources and discharging the waste products into the environment. Our economies are based on creating poisons.
1 The earth only has so much resources.
2 Extracting, transporting and shaping those resources into products creates poisons.
3 The earth has a limited capacity to absorb those poisons without undergoing drastic effects
4 Our human bodies have a limited capacity to absorb those poisons without undergoing drastic effects
5 Consider the phrase "undeveloped land". Nature is only valued to the extent that it can be changed into man made structures and uses, killing nature and replacing it with something else; yet without nature we die as a species (no food), and the web of life is far more complex and interconnected than we understand.
****Any economic plan not based in physical reality is a fantasy bringing about its' own destruction****
At present most of the world is living in fantasy. Rates of many illnesses are rising, ice caps melting, sea levels rising, oceans fished out, nutritional value of soil way down, etc.
All our political differences and personal dreams are moot if we are dying of environmentally caused cancers or are environmental refugees or dead from disasters brought on ourselves by fouling our nest.
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THE MATH OF JOBS IN AMERICA
1 Jobs and prices are related. How much work one needs to pay living expenses is highly variable.
2 At current wages and prices, especially housing, most people need to work 40-60 hrs/week to survive.
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3 There simply are not enough jobs for the population at 40-60 hrs/wk, especially decent jobs paying enough to live decently.
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4 Many of the jobs that do exist pay so lowly that many work hard and barely survive with no margin for error, such as illness
5 Illegal immigrants take up a certain amount of low low wage jobs, and/but if every immigrant went home there still would not be enough living wage jobs.
6 Many large companies are understaffed due to high executive compensation being chosen over hiring additional staff. This can be noticed on checkout lines, looking for someone to ask a question on sales floors, etc.
7 Many jobs have already been sent overseas to low wage countries, many more are in the process. Owners and execs seek profits for the business. The old vision of business as service and family is long gone.
8 Automation continues to kill jobs. Now even fast food order taking is starting to be automated
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9 Businesses are there to make money, not be socially responsible. If firing everyone in America, automating some jobs and sending the rest to some country where people work for 25 cents an hour increases profits they do that if it makes the owners more money and execs higher bonuses.
This goes to basic understandings and definitions of how a society is supposed to function: for the good of some or for the good of all, what used to be called the Social Contract.
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So, a game of musical chairs with jobs. What happens to those who lose, many of whom do not have the technical and computer skills
and education to get a job in today's workplace.
If one researches the difference between "participation rate" and "unemployment rate", one finds that real unemployment in US today is around %25-30. Official unemployment rate only counts those actively looking for work and can't find a job, not those who for whatever reasons are not looking.
If it were possible to survive on 30 hours of work per week, or even 25, there could again be full employment, but rents would have to go way down.
And what if the limits to planetary poisoning are acknowledged and the whole basis of the economies of the world is disrupted. Where then do people work, and what do they work at?
Not so simple, certainly not as simple as red or blue winning an election.
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DON'T LIKE WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY?
BROKEN ELECTIONS ARE A ROOT PROBLEM:
WITHOUT HONEST ELECTIONS WE JUST GET
THE SAME OLD BS
We need
ELECTIONS, not AUCTIONS!
Whatever your political views everyone wants honest elections with real choice
The American system of elections is deeply broken.
The abusive, miserable government policies we get are no accident.
People always say "vote the bums out" and then just get a new set of bums. The problem is that the system we have in place is designed to produce bums, not government for the people.
Until the type of decision makers in power is changed expect more of the same. Regardless of the particular names and faces, the electoral system guarantees that only certain types of people can win an election, with occasional rare exceptions.
What type? The type that serve their paymasters, not the people.
Lemon trees grow lemons.
Our election system is rotten and produces rotten fruit.
REAL CHANGE
1 verifiable voting, incl. exit polls. Honest vote counts.
.
Here in the USA we have Faith Based Voting: they announce the results, we have to take it on faith.
Electronic Elections are hackable elections, push one button, select your winner.
In the old days they had to at least stuff ballot boxes and they could recount real physical ballots.
When you go shopping you get a receipt. If you have any doubts you look at the receipt. A paper trail. Not so in elections, not even the same level of verifiability as buying a carton of milk.
No verifiability, no trust.
Why should we trust a result that can't be proven?
All the recent questions over election results should have by now proven to us that our results are not trustworthy.
2 Want real choice?
Whether you are Green Party or Tea Party shouldn't you be able to vote for who you really want, not just the lesser of two evils?
We need multiple choice voting, ranked choice voting or some variation thereof, so that people feel free to vote 3rd party without having to be afraid they are actually hurting the lesser of two evils. Without that the 2 parties continue their monopoly of power, and one thing Democrat and Republican leadership agree on totally is not letting anyone else in on the action.
