Why did Biden keep Wray as FBI Director? Why hasn't he gotten rid of DeJoy as Postmaster General? Why did he appoint Garland as Attorney General? And sticking by all these people despite their failure to do their job properly?
Trump, in his wisdom, determined that Janet Yellen is too short to be the Fed Chair. He did not appoint her to serve a second term and appointed Powell in her place. Typical reasoning from a very stable genius.
All Fed Chairman , board members come from Member banks, in NY and Boston. The MFWIC's of the financial institutions run this nation via its credit, and they choose, or maybe the most important player chooses, the name of the Chairman of the Fed. The name is laid on the desk of the President who then goes to Senate for rubber stamp, err confirmation.
He has done better than Wall Street and the GOP have given him credit. Wall Street has lost its crackers over "high inflation" when it's about 3%. That used to be the norm. There has been no recession that they predicted for the last 4 years.
Nobody has regulated banks since before the mortgage meltdown in 2008. Nobody. And the anti regulation goons have been in power since Reagan.
Thanks Robert for some sanity! I actually made money on Wall Street today because I invest in gold and rare Earth mineral companies. Until the Middle East and Ukraine settle down, gold will be in demand. Second, artificial intelligence will require huge computer networks and the rare Earth minerals are used in the computer chips. I also bought one share of Warren Buffet’s company many years ago and invested in what he invested in! They do not call him the Sage of Omaha for nothing!!! I lived through 18% inflation during the Arab oil embargo of the 1970’s! That was real inflation!!!
Policing one’s self is a highly dubious practice. Especially when the policeman is part of a planet, raping finite resource stealing federal treasury crime syndicate. Hardly a credible overseer, don’t you think?
Don’t tell me you think we should back the dollar with gold. Please. All the gold ever mined would not fill up the LA Coliseum. Translate that to the amount of US dollars in circulation not only in the US but in the world.
Also, the Federal Reserve members are hired and fired by the Federal Executive - that is, the President. So no, they are not self policing as today’s supreme court (sic) imagines itself to be.
You have no reading comprehension. I’m talking about corporations policing themselves. You’re either one incredibly stupid motherfucker or your Cryllic to English software is terrible. Design by the same interns who did iPhone dictation……
Hudson, your picture of the lilac and the attached poem in your bio are lovely. Your occupation as an organic farmer sets an example for us all. What confuses me is your language and name calling usually reserved for Trump followers. On this forum we are all stressed by these challenging times and sharing our insights with each other. There is no need for denigrating others points of views or utilizing obscenity to get your points across.
We can't even remove Louis deJoy. I for one will research the policies Elizabeth Warren has brought together for this year's campaigns. BTW She wanted to remove Jerome Powell from the start.
They have been de-regulated for decades. If you want a reference, William Bill Black, PhD, Lawyer, former bank regulator The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. And the documentary TheCon.tv The bankers paid a pence and they are still up to the same appraisal fraud game. Just the facts, ma'am
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Bruh, you’re just pulling shit out of your ass. If that was a legitimate claim, you would offer a citation from a credible source. Shut the fuck up and go the fuck away.
Pollinators keep us all alive. I'll bet NOAA saves us money on disaster preparedness every year. Trump is an idiot with a sharpee. He's lackluster in responding to disaster. Doesn't have a compassion gene that Biden has. He made racism a motif in his response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. He threw paper towels at people and attacked leaders on the ground. He thought we should vacuum forests in CA.
That's not it. I don't think William Farrar is a bot, I dont think AZ is a bot, I dont think Tom High is a bot, though I've had fact based disagreements with them all.
Exactly. Big oil and corporate thieves want Trump in the White House. So, Biden gets in and, big surprise, Big oil and corporate thieves up their prices to choke the American middle and lower income people (we all have class, every one of us!). They've upped the prices so we'll blame Biden and elect Trump to get more money in their greedy pockets while the average man/woman end up on the streets!
You're an asshole. You think that we stupidly don't know that the rich only pay a minute % of the taxes that they're supposed to pay. Your bracket charts mean nothing. EVERYbody knows this.
Your numbers are simply bullshit. The percentage of tax revenue created is not 70% nor is it fucking relevant to people that make hundreds of millions of dollars actually billions of dollars per quarter don’t pay taxes but some of them actually receive a goddamn refund. Tell me how that works? Shut the fuck up with your lying bullshit
There’s no fucking restructure of Texas goddamn read fake ass accounts like you and the people behind them should be removed from this space-time continuum. You fucking bitch
Karl--All kidding aside, to me rich is a state of being. When you have accumulated enough wealth that you are no longer concerned with how much something costs you only want to know when you can get it.
