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Month: March 2011

Being America Costs More

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Did anyone watch 60 Minutes on Sunday? If you missed it, you can watch the clip that supercharged my bitchiness here. I thought I was going to watch a clip on how US corporations use overseas tax havens to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. What I instead saw, was a propaganda piece about how the US should lower corporate taxes in order to keep jobs in America.

Oh where to start expressing my rage?

First of all, jobs will continue to leave the US as long as we have higher human rights standards. As long as we insist on safe, fair working conditions, labor will be cheaper in other places. So if you want to keep jobs in America you would have to turn employees into wage slaves, desperate to earn money in any condition. That’s what the union busting epidemic is about, but that’s another topic. As long as we have laws that protect the worker, we’re going to have higher labor rates. Period, end of story. If you want to keep jobs here, you’re going to have to be prepared to work side by side with your ten year old child for twelve hours a day.

Now that we have one implausible, bullshit argument down, let’s move to the other inane point made in this piece.

For this piece, 60 Minutes interviewed the CEO of Cisco. I give him credit for doing the interview, but everything he said was fucking ridiculous. He was talking about businesses moving to Ireland and Switzerland because they have more “reasonable” corporate tax rates. And he went onto caution the US government that it was driving businesses away by having high tax rates. Honestly, I can’t believe this douchecanoe runs a company. I would expect that a person who runs a company would have more business savvy that this. Okay, that’s not true. I actually have come to expect that people that run companies are know-nothing asshats that inherited their lot in life through luck of birth. But I didn’t always have such bitchy, low expectations of CEOs. They drove me to my low opinion of them by saying stupid shit like, “The US better lower its tax rate, or we’re going to leave.”

Here’s the deal, Switzerland and Ireland can have lower tax rates because the US is taking care of their high ticket item in terms of their countries’ budget. We essentially provide defense for all of Europe. They don’t have to spend as much on defense because we do. Does anyone honestly think that Ireland is prepared to defend themselves in a war with another country? No, of course not! Because if Ireland ever gets attacked, the US will jump right in to defend them. Why do you think the Italians or the French aren’t really leading the Libyan mission? Because the lack the tactical and operational capabilities that the US has. Like it or not, we have the strongest military in the world because we spend exponentially more of our GDP on defense than anyone else does.

Am I in love with this situation? No, but that’s how it is. We are the world’s military. And as long as that’s the case, being America just fucking costs more. Deal with it.

These asshat American CEOs who are oblivious to that fact need to bitch slapped repeatedly until they’re cured of their stupid. In their childish fantasy world, they get to drive around in a Ferrari that they paid Hyundai prices for. Idiots! Honestly, just when I’m thinking that politicians are the dumbest people in America, a CEO pipes up to disprove me.

We essentially have two options for keeping jobs in America, according to our CEOs. We can either go back to the days of treating our workers like shit in order to maximize profits, or we can seriously reduce our biggest expenditures; defense, medicare, and medicaid. The latter two go back to treating our citizens like garbage. All three would put us on a fast (er) track to giving up our position as leaders of the free world.

Is that what these idiot CEOs want? For America to become devolve? No, I don’t believe they do. I just believe that they’re incapable of seeing past the next dollar in earnings.

Being the leader of the free world isn’t cheap. And we’ve spent the last thirty years dropping corporate taxes, and taxes on the super fucking rich enough to have a pretty good idea of where the threshold is for revenue that we need to generate in order to maintain our position in the world.

The smartest thing that Obama can do right now, is to lower corporate taxes. Yes, you heard that right. He needs to lower corporate taxes, but he also needs to make the new rate a flat tax. If he took the corporate tax rate down to a flat 28% and eliminated all right offs, we would bring in more revenue. And it would be a win, because republicans wouldn’t have an argument to make against lower taxes. Right now, US corporations pay around 6.6% of total revenues. That’s just not enough to keep America, America.

Being America just fucking costs more than being anyone else.


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The Nuclear Option

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So we’re all biting our nails, waiting to see what’s going to happen with the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. And as we’re watching the devastation we can see, and anticipating the potential devastation that lies ahead, we’re justifiably discussing the merits and pitfalls of nuclear energy.

Here are some facts about nuclear energy that you may or may not know.

Banks won’t finance the nuclear power plants in America, unless the federal government guarantees the loan. Banks aren’t willing to take the risk. They don’t want to risk the massive cost overruns that are inevitable in constructing nuclear power plants. They also don’t want the litigation risks.

