Ask a Libtard Snowflake

Here's another example of how corporations' way of looking at every problem makes us vulnerable. There was a time in the USA (and all over the world) when every community had somebody with the knowledge and equipment to take a live animal and turn it into steaks and burgers. Those butchers (and bakers and dairymen and others) had breadwinner jobs. A high school education and a lifetime of experience made them skilled and necessary to the community. Solidly middle class. But i t's cheaper to kill and butcher animals in a factory setting. When you are corporation, you look at every problem through the lens of maximizing shareholder value. You focus on where the pennies can be pinched. This morning as I watched an idiot town deer shamble across a yard an analogy occurred to me. Capitalism as it is today in Merca is like the town deer. They are loosely based on wild mule deer. But they aren't really mule deer. They are inbred, they haven't faced predation in gener

I apologize in advance for how long this is. But it's one of the things that I've been ruminating about during this time of pause. It's about what's happened in politics and economics since the beginning of my adult life. If you don't have a little chunk of time, come back later. A couple weeks after my 17th birthday Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President. The buzz phrase Trickle Down Economics was coined and became popular during the campaign. It was so simple! Give a tax cut to the people at the top and it will trickle down to everyone else! And with that, an era of neoconservative control of the GOP and massive wealth transfers out of the middle class began. Reagan cut taxes in a way that almost totally benefited the top earners. One thing he did that was particularly indicative of what would come was to cut the capital gains tax top rate. Since the Great Depression, capital gains income had been regarded as a different, shadier kind of income. It

I need to barf out some words that are burning in my belly. It's about health care, and I want to make some points through the lens of our current crisis. And let me start by qualifying myself. I am a libtard snowflake. I have been calling myself a socialist for over 20 years. So you can just put me in your nutjob drawer and stop reading now if that's all you need to know. People, I've gotten really used to feeling like a far from mainstream whacko here in Merca in the years since Newt Gingrich and the contract with America idiots planted the seed of greed that has since polluted the political right to a greater and greater extent with the passing years. Pointing out that we would be better off with a fully socialized health care system like France or Canada has made me feel like a sideshow freak. Pointing out that Obamacare was actually an idea created in a right wing think tank which handed a huge slice of pork to the insurance industry also has made me seem like a loony