Good question. We don't want to scare people with annual incomes around $400,000. But definitely go after people with income tax dodges for investment income. Then there's extreme poverty which we allow to exist.
If there aren’t visible, homeless, starving people on the street in the richest nation on earth, how are we gonna motivate the losers to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
Tax corporations. Far more important than the rich. Antoinnette, the Eisenhower progressive tax bracket pain remove loopholes and shelters. All of this shit was figured out long ago. Shameful we aren’t smart enough just to copy a good wheel. We act as if we have to invent one.
I agree. Tax corporations as they were years ago and second excess wealth ( the gross amount above any reasonable needs ) say 10 million should get a significant. Rate increase to maybe 30-40% . That wealth has to be both individual personal ones but also the passively owned like stocks , monetary insurance investments , tangible assets such as land- bill gates owns 1/8000 of the US ? And so on. Federal budget deficit goes away with I’m sure a serious disruption in the philosophy of profit for it’s own sake when purpose maybe a better object
Trump never shows gratitude to veterans. Maybe he keeps meinkamph on his bedstand. He wouldn't stand in a light rain to honor WWII veterans at a memorial in Normandy. He's cruel to five star families because of his racial animus.
Eisenhower beat Mussolini. Harris beats Trump! Did I get my general's right? Trump never shows any patriotism. He likes Andrew Jackson. Wasn't he responsible for the Trail of Tears? Sorry no google machine for me. I am pretty certain that Andrew Jackson was one of our most brutal presidents.
That is the equivalent of an Olympic boxing bragging about beating up a second grader on the playground. Not fucking all of that. The opposition is never relevant to the quality of governance and the policy a party offers.
I thought I would try to teach you something before I left…..
Ain’t no loophole strictly enforced, 40% income tax on revenue over expenses generated within the borders of our sovereign on corporations would pay off the national debt in five years. Oh yeah, one of the things that mom and Pop could actually compete. Jesus fucking Christ you’re stupid all those things are a given. it must’ve taken an unbelievable amount of work to become that moronic. Or morally bankrupt. Whatever the case may be, I suppose they’re not mutually exclusive…
The national debt is $35 trillion. Total corporate profits in 2023 were 3.2 trillion. Let’s take 40% of 3.2 trillion and we have 1.28 trillion. That won’t even cover the 2023 deficit.
You have not thought this out. I know what the fuck I’m talking about but, if you think you can lie with ridiculous numbers, just pulled out of your ass and I don’t know what I’m talking about, i’m just gonna let it slide without exposing you for the feces, filled Putin Geo peacock sleeve lying piece of shit that you really are.
You really really really have not thought this out .
To edit. The fourth quarter profit a loan in 2023 were $3.8 trillion. Feces filled skinbag is always a bad optic. When your brain is so addled with rotgut bootleg ‘wodka”
You’re so fucking stupid you don’t see the stupid here do you? You are so far out of your depth engaging in a body politic conversation with me. The lack of awareness is almost to music, but I got better shit to do.
That’s absolute bullshit. I’m not going to allow you to pull numbers out of your ass there. Intentionally the fourth quarter profit in the United States won or 3.4 trillion pain. Go the fuck away and shut the fuck up. And whatever particular order you prefer. Seriously consider self immolation.
What about when a company raises prices (or declines to lower them when market conditions indicate that should happen) and then reports record-breaking profits? Is that still "rais[ing] prices to make up the losses"?
Okay - then why did a major airline cancel the job offers to all of their new hires? Yea, I know why the Dem are pushing such a great economy - it's election year. BUT Bernie Sanders (who is trying to help the Dems) points out. The economic decline for decades has pushed the 99% into less housing, less wages, less health care (medical debt anyone?).
The Dems need to talk about 2008 disaster. If we keep building more housing (which is the big reason for carbon footprints), we are going to destroy the climate and the last of the middle class. I'll keep sharing it. We must talk about the hardest issue : money. The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One - Bill Black, PhD. TheCon.tv
I don't just want the Dems to win - I want them to be successful and life the middle class - back to the middle.
AMEN!!!! I am a widow in her late 60s still working FT both out of financial necessity and because I enjoy helping others even worse off than me. I am a Social Worker with a moderate income. I make too much to get help with food and rent, but it is increasing difficult to keep to my budget. Millions more in the US are like me
That’s called price gouging Collin market, fixing and many other antitrust violations. The only fault of this administration was not immediately indicating and prosecuting it. Fumbduck
How does the Biden ministration have anything to do with that? Fuck do you need serious help. Real professional mental health care. We aren’t connected to reality. Even coincidentally. Do you not have anyone in your circle? That gives a fuck?