You know how Wall Street was happy, willing, and able to trade crap ass mortgages for ten years? Yeah, well they won’t touch nuclear power plants. What does that tell you?

So in order to build a nuclear power plant in this country, your taxpayer dollars have to back the project because financial industry analysts don’t believe they can make money on them. They don’t believe that the ratio of risk to reward is worth the trouble. Speaking of risk to reward, you must be asking yourself, “What do I get for guaranteeing the loan?”. Good question! The answer is that you don’t get jack shit because even though the federal government is guaranteeing the loan, they still award contracts to companies to build the power plants. So the company gets the contract and collects the profits without taking on a single dime of liability.

Sounds like an awesome racket to get into, right? It gets better. A nuclear power plant costs between $5B and $8B to build. Now once it’s built, do you think there’s an insurance company on the planet that’s willing to insure the fucking thing? NO! That would be batshit crazy! We know that banks and insurance companies are greedy, reckless, and morally bankrupt, but they’re not batshit crazy. So guess who takes on all of the liability when something goes wrong? If you guessed ‘you’ you’d be right! You’re poor, from being repeatedly robbed, but right! And since we the taxpayers cover any liability that may arise from an accident at the nuclear power plant, if you ever needed to sue for medical costs, you would essentially be suing yourself.

So if a bank isn’t willing to touch a nuclear power plant, and Wall Street isn’t willing to touch a nuclear power plant, and insurance companies like AIG (who will historically insure God damned anything) aren’t willing to touch it, wouldn’t one think that perhaps nuclear power is a bad idea?

Yes this is clearly a dumbass idea, which means that our government will naturally pursue it to the tune of $36B. Actually, it’s $54.5B if you add the $36B that Obama wants to add to the $18.5B that wasn’t spent out of the last budget.

Does any of this sound good to anyone? Forget what’s happening in Japan for a moment. Does using tax payer money to fund and guarantee a venture that is too dangerous for even Wall Street to gamble on sound reasonable to anyone?

Even people who purport to be pro-nuclear energy, back way the fuck off when the conversation turns to building one in their back yard.

Now I’m ready to bring the Japanese crisis into this post. Those socialist, statist, Marxist motherfuckers have building codes that are far stricter than anything we have here in America. It took an 8.9 magnitude earthquake to trigger a nuclear meltdown. We have two nuclear power plants in southern California, sitting on a fucking fault line! Those two plants can allegedly withstand earthquakes up to a 7.4 magnitude. Just so you’re clear, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake is roughly 1/15th as strong as an 8.9. Does that sound good to anyone?

Another issue is nuclear waste. We still don’t know what to do with it. Yes, we’ve figured out a way to reuse some of it but there’s still waste. France encases it in concrete and buries it. But the problem with that is that concrete eventually breaks down, even if it’s not covering uranium. Have you ever seen an industrial building that has been abandoned for a few years? Concrete needs to be maintained in order to hold its integrity so the French are going to be digging up and reburying nuclear waste in perpetuity.

I say that we spend that $54.5B on subsidizing green energy startups to develop things like the Bloom Box or more efficient solar and wind solutions. We need to stop spending our resources on energy supplies that are killing us. Whether it’s the slow death that comes with carbon emissions, or widespread death that would result from a nuclear meltdown.

There will be nuclear meltdowns. That’s an absolute certainty. So we should ask ourselves how many meltdowns make nuclear power worth it. Is one meltdown every hundred years acceptable? We know that the radiation lingers for a couple of decades, so we’re talking about elevated cancer rates for two generations of families within a couple of hundred miles. Is one every two hundred years acceptable? I’ve already seen two in my lifetime, so I find it pretty unlikely that two hundred meltdown-free years is possible. If it were, it would require a shitload of regulation and maintenance. Do you trust our government to regulate the shit out of the energy industry? Or do you trust the company running the plant to voluntarily make costly maintenance investments? Pro-nuclear republicans suddenly have so much new found faith in the government they hate, that they trust it to keep nuclear power plants safe?

Remember, Three Mile Island happened because of user error. Chernobyl happened because there weren’t enough containment measures in place. Are you so confident that it won’t happen here?

Nothing about nuclear power makes sense to me. The first nuclear power plant went live in 1954. It’s time to move past 1950s solutions. The advances we’ve made since then are staggering. Proponents of nuclear power operate under the assumption that we can’t come up with something more efficient. And they’re using their iPhones to say so, in their Facebook status updates.

