Thursday, December 10, 2020
Consequences for the 45 administration...
Friday, November 27, 2020
Messaging is key...
The Republicans do it well to their targeted, too large, audience and Democrats do less well; need to improve. However large the Republican audience is, it isn't a majority and they must cheat to win elections.
Democrats must demonstrate (arrange demonstrations of) the available, non-partisan software that creates the smallest district with the correct population; fair redistricting disallows representatives choosing their constituents (Republicans tend to lose in these districts).
Motor voter: DMV uses driver's license data to automatically offer voter registration, and updates voter registration data automatically when a driver's license is updated (doesn't purge voter rolls).
Let's get going, because: January 5th, 2021 (GA), 2021 (VA), 2022 (most everywhere else) is coming. If our democratic republic is to survive (can't thrive if it's not alive) the responsibility of all eligible citizens to VOTE never ends.
Saturday, November 21, 2020
Consequences for the 45 Administration
Our
forefathers, framers of: first, the Articles of Confederation, then
the US Constitution, did not detail every possible activity of,
"those whom we are obliged to trust with power," because
they knew it would be an enormous, contentious document that could
not cover all possibilities. They laid out the founding
principles of this democratic republic for a reference to which all
that might follow would adhere.
It, therefore, becomes
necessary for us to formulate a means and method to deal with the
challenges to the continuance of this, our democratic republic.
The
Republicans in the US congress were given the chance to impeach a
president in clear violation of both law and Constitutional
restrictions on the office; books by former 45 administration staff
reveal an awareness of the president's insufficiency to the
requirements of the office held and did absolutely nothing about
their 25th amendment capacity.
This is completely and utterly
unacceptable!
If all these folks are not investigated,
documented and held accountable for their own abandonment of oath to
their office and lawless behavior, we (you, me and all the US
citizens) set a precedent that is even more dangerous to our
democracy than this recent, incompetent attempt at an apartheid,
authoritarian regime; re-prosecution of a combat free, civil war.
There were none held to account for the civil war;
insufficient consequences for the activity of the Nixon and Reagan
administrations, etc... These, and other, oversights emboldened the
actions of the 45 administration and the sycophant Republican party.
Nuremberg created an appropriate example of a forum to
investigate, document and prosecute all the violations of
Constitution and law. It should be the model that guides our actions
once the President-elect and Vice President-elect are securely in the
offices to which we, the voters, have elected them.
Following
through with accountability for the actions that threaten our
democratic republic may be the most important thing that any of us
will ever do. History will document our (in)ability to do what is
appropriate and necessary.
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Voting in your own best interest...
These things should be broadcast from every bully pulpit available, especially if a Blue Tsunami is insufficiently realized:
Your access to telephone and electricity was probably provided by, and is definitely made more reliable and affordable through, the government's regulatory environment that they operate in. The Internet, GPS, digital picture and sound (e.g., television and multi-media of any kind), microelectronics, etc... were first developed by, and for, agencies of the US government; often via Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC)...
Health care info... Comparing costs and results around the world. Spoiler: the USA has the highest, by far, costs and is well down the list of good results in every category.
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2019/07/how-does-the-us-healthcare-system-compare-to-other-countries
A study of many studies all confirming Single Payer/Medicare for All would reduce costs and improve results:
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003013
A study demonstrating potential benefits of Single Payer health care:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext
The results are in and the conclusions are all in agreement; Single Payer/Medicare for All health care is more effective, efficient; less expensive... The United States of America needs to get this done.
If you are voting for your own economic self interest, you are voting for the Democrats. This point is highlighted by two magazines not known for supporting a Democrat's perspective. They also reinforce the main assertion (Democrats are better for our economy) of the book: Bulls, Bears and the Ballot Box: How the Performance of Our Presidents Has Impacted Your Wallet; by Bob Deitrick and Lew Goldfarb.
These are facts that need to be shouted from the mountain tops!
Business schools should be queried about how these facts are presented in their required curriculum.
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Political conflict in the USA...
The
scientific and intellectual, "elite," that had some folks
just flustered towards the edge of their, "flat Earth," got
together with the racists and voted... Progressive, liberal
and, "neo-liberals," quietly coalesced in the comfort that
Hillary Rodham Clinton would continue on a familiar enough course;
didn't vote like we had for Obama.
In pursuit of actual equal
protection under the law someone came up with the unfortunate slogan,
"defund the Police." What was meant was that we had
to reallocate tasks so that a social worker could be available for a
social problem, rather than calling the police when things become a
social disturbance.