We have now reached the point where the stock market and the media are driving public opinion by breeding panic with every breathless headline and overreaction to financial news.
Definitely by design. Investors and corporate media owners both will do anything they can to engineer a Trump victory. The job report (still reflecting an increase in job growth) was their excuse. The companies that comprise the stock market have themselves been driving up inflation by indiscriminately raising prices since the pandemics supply chain shortage. Harris has to bring down the antitrust hammer.
BIG TIME on that hammer! Also, make stock buybacks illegal again. Basically, re-implement all the regulations that have been stuck down since Ronnie Raygun's time.
Like she’s going to change anything? She is a donor class tool. My god there’s nobody more gullible than the average democratic party can schedule OK the party has all 10 or 12 legitimate liters in Congress, save Bernie all but three of them women, Britain, and the dummies go for HRC, Nancy, Kamala? There is a very special place in hell for a woman of color who passed corrupt old white guy water.
They are under current paradigm. Of the 2.2 million employees at Walmart half of which is owned by Sam’s 11 airs, 800,000 of them are on some sort of federal assistance. I don’t know about you but I’m sick and tired of fucking subsidizing the Walmart airs. And the Amazon, exacts and major stakeholders, along with the rest of the Fortune 500. You are a despicable piece of shit I am positive. You know your claims are complete and utter bullshit.
Were you in dictation mode? Just wanted to point out "heirs," certainly a sound-alike. "Exacts" maybe for "execs?" What a world of "madlibs" we are in!
They are finite resource raping, environmentally, destructive fiduciary duty only entities that kill life on the planet and exploit labor capital. If you don’t recognize that, you should leave this conversation.
Obviously. Some poor bastard that’s been drinking far too much toxic bootleg, homemade vodka for far too long. Obviously, they need to get out of the basement in St. Petersburg occasionally.
This is just the beginning of the “hurt” that billionaires, the face of corporations, and corporate organized crime who unduly influence our corporations intend, especially for the next 91 days and up until inauguration of Harris. This is the power we allow them to hold over us. This is the nasty side of capitalism and it’s probably going to get more painful until our laws reflect fair taxes for all, including the uber rich and corporations.
It’s true, this won’t end their power, but it will allow a much needed update of the various systems we all share and others that some of our population depend upon to survive—not to mention balancing our budget or paying down our debt. The richest country in the world is gradually drifting further and further behind the rest of the world in education, healthcare, old-age benefits.
Where’s our cross-country high-speed rail? Hell, where’s our cross state high-speed rails? Our cities are old and our energy grid is falling apart and the GOP won’t move to allow things to change because the people who really influence their representatives aren’t getting the OK from the billionaires who control them.
Our current macro economic model is “rape and pillage. Having absolutely nothing to do with capitalism. Capitalism requires a free and unfettered market with strictly enforced, thoughtfully emplaced consumer protections. We have neither. As the aforementioned, rape and pillage paradigm correct label is known in Econ, 101 classrooms around the world as “imperialism“ words have definitions. Let’s try our best to use the correct ones.
"Rape and pillage!" Yay, loud and clear! I have been opining here and there for a while that the Overlords are not disturbed primarily by taxes: there will always be a dodge around that. It's the REGULATION, darlin'! Current Supreme Court taking care of that annoyance nicely.
You say that, as if the democratic party platform is a legitimate policy proposal fuck. You know it’s the Democratic Party constituents that are continually holding us back and not allowing us to move in this Third World shit hole. It’s a given the GOP constituents are never gonna be smart enough to chew gum and walk. You’ve proven no smart. The political acumen have a fucking River rock.
Neither party is going to do anything like paying down our debt!!!
What fairytale are you reading? Are you clean the Democratic Party? Somehow offers quality policy and good governance? I suppose corporate oligarchy enable fascism is better than totalitarian despotism …
We were always at that point, no? I cannot recall since the 90s it being any other way. Wall Street is like chicken little running around with its head cut off every time there is a bear market or a serious adjustment to their gambles.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
The economy was so much better when there were laws against monopolies. I remember Ma Bell having to diversify, which opened up the market for other telephone companies to emerge. Large retail outlets, like WalMart and Amazon, have taken over almost all areas of retail, and the smaller business could not compete. This led to the fall of the middle class.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
I agree with you and thank you for pointing this out. I learned this on a small scale the hard way myself, when I started a local community newspaper and was subject to a larger paper threatening my advertisers, teachers who didn't agree with my editorials taking it out on my children in school, and being taken to task at council meetings because I exposed corruption. Trying to educate the public to the truth of their surroundings can cause repercussions for those who are trying to make a living in journalism.
Because the conglomerates are such bullies, newscasters are afraid to lose their jobs. Some, like at Fox, will even compromise their own ethics and lie to the public in order to appease their superiors.