I say, bullshit!  We can innovate if we decide that we’re going to. Look, we got computers in our homes in the 90s as a direct result of all the money that Reagan dumped into defense in the 80s. Those billions of dollars spend in R & D shrank the microchip down to a workable size.

If we get serious and we throw serious money at the problem, we can solve it once and for all. We always have.

 

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Nine Most Terrifying Words

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I’ve always been perplexed with politically active people that don’t believe that good government is possible. If you don’t believe that government is good, why bother to get involved?

I completely get the motivations of politicians that hate government. They want the power that comes with being in the government. It’s a great way to get really fucking rich without creating anything, or employing anyone. But the people that believe them? I find them inexplicable.

Who the fuck hears a candidate say, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help'”, and thinks “that’s who I’m voting for!“? How does that make any fucking sense? He just told you that he’s not going to help you if you elect him!

What kind of person perpetually votes for a party whose mantra is the promise of shrinking the government, despite the fact that no president in the history of that party, has ever made the government even a little bit smaller? Are these people fucking idiots?

The short answer is, yes. The longer answer lies in the inherent pessimism that fuels the belief that government’s only purpose is to fuck you.

See, republicans generally come into power and make things worse than they were before they got in. And once they’ve made things worse, they take the opportunity to leverage that crisis to make themselves (i.e the government) bigger and more powerful.

Bush ignored mounds of evidence (not to mention the emphatic warnings from his predecessor) , outlining the threat that Bin Laden poses to America. The US gets attacked, and the administration used that crisis to pursue the neocon agenda of world domination through invasion and occupation.

Ronald Reagan revived fears of a Soviet takeover of the world, at a time when no one was thinking about the Soviet Union. Iran was holding fifty-two Americans hostage, and we had an oil shortage that created long gas lines. The last thing on any American’s mind was the cold war. But Reagan gave those old fears some CPR and brought them back to life. He then leveraged the fear he resurrected, to get the American people to go along with his wild defense spending that blew up our deficit. He massively cut taxes for top income earners when he first came into office, and then had to raise taxes eleven times to offset the the shortfall that he created. In classic republican tradition, those tax hikes shifted the tax burden on the middle class.

Scott Walker turned a surplus into a deficit ten minutes after being sworn in, by cutting taxes at the top and doling out government contracts to his cronies. A minute after that, he leveraged the budget “crisis” he created to decimate collective bargaining rights for public employees.

I can give dozens of examples, but you get the idea. This is an age old tactic of the republican party. Why does it work on some people? Because if you are pessimistic enough to believe that government can never work for you, fucked up government validates your world view. It makes you right! Never mind the fact that you voted for the government. You were right, and that’s all that matters. Buying into the “nine most terrifying words” theory is purely emotional.

No rational, thinking, logical person would ever accept the idea that a human (any human) will ever relinquish power that they’ve obtained. That’s never happened in recorded history. So buying into the bullshit narrative that someone is trying to get into government so that they can turn around and give up the power that comes with the office. That’s just batshit crazy. So if you’re buying into this bullshit, you’re not doing it with your mind. You’re doing it emotionally.

That goes for you too, democrats. If you believe that a democrat will give up power that his/her predecessor secured for that office, you’re not being rational. I never, not for one second, thought that Obama was going to give up any of the expanded powers that Bush snatched up. To do so would be crazy and stupid, and I was definitely not voting for someone I thought was crazy and stupid. That’s just not how I roll. I will admit that I never saw the Bradley  Manning abuse coming under this president’s watch. I knew that Obama wasn’t going to give up the power to do anything, I just didn’t think that he would use this particular power. Don’t kid yourselves, Obama is completely aware of what’s happening with Manning. In my defense, I’m no less disgusted with Obama when he does it, than I was with Bush when he did it.

Die hards on both sides vote irrationally, but the whole foundation of republicanism is based on irrational voting and perpetuating a pessimistic world view.

We have a republican congress now, whose sole mission is to make things shittier so that they can point to Obama and tell you that government sucks. And Obama is playing into their hands by not standing up to make sure that shitty things don’t get passed.

It’s a vicious cycle, and to some degree, we’re all playing our part.

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Expensive And Ineffective

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That’s republicanism in a nutshell. Expensive and ineffective describes every aspect of the republican party, but I want to focus on one specific area for this post. Union busting.

Everyone is hip to the fact that the union busting efforts by republican governors all across the country aren’t about balancing state budgets. They’re about eviscerating the democratic party. Everyone knows that with a few exceptions, the lion’s share of corporate political contributions are made to republicans, and the lion’s share of union contributions go to democrats.