3 Really we don't have elections in America, we have
AUCTIONS NOT ELECTIONS,
legalized bribery of politicians with "campaign finance contributions".
Regardless of blue or red, they are both bought and paid for henchmen/women of Big green which is why they represent and serve their paymasters, not us.
And you know what, they almost have to be because the way the system is set up now without a lot of money it is very hard for anyone to win an election.
Get Money out of politics.
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Secondarily
1 unGerrymander. Many people's votes hardly count, districts are drawn in such heavily biased ways as to almost guarantee a certain result. Both red and blue do it.
Gerrymandering makes a mockery of Democracy.
2 unStrip voters from rolls. Tens of millions have been cheated of their chance to vote in various devious, ugly ways. Every election in every state for every issue has been affected for years. Many results would have been quite different.
Certainly we need to have a process that verifies that those voting are legal voters but the way that has been gone about in many states is so blatantly a one sided attempt to disenfranchise certain voters that even conservative courts have ruled it wrong.
See the work of Greg Palast
3 election day a national holiday. Elections on a workday inherently discriminates against working people
4 abundant polling places, no more lines. Many are almost denied their right to vote by making it incredibly difficult, often deliberately. Another often successful attempt to disenfranchise certain voters
5 amendment: affirmative right to vote. It is a democracy, right?
6 A number of people have expressed concerns that immigrants who did not have the right to vote have voted in our elections. In fairness, these claims need to be investigated.
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NATIONAL CITIZENS COMMISSION ON VOTING
Republicans allege vote theft by Democrats and illegals voting
Democrats allege voter suppression by Republicans and voters unjustly thrown off rolls
Sanders supporters allege primary thefts
Allegations of hacked voting machines
and the list goes on
Whether you believe any of this is true or not, many people have lost confidence that we have free and fair elections and honest vote totals. Every election seems to result in a number of allegations.
****We can not have questions about the most fundamental basis of our democracy****
****We can disagree about everything but we at least have to have confidence in the process****
So here's my suggestion:
A National Citizens Commission On Voting
made up of everybody from Greens to Tea Party.
A fully transparent process
broadcast live on the internet
Investigating all allegations and
Investigating all possible fixes.
The reason I recommend an independent Citizens Commission is because Congress is not capable of setting aside partisanship. They have to play to their audience in a way a Citizen's Commission would not.
Can enough people be found with committment to following the facts where they lead and setting aside political dogma, doing a real investigation and not just another political tribal battle? I have my doubts but we have to try.
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DON'T LIKE WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY?
BROKEN ELECTIONS ARE A ROOT PROBLEM:
WITHOUT HONEST ELECTIONS WE JUST GET
THE SAME OLD BS
We need
ELECTIONS, not AUCTIONS!
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TRUSTWORTHY VOTE COUNTS
REAL CHOICE
HONEST POLITICIANS
FAIRLY DRAWN VOTING DISTRICTS
FAIR ACCESS TO VOTING MACHINES
ELECTIONS ON A DAY PEOPLE WORKING HAVE THE SAME CHANCE TO VOTE AS ANYONE ELSE
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IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?
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Dishonorable mention-all the millions of (mostly black) people who have been deliberately robbed of their right to vote because of War on Drugs convictions.
We have been in a long term cultural civil war which started in the 60s with the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War protests.
The War on Drugs was a brilliant, deliberate, devious move by the Republican party to seize power by incarcerating blacks and leftists to deprive them of their votes, to make them afraid or ineligible to run for office or partipate in politics too openly. They couldn't criminalize being against the war or a Democrat, but they could and did criminalize a lifestyle choice common to anti war protestors, leftists and black people
Ronald Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2, DT, along with countless Senators, Congesspeople and ballot measures, none would have won if all the people who had their votes stolen by the War on Drugs could have voted.
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Step 1: get more people aware of the top 3. The shocking thing is how many are in denial of vote hacking and how few realize how important multiple choice voting is.
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and,
IF CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE, MICKEY MOUSE IS A PERSON TOO!
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POISON THE RIVERS
there's a LAW that says a corporation's #1 responsibility is to make profits for it's shareholders. That means that if it's cheaper to poison drinking water and pay the fines than to not poison the river, they poison the river. Execs face pressure from shareholders to maximize profits no matter who gets hurt.
can anyone tell me
*Where that law came from?
*why it should still be there?
*why no one talks about it?
That law needs to be taken off the books.
Maybe replaced with another law saying that business has a responsibility to the society to not do harm for profit, but at least take the present law off the books.
meanwhile
NO ONE IS PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE
Execs in Corps are immune from prosecution for the consequences of their actions.