For this reason, we must take other tactics in order to get the messages out. Each of us should be vocal on social media. Encouraging more group zoom calls. Send postcards. We need to be creative, and sitting still won't make anything happen.
Wow Toni wasn't expecting quite such a powerful personal story about repressive responses to stories in your local newspaper. Here's the concluding paragraph here and the first section of the paper below that's going to take down the whole house of cards. on 9-11.: So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Exposing The Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissist As A Moron
A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency with Donald Trump's
Recently the media focus has been on the 'age issue' and the question of the mental competency of an octogenarian during President Biden's second term. So let's compare his mental competency with Donald Trump's starting with his most recent gaffow followed by a list of what he said and his cabinet members said about him during his first term. (A short list of my faves:)
Did Biden call Nancy Pelosi Nicky Haley when recently talking about the 1-6-21 assault on the capital?
Did he claim the ability to properly identify a giraffe in a multiple choice of three animals, proved he was a "real stable genius"?
Did his former college professor call him the "dumbest f--king student I ever had"?
Did Biden suggest we could build a wall with transparent concrete?
Did he ever say to the camera he wished his wife were present with him while she was literally standing next to him looking confused?
Did his own sibling say in a recorded interview that he paid someone to take the SAT for him because he was too stupid to get into college on his own?
Did Biden think people needed photo IDs to buy groceries?
Did Biden say Paris was a city in Germany?
Did he misspell basic words in dozens of different tweets only to "correct" them by misspelling them a different way?
Did he suggest injecting disinfectants into our bloodstream to kill COVID?
Did he say he didn't know what a blind trust is, despite having a "degree" in Finance?
Did he bankrupt every business he tried starting on his own, including a Casino?
Was Biden the first President in history to utter the sentence, "Belgium is a beautiful city"?
Did Biden ever say our captured prisoners of war are only heroes because they were captured?
Did he have more than a dozen of his hand picked cabinet members resign because they couldn't work with his incompetence?
Did his own Chief of Staff call him an "idiot"?
Did a Senator from his own party say, "The White House has become an adult day care center”?
Did his own Secretary of State say he was a "fucking moron"?
Did his own economic advisor say he was "dumb as shit...an idiot surrounded by clowns"?
Did his National Security Advisor say he was "a dope...an idiot [with the intelligence of] a kindergartner”?
I saved the above collection of quotes that was originally posted on a Facebook page dedicated to insuring Joe Biden's second term last year. That was before that Republican special prosecutor in his VP document's case harped on the age issue and Joe's forgetfulness of details when the guy interviewed him. I was going to submit the above to the Daily Kos before reading the two following articles updating Trump's mental problems amidst the failure of a media focus on the orange moron at the president's expense while he's trying to run this country as the GOP is fixed on trying to tear it apart.
On 2-26-24 I read their lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia, cataloging his further mental decline. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a new site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Trump has obviously been both a low IQ moron and a fascist all his life, his first attorney was Roy Cohn Christ's sake. For here's precisely how he became the Perfect GOP Candidate: A supreme Narcissist who first builds Hotels with his last Name plastered all over the top of each with a Will To Power Fixation that drives him to become a TV Star where the whole game was to have the contestants kiss his ass to see who was His most 'competent' Apprentice, Firing all the Losers before finally picking the Winner, Like Me. Which sets him up to run for President, Wrapping Himself In MAGA Flag to Beat all those Loser Politicians in the Primary and Lock Her Up Hillary in the 2016 Electoral College. Rejoice, rejoice an absolute field day for all the fascists, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, plutocrat billionaires, corporatists, corporate media, atheists, evangelical preachers and six Supreme Court Justices all Backing a Moronic and now progressively Demented Fuhrer for the MAGA Masses Who Worship Him Like A God, Further Feeding Its Insatiable Sociopathic Narcissism!!!
Turns out I also hadn't read the whole issue with A.J. Pennyfarthing's 10 stunning moments from Trump's late-night speech to religious broadcasters. You ain't going to be changing any preacher's or MAGA's minds about how unhinged DT is with any raft of articles cause that is the Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron's Lowest Common Denominator Appeal To The Wrap Yourself In MAGA Flag And $60 Bible Masses!
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Excellent list Sean, and that only taps the surface. It is my opinion that the emergence of Trump is funded by billionaires and organizations like the Heritage Foundation. In order for them to insert their own man (Vance), who encompasses their Christian National values, they have to have a shill, like Trump. They are aware he is demented, but with the help of Russian, Turkey and even China's misinformation streamed through social media, people will believe anything once they have given to it repeatedly in small bites. Trump will be found to be unfit once he has taken office, and Vance will be made POTUS. I am not usually a conspiracy theorist, but this only makes sense to me that so many would not see how mentally unstable Trump was without some outside forces in play.