A little bit of simple math, coupled with some common sense (there I go with my sunny optimism again) will tell you that the corporate contributions are significantly larger than the union contributions. Union membership in America is 12.3%. That’s if you add up all of the private sector and public sector union members. Unions ostensibly raise their political contribution money from a percentage of dues paid by that 12.3% of workers. Workers that, by the way, earn an average of 59k a year. Corporate contributions come from diverting profits to political contributions. US corporations are at this moment, sitting on two trillion dollars in cash reserves. It’s obvious where the bigger trough of money lies.

These union busting efforts are aimed at drying up the union money to political contributions. You know what that tells me? It tells me that it costs a fucking fortune to get people to buy republican. And for all of the money that’s being spent on selling republicanism, it’s still not working.

In yesterday’s post, I shared a poll that shows that most Americans would take a much more “liberal” approach to balancing our budget than our government will actually take. We see that while republican governors across the country are cutting money for education, Americans would increase the education budget. We see that Americans are willing to raise taxes on both themselves and the filthy rich.

Poll after poll shows that most Americans have “liberal” opinions on domestic issues from abortion, to gun purchasing requirements, to education and gay marriage (that poll moves more and more liberal every year). The only domestic issue where Americans skew “right”, is on the death penalty. We still have a blood lust for revenge, apparently. Most Americans aren’t interested in invading or occupying other countries. The Bush administration had to employ a major shock doctrine offense in order to get Americans on board with Iraq, and even that didn’t last more than five years. The majority of us are not interested in the neocon porn fantasy of world domination.

We are liberal on most issues, despite the shit load of cash that is being spent on selling republicanism, and making “liberal” a dirty word.

On top of the corporate contributions, there’s billions of dollars invested in a giant right wing propaganda machine. There’s Fox News, where Rupert Murdoch was happy to lose money for six years before he ever saw a dime of profit. There’s Rasmussen, a right wing polling outfit that exists so that right wing radio and Fox News can quote “data”. There’s the right wing think tanks like Cato and Heritage whose only purpose is to again, feed right wing media with lies that they can cite, thereby validating each other.

I’ve driven through cities where, when flipping through the AM dial, I’ve come across Rush Limbaugh on three different stations. Three stations carrying the same program? Why would any radio station in America carry the same programming as a competing station in the same market? Because the right wing think tanks are buying up all of the advertising on those programs, in order to ensure that those programs are all that Americans have access to. That system is finally starting to fall apart. Right wing talkers are being pulled from radio stations all across the country, finally. Nobody is fucking listening anymore.

We have a really fucking big, really fucking expensive machine trying to crank out republicans in America. But that machine is failing to accomplish it’s task. You can’t throw enough money at Americans to convince them to want to legislate’s a woman’s uterus. You can’t throw enough money at Americans to convince them to hate people for being gay (anymore). You can’t throw enough money at Americans to convince them that workers should give up their right to organize.

And you know what? The right wing corporate interests know they’re losing. That’s why they’re making a concerted effort to bust the unions. They need to make sure that no money goes to liberal voices, so that they can buy themselves a little bit more time. You think that all of these republican governors suddenly all, independently decided to launch an attack against the unions in their state? No, it’s obviously a coordinated effort. Republicanism is going to collapse. It’s just a matter of time.

Let me be clear, when I say that republicanism is going to collapse, I’m not referring to conservatism. Republicans went horribly wrong when they walked away from every single tenet of conservatism. Republicanism isn’t about smaller government. It’s about big giant government, picking your pocket at every turn.

The tea party emerged as a backlash to republicanism. It had the right idea when it started, but it went horribly wrong when the movement was taken over by Dick Armey and the Koch brothers. But I believe that true conservatives will eventually take the tea party back. Yes, I realize that I just gave the tea party some credit but I am a sunny optimist! Oh, and I look at polls.

Americans don’t want what the oligarchs want and it’s just a matter of time before they can’t fool us anymore.

Americans are not prospering the way they were in the past. And even the most politically disengaged American knows that something is horribly wrong. I think that what we’re seeing in Wisconsin is just the beginning. And I believe that defeating Scott Walker will serve as inspiration to make us realize that we do have all of the power. We just need to use it.

There is not enough money in the world to keep the robber barons in our good graces for much longer. They’re going to have to keep throwing more and more money at the problem, just to buy themselves another month, year, maybe five. But it’s all going to fall apart eventually.