Now, some say we must give up the word,
"socialism," because it's scary. No, we must bring
Civics classes back to public (socialist) schools, so that folks are
taught the shades of socialism; the difference twixt socialism and
communism. Many, including a great number of folks who made a
career in the military (an enormous, government owned and operated,
"socialist," collection of organizations; the VA/Walter
Reed is socialist medicine), don't even want to hear that they,
effectively, worked for the government all their lives... Some
worked, with me, for the public (socialist) school system after their
years of service in the (socialist) military.
It should be as
clear as the paved roads, that are pretty omnipresent in the USA,
that socialism isn't frightening. Many will have to learn to
adjust if Biden/Harris, and the Democrats down the ballot, win.
Those that successfully resist the knowledge will forget the details
when a Green New Deal makes their lives better; till the next
election.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Attempted Access to Ballot Tampering...
First) Paper ballots are
the most difficult to tamper with; come with a paper ballot based, audit
trail built-in. The 45 administration appears to be expecting help
(very probably from Russians) with votes. Absentee/mail-in ballots
use a paper ballot that is not able to be accessed remotely, usually has both human and machine readable
text/information on it and is easily checked and confirmed.
Second)
Electronic ballots, stored as a data file on a computer, have been
documented (at hacker conference experiments) to be relatively easy (for talented hackers) to use in
vote manipulation. Exclusively electronic ballots do not generate a
paper, back-up copy (audit trail) of every ballot and can not be easily checked and verified for vote manipulation.
The orange
menace is assisting any and all who would hack a voting system for him
by attempting to get as many people as possible voting in person, on a
computer terminal/server, electronic ballot system.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
The need for a Federal Law Enforcement Inspector General...
There
has appeared, for decades, to be a need for a federal agency to hold
police accountable for their activity. Police unions defend everybody
all the time and local prosecutors hesitate to mess with their
associated police departments.
It does not seem to be getting
through to the local, county, and other, law enforcement agencies
that they are not judge, jury and, too often, executioner.
That
three officers watched while a knee to the neck killed a cuffed, face
down man; didn't occur to officers to check to see if the suspect
that they were after was already in custody, let alone that they were
at the wrong address; reported the correct license plate, but didn't
check the state that issued it...
Time and again police
refuse the responsibility for mistakes made on the job that injure
and kill; don't care to understand that they have great
responsibility with the power of their office.
There needs to be
a federal, Law Enforcement Inspector General; a database that keeps
officers, fired for cause, from moving to a new job (in law
enforcement) at a different department; a penitentiary that keeps
convicted officers out of the incarcerated population that might
resent their presence to death.
That requires a Blue Tsunami
because today's Republicans are against responsibility and everything
else a Democrat might support.
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Passing, and the Threat to Democracy it Exacerbates...
The passing of the Notorious RBG (Rest in Peace, Ruth Bader Ginsburg) takes the death of Democracy in these United States of America one step closer to the grave.
In the name of Democracy, RBG and John Lewis (who preceded her in death): it's time to get into some, “Good Trouble.”
The Republicans, and the Republicans alone, complained about Democratic, judicial appointments as a means to use the federal courts for a power grab; to, “legislate from the bench.” Then, when their hold on legislatures (state and federal) couldn't/wouldn't legislate for their benefit, Republicans unabashedly used the ability to appoint justices, “to legislate from the bench.” Republicans are using the courts to try to reverse the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Women's Rights, the ACA, etc...
The Republicans objected strenuously to the rejection of Robert Bork's appointment to the SCOTUS, even though he did get a vote (which he lost in a bi-partisan manner).
Republicans objected strenuously to Democrats eliminating the filibuster for lower, federal, court appointments in the Obama (44) administration... Then used their simple, Senate majority to fill hundreds of lower court vacancies in the 45 administration.
The Republicans once again demonstrated their unbounded hypocrisy by eliminating the filibuster for SCOTUS appointments.
The Republicans eliminated the possibility of consideration, let alone the appointment, of Merrick Garland to the SCOTUS during the presidential election year of 2016; promise a vote for the orange menace's appointment to SCOTUS in the presidential election year of 2020.
It puts beyond discussion the power of the VOTE... The need for everybody to exercise their responsibility to VOTE!
Democrats must elect a President Biden and VP Kamala Harris, keep the majority in the US House and get a Democratic majority in the US Senate; get as many Democrats, on the entire ballot, elected to all government offices.
Then the American Bar Association must review all the justices, appointed without the possibility of filibuster, for possible conflicts of interest; competence in the performance of their judicial responsibilities.