Toni, all my comments to you were removed as I was banned by substack from posting anything. I saved this in my earthlink inbox and took two sessions with Tex from their support tea, to get this resolved from 241mumbers website. Tex said is was barred for spam and not to post the same thing in succession like one can freely do on Facebook.
This was on Robert Reich's post where Musk got 57% of votes for second most despised person after Trump. Here was the the last paragraph in that paper:
So now that we have fully summarized Anti-Trump News Suppression In Corporate Media, the first question is how in the hell can Progressive Media Counter Mega Billionaire Support Of Trump? Easy and Only Answer – make sure everybody is presented with this Comparison Between The Candidates: Since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Thomas Paine On Religions Keeping Mankind Ignorant Of The Creator
As Governments Keep Man Ignorant Of His Rights
by Terry K.
So let us briefly update and address the two central themes in Thomas Paine's precocious quote: "It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of governments to hold man in the ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support."
So let's talk about the relation between religion and polytrix in the US government. We have a Supreme Court with six Catholics, steering religion and politics to the far right, away from the Creator. We'll comeback to the original conclusion after this read about the last act taken by the Supreme Court on the first of July. TruthBeTold's post from Jim Hightower's daily news letter on 7-2:
Today the US Supreme Court overturned the centuries long conviction of Pontius Pilate, absolving him of any responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
In a 6-3 decision along party lines, Chief Justice John Roberts found in error the long standing verdict of history that the Governor of Judea had acted out of personal motivation. Quite the contrary, Roberts wrote, it was strictly within Pilate’s official capacity that he ordered the crucifixion.
In support of his conclusion that Pilate was not acting out of personal motives, Roberts noted a heretofore unrecognized fact. Pilate actually admired Christ and had for a time considered making him court jester after being told of Christ’s whimsical parables. However, after Christ fed the multitude on three fishes and five loaves, Pilate sought to have him elevated to high priest, a plan denounced by Joseph ben Caiaphas, the incumbent. To mollify Caiaphas, but primarily to remove a threat to his regime, Pilate reluctantly ordered the crucifixion, an act well within the governor’s official duties. The first duty of every official, Roberts wrote, is to preserve and perpetuate his rule, be he governor, satrap or inspector of hides and brands.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh noted that crucifixion was not a death sentence, merely a punishment. Unfortunately, he wrote, some individuals perversely elected to die on the cross just to embarrass a government toward which they were ill disposed. Likewise in the case of time honored punishments such as keel-hauling and flogging there were the occasional fatalities, regrettable but hardly of consequence.
Justice Gorsuch noted in his concurrence that in olden times, measures which today are deemed cruel and unusual were in fact a necessity. Trial by water and trial by fire, he observed, were the only ways to get at the facts before the advent of the polygraph and Fox News.
Remarking the perspective she had gained occupying the Tomas de Torquemada Chair of Jurisprudence at Notre Dame, Justice Barrett stated with apodictic certainty that had prosecutors been deprived of the rack, the thumbscrew and the iron maiden, many great truths would have gone unrevealed.
Despite having been challenged to recuse himself when it was learned that Harlan Crow had given him Pilate’s solid gold death mask, Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion, the gist being: redemption. Romans, he observed, had long since become good Catholics and were thereby redeemed by Christ himself; they had hardly bothered anyone since their conversion, with the exception of Al Capone in Chicago, Lucky Luciano in New York, and Sam Alito in Washington, DC.
Justice Alito declared that no way could Pilate have gotten a fair trial, with the populace spreading the word that Christ was the only begotten son of God. The scriptures, Alito emphatically stated, say that we all are the children of God, and scriptures take precedence over man’s laws. “We here in this very court,” he continued, “we six justices are a testament to that divinity. If we don’t sitteth at the right hand of God, I don’t know who does.”
Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson, knowing their six confreres better than anyone, dissented.
We have a new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president. Who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025, as outlined at the end of Thom Hartmann's historical analysis of what led up to The Shocking GOP Plan to Dismantle the American Government. And all the while you've watched the Republican Party champion the idea of "freedom" while you have also watched the same party openly assault various freedoms, like the freedom to vote, freedom to choose, freedom to marry who you want, freedom for your children's teachers and librarians to have them read what they want, freedom to form unions and so on. If this has been a source of confusion, then your assessments of what Republicans mean by freedom were likely too generous. Here is what they mean: 1. The freedom to tell people what to do. 2. Freedom from being told what to do.