And this isn’t about political parties. Obama’s approval ratings have stayed unimpressive because Americans aren’t seeing the sweeping change they were hoping for.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a democrat or a republican. Americans are going to turn on any politician that supports republicanism. The machine overplayed its hand in Wisconsin. I believe that we’re watching the beginning of the end of republicanism.

I say good riddance. I want to go back to the days of debating conservative and liberal ideas. This oligarch diversion has been bad for all of us. It’s time to move on.

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A Country Of Flaming Liberals

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No, I’m not referring to France. I’m talking about The United States. Yup, I’m just as shocked as you are, but it turns out that we’re all just a bunch of granola eating, dirty hippie liberals.

We just needed Scott Walker to help us see ourselves for what we really are. LIBERAL (peh!). Many, many polls have been taken in the past couple of weeks to assess how America feels about commandant Walker’s actions in Wisconsin. Turns out that Americans aren’t for taking away collective bargaining rights from people, to the tune of 2 to 1. Two thirds of us have a sense of decency, not to mention forethought.

Oh, but we’ve only touched the tip of the Birkenstock with that little factoid. NBC News and the Wall Street Journal commissioned a poll to figure out how Americans would balance the budget if it were up to them. Let’s start with what the pollsters presented to the sample group. They used the actual budget of the United States, more or less (you can download the actual report here if you want more detail). They broke the budget down to discretionary and non-discretionary line items and gave the respondents options for generating revenue, as well as the option to cut spending. Here’s what the respondents did:

76% of respondents cut spending by an average of $145.7 billion. They cut;

$109B out of defense
$13.1B from intelligence
$12.8B from Iraq and Afghanistan
$6.7B from veteran’s benefits
$4.6B from federal highways
$3.2B from the space program
$2.6B from medical research
$2.5B from homeland security
$2.3 from farm subsidies
$2.3B from air travel and roads
$1.8B from development assistance
$1.8B from military aid
$1.6B from the State Department
$1B from land management
$.4B from nuclear weapons
$.2B from federal law enforcement
$.2B from global health
$.1B from mass transit

But is wasn’t all cuts. They also made increases in certain areas (brace yourselves for a big whiff of patchouli);

  • $5.2B increase in job training
  • $4.6B increase in higher education
  • $3.3B increase in energy conservation/renewable energy
  • $2.7B increase in elementary/second education
  • $2B increase in subsidies to small farms
  • $1.5B increase in pollution control
  • $1.4B increase to special education
  • $1.1B increase to humanitarian aid
  • $.9 increase in science
  • $.2B increase in housing programs
  • $.1B increase to federal prisons

Fascinating, right? But it really gets interesting when you break the respondents down by political affiliation. The biggest spending cuts were made by independents who cut $195.5B out of the budget. The next biggest spending cutters were democrats, who cut $157.3B out of the budget. The “fiscally conservative” republicans were only able to cut $100.7B out of the budget. Any guesses who landed at the bottom of the budget cutting list? I’ll give you a hint – they can’t fucking balance a budget any better than they can spell protest signs. Yep, teabaggers could only bring themselves to cut $100B out of the budget.

I realize that this is getting super fucking wonky with all of the numbers, but I found this report endlessly fascinating so I’m going to continue.

Democrats were the biggest raisers of spending, but not in any meaningful (in terms of adversely affecting the overall budget) way. In fact, when it came to job training, democrats wanted to raise spending from $4B to $9.2B. Independents wanted to go higher than democrats, to $14.4B.

Every group wants to cut defense, so we’ll never see that happen in actuality. Independents cut defense more than any other group, coming in at a cut of $154.1B. Democrats cut defense by $131B. Republicans only cut defense by $56B, but they cut it!

Here are some interesting areas where all groups agreed and differed:


Ready for another dose of American granola? You know how you constantly hear that Americans prefer cutting spending to increasing taxes? Well, that turns out to be true only if they’re not looking at real numbers. 91% of respondents in this poll increased taxes by an average of $291.6B. The amount of tax increases by group looks about how you would expect;

  • Teabaggers – $188.2B
  • Republicans – $229.9B
  • Independents – $305.5B
  • Democrats – $338.5B

All of the groups favored a progressive tax rate (meaning that the more you make, the higher the percentage you pay), but republicans and teabaggers were much more forgiving to the higher tax brackets than independents were. Predictably, democrats really stuck it to the rich.