The Republicans have abandoned their oath of office, to protect and defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic... The Republicans refused to use their Constitutionally assigned power, as a co-equal branch of the federal government, to impeach an indicted, clearly in violation of Constitutional restrictions, President.
Democracy in these United States of America is in dire straights, as never before, and the voters must step up and realize the power of EVERY SINGLE VOTE!
Monday, July 6, 2020
Philanthropy and the Plutocrats...
Sunday, June 28, 2020
CA Tries to Help in the Time of Pandemic...
Monday, June 8, 2020
Criminal Justice in the USA Requires Systemic Change
Thursday, June 4, 2020
The End of the Beginning...
Friday, April 17, 2020
Catastrophic merger...
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Down the rathole with the ultra conservatives that destroy America...
To quote from JFK's speech given, in 1962, at Rice University in Houston, TX, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things... because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept..."
The goal was set and the process was driven by the US government, as was a group of organizations known as the FFRDC (Federally Funded Research and Development Centers). The rich Americans did, in fact, not create the power house that is the United States of America, they did benefit massively from a society and a government that had literally paved, continues (with the current 45 administration's exception) to pave, the way for their success.
So when 45 and his sycophant Republican party repeatedly, "bend, fold, spindle and mutilate," the truth in the name of, what is very politely called, "unenlightened self-interest," they continue a push back in time to feudalism (a.k.a., laissez-faire capitalism, the dark ages) so that they might crown themselves Aristocrats (Lords and Ladies) of the realm where theft in the name of self promotion is acceptable...
It is truly not new. It is, in fact, a return to a very dark period of our history where chaos could, and did, reign supreme.
Monday, March 30, 2020
The first, best, response to the Pandemic in the USA
The 45 administration has refused to invoke the Defense Production Act, that would order and organize our own American companies to massively scale up production and delivery of medical, and other necessary, supplies (do tasks that they are known to be capable of) here in these United States.
We've known for about a month that the 45 administration had ignored warnings, from our own intelligence agencies, that a global pandemic was in progress overseas and would soon arrive in the United States.
Medical supplies, facilities and personnel are being overwhelmed by the sick and the dying from a pandemic that the 45 administration has intentionally ignored, or underwhelmingly responded to... People have gotten sick, and some have died, above and beyond what should have happened, because of the 45 administration's incompetent, or complete lack of, activity.
Is the charge of reckless homicide applicable? To whom? How many counts?
The first, best, thing the USA needs to do, in response to the current pandemic sweeping across the United States, is clear the obstruction that is the 45 administration.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Bernie's travel travails...
Cuban doctors make significant contributions to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) as well as providing Cubans and medical tourists (some from the USA) with good, some seem to feel that it's better (definitely more affordable than in the United States), medical care.
While communism has been, on the whole, bad for Cuba, they (like a broken, analog clock) get it right twice a day.
Does anybody remember, "glasnost and perestroika? (openness and restructuring)" It was that period in time (1980s) that the leaders and citizens of the USSR discovered that they were a third world country with thousands of nuclear weapons, the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.
A Mayor from Burlington, VT had the means and the curiosity to make some visits that many would question, but I'll bet he took good notes; learned some things first hand.
Bernie is not my first choice, Elizabeth Warren is, but if he's the Democratic nominee I will vote for him.
Blue no matter who: BlueNami (Blue Tsunami) coming this November!
Sunday, February 16, 2020
More, and More, Evidence: Single Payer/Medicare for All is better!
Sunday, February 2, 2020
Restoring the USA to a Democratic Republic...
We need civics back in all the classrooms across these United States, motor voter (automatically registered to vote at age of majority, currently 18), automatic change of voter registration (not voter roll purging) when DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), or equivalent agency, receives a change of address form for a driver's license.
etc...
We are in an oligarchy now; need to restore the USA to a democratic republic.
The US Constitution is fine, but it is not being applied; Congress is too much a sycophant, not a co-equal branch of government... Oath of office means too little to too many... Eligible voters don't register, don't vote, don't follow-up with their elected representatives...
This is a problem with, "we, the people," and we already have the means to fix it; keep it from happening again:
Show Up!
Questions about: Well, How did we get here?
Mayhaps that might be a common denominator for the Republican party's transformation to the far, wing-nut, right and 45 sycophants.
Could the answer be in the redacted spaces, most of, the Mueller Report? Could the answer be coming from the FBI's Counter Intelligence investigation?
Bolton and Kelly come out now... Where were they, and their 25th amendment capacity, while they were members of the 45 administration?
These are questions that should motivate continued investigation of 45 and the Republican party, far right, wing-nuts that are super-glued to him.