Just copied my test response to you and sent it to Tex at substack support. Here's my concluding questions: So Tex, how can one Successively Or Not Successively Post This Hugely Important Message On Substack? What's the Purpose of Progressive Media If They Suppress Free Speech Because Of Spam Algorithms?
Concluding paragraph of On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia:
So now that we have fully summarized Anti-Trump News Suppression In Corporate Media, the first question is how in the hell can Progressive Media Counter Mega Billionaire Support Of Trump? Easy and Only Answer – make sure everybody is presented with this Comparison Between The Candidates: Since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Yesterday I sent On Media, Exposing, Thomas Paine and The Shocking to every progressive media outlet for publication in that order.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
by Terry K.
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long rant about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So now that we have fully summarized Anti-Trump News Suppression In Corporate Media, the first question is how in the hell can Progressive Media Counter Mega Billionaire Support Of Trump? Easy and Only Answer – make sure everybody is presented with this Comparison Between The Candidates: Since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
When 50% of the market is owned by 1% of the investors, any time it is to the advantage of the 1% to all sell off some of their holdings, the market will skid. They do not have to discuss selling. They just have to agree a down market would be bad for democrats, hmmm... "I think I'll take some of my earning now."
Since this article pointing out these affiliations, the wealthy have been pouring money into the party in power to stop attempts by democrats to cohere around an economic redistribution policy agenda, in an era of rising inequality. Some here want to believe these new contributions are because the wealthy have seen the errors of their ways. Oh dear!
Insinuation that there is a statistically significant difference for the proletariat, and that the Democratic Party summer offers legitimate government is proof of our absolute stupidity. Especially yours. The motherfucker who called us a confederacy of dunces completely overestimated.
Hi Hudson, As a fellow poet, your poem is beautiful, I know you know about the use of language. So please tell me, why you chose to use such vulgar words and disrespectful tone to another human being trying to understand what is happening in our world.
What member of a proletariat *really* understands what statistical significance even means, much less the general populace? I mean I know people still thumb through books in the 2020s ... right? Ok wait .....
There’s no fucking redistribution of wealth policy on the democratic party platform. Fuck you believe anything been more golden, mini GOP constituent pit. Have you read ever? If the largest fucking corporate subsidy in history. Goddamn stupid twat.
Hi again, Maybe if you wrote what you want to say, about how an individual or group chooses a direction (policy) to move as a poem, I would be able to understand your point. As it is fucking seems to be distracting the essence of what you want to say.
I see exactly what I want to say. I like to Weaponize words. They have definitions. Very few are so open to the opportunity of learning something but most of them remember the sting. Words have the power to inspire create and destroy. I try my best to stay on task. I’m not a poet, not my gift. I am forward, blunt tactless, but correct. If you can’t do that you need to leave the conversation. Not you specifically I’m just saying.
Just learned that Steve Forbes, the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine was a Republican candidate for president in the primaries of 1996 and 2000. Thought it interesting. He hasn't prepared an updated list, but most of what I'm seeing on Quora indicates the Republicans are the biggest recipients of the largesse of the wealthy. For a while, it was pretty much half and half, but not now.
Yeah, well try the corporate donations. The Dems completely make up for it. Fact, I think there’s a significantly significant difference is the height of fucking probably ignorant and it intentionally stupid.
Republican rich "think" they care about one thing: further enriching themselves. That means lower corporate taxes and ways to get out of paying taxes on personal wealth. It also means making sure the middle class/poor stay that way: take away rights to unionize, union busting, etc. This is the same way it was in the Gilded Age. What they don't realize is that long term they are making enemies of common people, who will rise up against them (riots of late 1800's, early 1900's), and are creating political instability which will ultimately hurt everyone--including themselves.
Marxism was a political manifeststion of the kind of wealth hording and power grabbing that we are seeing now. Tax the rich, break up the monopolies!
Thank you David, I see the world they way you describe also. Stability comes when people see, and serve, the relationship among Me ) We ) Many. The economy likewise must serve Me ) We ) Many. 50% of the wealth of a nation in the hands of 1% of the people is not sustainable long term... especially with global warming threatening life. People are not going to allow the wealthy to continue their life style at everyone's expense. I often ask myself if this is the dynamic at play, instead of simple greed. Am I totally wacko? Or is it just greed?
There’s no proposals on the part of the Democratic Party to do anything but those very same thing you people are fucking straight up delusional bring there’s no order a Third World shit hole
I think the consciousness of the rich is more guilty now than that of the "Gilded Age" nabobs. In the past, the culture took it as "the natural order" for those with African blood, Irish, Polish, Italians, and always, always females to be (naturally) less human and suited to subservience. The Betsy Voss's of today are maliciously pursuing a program of repression to social engineer a perpetual slave class.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
You are, I gather, listing only families. But if individuals are added, the Democrats or Democrat-leaning individuals like Buffett, Bloomberg and Pritzker are near the top of the list.