On every single issue of taxation (estate, corporate, personal, etc) each group raised taxes. Yup, even teabaggers. Only 17% of republicans favored the estate tax breaks that Bush enacted and Obama extended. Let me repeat that so that it really sinks in; only 17% of republicans support the current estate tax levels.

On the issue of capital gains, both independents and democrats want to either raise the percentage of taxation or treat capital gains as income, thereby raising the percentage of taxation! Only teabaggers (68% of them), had a decisive majority that don’t want to raise capital gains. Republicans were divided with 49% against raising taxes, 46% for raising taxes.

Every group agreed that oil companies don’t need the tax breaks they’re currently enjoying, and they would all repeal them.

Every group overwhelmingly agreed that they wanted to fix the social security shortfall by increasing they payroll tax limit from the current level of $106,000 to at least $156,000. 38% of respondents went further and removed the cap entirely and chose to take social security contributions on all money earned. There wasn’t much deviation on this among the different party affiliations. Every group overwhelmingly chose to raise the retirement age, but only to 68. Only 1/3 were willing to go up to 70.

I can keep going, but I won’t. You should definitely download the report from the link above if you want to see more.

Let me summarize what I got from this report, other than the fact that America is made up of liberals (as defined by Fox News).

First and foremost, I see that a strong political ideology creates blinders that make it harder to get things done. That applies to both the left and the right. That being said, left wing ideology doesn’t seem to be as debilitating as right wing ideology does. Over and over again in this report, independents were much closer to democrats than to republicans. Teabaggers were consistently way out there.

When it comes to coming up with solutions to problems, nothing should be off the table, unless you have historical precedent that demonstrates failure. You shouldn’t let your ideology create your facts. It should be the other way around.

It’s clear that one side does love their unicorns more than the other does. Republicans are emotionally attached to the “trickle down” theory that is demonstrably false. But, they’re not as attached to it as our government is. When they were presented with the budget in detail, they all deviated from that ideology to a greater extent than any administration in the past thirty one years has.

But the thing that most struck me about this poll is that our government isn’t representing us. Not any of us. If you had to put a direction on it, you could make a case that our government is to the right of all of us. “Right” as defined by a greater deference to corporations and corporate interests. But that isn’t really an accurate description of what’s happening here. It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say that what we’re experiencing here is an oligarchy.

Oligarchy

[ol-i-gahr-kee]
–noun, plural -chies.
1. a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.
2. a state or organization so ruled.
3. the persons or class so ruling.

We have a government that serves only the interest of its donors. And last year, when the Citizens United decision came down from the supreme court, the system insured that it’s donors will never be the people. The supreme court gamed the system and completely locked the citizenry out of it. In 2008 when Obama ran, he kept repeating that 90% of his contributors were ordinary citizens making small contributions. While those statements were completely accurate, they didn’t tell the whole story. The contributions made by 90% of his donors represented 50% of the total amount that he raised. The other 50% came from corporate interests. Believe it or not, a 50-50 ratio is astonishing. Corporate contributions typically eclipse private contributions so what Obama accomplished was amazing.

But it will never, ever happen again. The supreme court made sure of that. If we don’t all work to pass laws that make the public financing of campaigns mandatory, we well never be represented by our government. None of us, conservative or liberal, will get the opportunity to be heard or represented.

If we don’t change the system, we’re fucked. We need to stop focusing on the democrat or the republican in the race. Party affiliation is irrelevant because both sides can only get their campaigns financed by entities that don’t give a shit about you or me.

The ideological lines between right and left are drawn between having faith in corporations versus having faith in the government. Both sides are wrong. The growing wealth disparity on the country has proven that corporations aren’t going to do right by the workers. And Citizens United has insured that good government isn’t possible.

So if you’re having a political debate with someone from a different political persuasion, and you’re taking the pro-corporate or the pro-government side, your point sounds like nonsense to the person you’re talking to because it is nonsensical. You’re having the wrong debate, and you have to realize that the team you’re on isn’t on your side.

Obama is not a great president because the system won’t allow him to be. He has to fellate Wall Street if he wants to have a single democratic congressman or senator elected during his term. Democrats idealize Obama’s presidency at their own peril. Look at what happened to republicans when they idealized Bush’s eight year fucking nightmare. That didn’t turn out to well for republicans, not to mention America and the world.

It’s time to play for your own team. Fuck the politician you’re spending your time or money on. Use that energy to change the system. We need to get public financing of campaigns on ballot measures in every state across the country. We need to stop having stupid fights amongst ourselves and unite around our own self interest. America will never embrace its inner hippie (again, as defined by Fox News) until we do.


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