This makes sense for honest mistakes, but what about when they knowingly poison a river, or order a coverup of a safety flaw in a product?
And willful and criminal negligence?
Why is there no PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY?
If there was, they wouldn't do those wrongs.
Those laws arguably make more difference than the President
We need a law change:
Execs personally liable to prosecution for harm resulting from criminal activities, willful and gross negligligence, including public right to file civil suits.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY NOW!
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A VERY SMALL TECHNICAL CHANGE WHICH MIGHT MAKE A VERY BIG DIFFERENCE:
LAST MINUTE CHANGES TO BILLS IN CONGRESS
Very often, at the very last minute, legislators slip in nasty little additions or changes to bills, usually for the purpose of giving some big business a tax break. One or two sentences in a 600 page bill, slipped in at midnight. Usually a giveaway to some business that has bribed them with "campaign finance contributions".
SUGGESTION: a 3 day vetting period for all bills before they are voted on, no changes allowed, meaning the public has 3 days to read the final bill, to catch any attempted hanky panky.
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THE POLITICS OF DESERVING and PSYCHOLOGICAL POLITICS
Without judging...
Underneath much of Blue politics is the idea that
1 we have a moral responsibility to care of everyone: homeless, healthcare, refugees, etc.,
and also the idea that
2 people who do not hold this view are bad people.
Underneath Red are the ideas:
1 Deservingness-Do these people deserve help, especially if, as in the case of drug addicts, they are making very poor choices.
This includes
"you want to take my hard earned money and give it to THEM???"
"Them" often has racial overtones (which this post will not get into).
and
2 We can't afford to take in people from the whole world and take care of everyone. People will just be drawn to come here to take advantage of the benefits.
"you want ME to pay for THEM?"
And perhaps the key issue:
3*****
Inside the psyche of many traditional people is a biblical worldview that sees wealth as a sign of God's favor, poverty a sign of sin, and sinners deserve punishment, not support.
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Blue very often diminishes the personal responsibility of people for their choices and does a poor job of understanding how it feels for someone working hard and still struggling to see someone who is either "undeserving" or a foreigner getting government help, help which is taken from their hard earned taxes, which is what really happens.
Red diminishes the very real cause and effect of non personal forces which produces so many social problems and does not acknowledge the huge changes in the basic structure of jobs and the economy, the reality that many jobs do not pay enough to live on, or how US foreign policy has created many refugees.
Q: usually asked by blue-why does red ignore and often support government programs advantaging big business and the rich.
A: deservingness. Wealth is seen as a result of good moral character, "the best people". Winners. Also for the christian conservatives wealth is seen as a sign of God's favor, poverty a sign of sin, and sinners deserve punishment not support, while good people deserve support. (Calvinism) This is usually subconscious, not explicit.
This is the reason why in general Red is against any program that helps the common people and for any program that helps the wealthy.
When one reads a lot of the conservative comments on FB and ESPN, where a lot of the comment boards devolve into politics, many of the comments show a basic disdain for lower income people and a belief that these people have their problems as a result of their own defects and/or poor choices. These people are seen as "losers".
Reading liberal comments, the attitudes are reversed: people are to a large extent considered helpless victims of greedy bad corporations and rich people who exploit them ruthlessly. People are not held accountable for poor choices, while there is a basic negative judgement of the wealthy for allowing social ills such as poverty, homelessness and hunger to exist.
In addition there is the issue of shame. For many Americans one of the basic sources of pride is taking care of yourself. Taking aid from the government is seen as shameful, a sign of being a failure, although this attitude is not extended to business subsidies and tax loopholes.
And the issue of jealousy. People keeping their nose to the grindstone, working low-wage jobs, watching every penny carefully and still struggling just to get by, get very angry when they see someone they judge as "undeserving" not working and receiving government benefits such as food stamps and SSI checks.
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Essentially deservingness comes down to a yes or no moral judgement:
"you want ME to pay for THEM??? They don't deserve it. People are responsible for making good choices and working hard and if they don't they deserve to suffer",
often accompanied by
"and it is morally wrong to bail them out, especially by taking money from good (deserving) people and giving it to bad (undeserving) people, penalizing the good and rewarding bad behavior".
or
"it's our moral obligation to take care of people, no matter what mistakes they have made", usually accompanied by
"We have money for ___ (war, tax breaks, etc, all of which trigger their own issues of deserving or not)", we can take care of people" and
"It is morally wrong to let them suffer if we can help".
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There's your politics in a nutshell. Along with the disagreements on the technical details of policies, each side judges the other as being not just technically but morally wrong.
See the work of George Lakoff.