However, think man, even if a wealthy person gave $50 million to a democrat once, we have let the wealth of the nation slip into the hands of so few people it is irrelevant. Even $50 million is a pittance of their wealth... but it might buy policy we we don't watch out. It is the long term support of policies that matters.
There is no way that you or anyone else can know what DonOld's net worth is because of the complexity of his finances and holdings. The IRS doesn't know. But, so things from his time in office: His daughter was granted numerous, hard to get, Chinese trademarks shortly after he made a surprise announcement that he was working with China’s president to save jobs at a major Chinese telecommunications company.
His son-in-law secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince despite objections from the fund’s advisers.
Good reminder! If only more than a couple of hundred geeks ever heard about it! (But Trumps groupies wouldn't believe it if they did hear about it, so futility anyhow.) Sorry about being a drip.
I do not know what your definition is for taking on the system, but the way has has challenged the system has mostly been criminal. The list is long, but includes: $2M in damages for fraudulent use of charitable funds. $25M settlement for Trump U fraud. $5M for sexual abuse. $83M for continued lying and defamatory statements. $355M in damages for business fraud. Serial adulterer (even with a porn star). Indicted for withholding top-secret federal documents. Indicted on Federal charges for conspiring to defraud the U.S. government. Indicted on state forgery and racketeering charges. Ten time found in contempt of court. Guilty of felony in NY court for falsifying business records in conspiracy to hide info from voters. Plus 6 (six!) bankruptcies.
You're just mad Dear Leader won't be able to gift the 1% YOUR hard-earned tax dollars when he goes to jail. Face it: BUNKERBOY WILL NEVER BE PLAYING PRESIDENT AGAIN.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Basically, they base their measurements of the economy not by how the average American is doing, but by how the richest 1% is amassing more wealth. Just because the rich are getting richer doesn't mean the rest of us are doing well, especially when this country is allowing them to be so greedy. Honestly, I partially blame trump for that with his tax cuts for the rich. Mostly, I blame reagan and republicans since then for taking away all the regulations that kept the corporate greed in check. I'm voting Dem, but, if they have Congress and Executive branches, they need to start putting those checks back in place and make them permanent.
Agreed, we need to get back to what was working for the middle class before they conned us with their Neoliberalism/Reaganomics/Trickle Down Economics/Voodoo Economics. Yet few people realize what that really means. I am guessing that most people had no idea what Biden was really saying with his bottom up - middle out talk. We need more politicians to start talking about helping the middle class by doing away with Neoliberal policies and what that means.
Yes, but policy is only possible with enough votes--votes for President, votes in the Senate and House, votes in state legislatures. Our system is set up to make change difficult unless President and Congress have sufficient power (60 votes in Senate) to enact change. The best legislation in recent memory has come when we had a Dem Pres, Senate, and House.
So talking good policy is absolutely necessary. Biden's proposed changes to the SCOTUS are terrific. They are good policy. But we need MANY more votes to make them possible.
That’s a bar that a fucking snake would have a hell of a time limbo going up. Your insinuation that the Democratic Party has proposed any quality palsy since Eisenhower, wait, he wasn’t a democrat…..
Jimmy Carter to be gracious is asinine. The only contacting machine Democratic Party in United States legitimate is in comparison to the fucking opposition.
Some talk about it like Bernie and Warren, but I don't think that it gets talked about enough. I hope that politicians and people are finally waking up to this Neoliberal garbage. I would love to hear it mentioned more often. Policy in this case will have to mean winning elections.
No. Policy is always good party and the democratic party constituency need to understand that the most electable candidate is always the best candidate. They are one in the same. But hey, nominate the wrong person is what we do.
I don't think many people have a clue. Policy would be great, but I think they might have to warm the people up a little. There might be people on the other side that could be converted if they understood the economics a little more.
We don’t need to convert anyone. Simply propose good policy always, implement it when you can and wife will improve for everyone. That is how you win elections.
But people are impatient, and some policy takes time for the results to show. It seemed to take take almost 40 years for people to realize Trickle Down was bad for the middle class.
Actual experience is irrelevant. If you fool enough of the people enough of the time that the economy is a zero-sum proposition, and (name your scapegoat) is sucking away at their share, job done.
Amen. The only economic statistic relevant to the proletariat is the wealth gap. Which has reached the record under every single president since did Jimmy Carter. No matter the party affiliation.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
What I'd like to know is whose idea was it to transfer our retirement savings into the hands of Wall Street gamblers? My father and grandfather didn't have 401(k) plans; they had guaranteed pensions from their employers, based on years of service. Apparently, somewhere along the line, someone decided that it would be a good idea to give our retirement savings to Wall Street speculators and let them gamble it away. Now every time there's a recession, my 401(k) gets wiped out and I have to start over from scratch. No wonder people are losing faith in capitalism.
401 Ks were the pablum richy rich and the Corporations hung us with as they deconstructed pensions and every other benefit we used to be offered. Remember short term disability? Long term disability? Free banking accounts? Pension incentives?? Some of us knew the downward motion in which we were pitched!!
On the one hand, 401(k) are about providing financial firms (the trustees) with a guaranteed stream of fees. On the other hand, pensions may be less secure because not all corporations survive, and they may be no better regarding fees because a financial firm (trustee) is "manages" the assets. I like the 401(k) system better.
Requiring companies to make good on their pensions rather than stealing all the ‘good’ would go a long way to ‘righting the ship’. But, none will do this voluntarily. Humans have proven themselves as Apex Predators, that fouling their own nest and beating out the other is their top priority. And, the rest of us will have to suffer with the ones who don’t look like Barbarians but act like this at every turn.
Good points. The possibility of a company going belly up and not being able to pay employee pensions did cross my mind. But I'm not entirely convinced the 401(k) system is "better." Imagine you work for decades building your 401(k) savings, then a month before you retire, along comes another "black Monday" and you lose it all. Is this scenario any less likely than losing your pension because the company didn't survive? I don't know.
A major problem with 401(k) plans is that most do not allow you to buy FDIC insured CDs or Treasury issued securities outright. But 401(k) rollovers do.
There's probably a book about that: probably one of Thom Hartmann's "Hidden History" series, but I'd bet Prof. Reich has written about how 401K's came about. Look it up!
I hope Democratic supporters will make it clear during the campaign, that the torch Biden lit, of acting against monopolies and excessive corporate power, and strengthening unions, will be carried forward by Kamala and her team!
PS. Here's a webpage on how to report offensive messages:
I hope someone shove that imaginary George cup your imaginary ass until he shoots out your nostrils. Trik morally bankrupt professional wire for the DNC is not exactly somehow metaphysically better than doing the same for Putin or the GOP you lye for a living bitch. Your existence is a Lie
Oh my God. None of that happened. He has delusional as any GOP constituent. Hell Biden is a strike breaker. He wouldn’t give the fucking railroad workers. Holiday pay and healthcare. A basic first world country dynamic. Any action taken against monopolies has been like all democratic party, proposals, and legislation, nothing but an insulting token. Name the market Center, it is market fixing, monopolized, and nothing but a myriad of antitrust violations. Why does Walmart not busted for monopolizing the grocery market? It has three times the market Sheraton Southwestern Bell ever did a long distance.
I assume you are referring to Sam Rayburn, correct?
My view of the electorate and their interests is that they are susceptible to demagoguery, propaganda and cultural conformity- adopting positions counter to their financial interests, agreeing with positions consistent with their cultural beliefs and going along with the ethos of the groups with which they affiliate. How else can we explain that Christians, who profess to believe in and follow the teachings of Jesus, become Christian Nationalists?
No, I’m saying is political position was incorrect given anytime after Eisenhower. Which, by the way, would be relegated to the squad in present day body politic mean to Liberal for in the Democratic Party.
Mr. Reich, would you accept an appointment in the Harris administration similar to your work during the Obama administration? The nation needs your insight and knowledge on the economy and labor.
I am not an economist, but I wonder about the current freak-out. The economy added more than 100,000 jobs, but some economists EXPECTED more. Therefore the economy is IN THE TANK. So imagine a ball game: Your team wins by 10 points, but the bookies were expecting 13 points. Does that mean your team lost. Seems like economics is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Back in the arcane days of my college career, I heard this; "Astrology became astronomy; alchemy became chemistry. What will economics be when it grows up?"
Which is why products such as food, gas, and meds need price controls. Still, if everybody went vegetarian all at once, meat prices would fall. What I'm calling for, keep calling for over and over again, are organized boycotts. Publish lists of products whose prices are gouging. Companies will lower prices just to stay off the list. This was done in the 70s. Nobody's doing it now.
Corporate companies and the top 1% own and run this country.
This can be changed.
Using the anti trust act to break up the monopolies that have been allowed over the past 20 years. Enforce the "bank usery laws"
Credit card companies are now charging 34 and 1/2 % on credit cards !
In the old days when there were enforeable laws, anything over 10 or 12% was considered " usery" and mofia rates.
Stop allowing stock buybacks! Before 1980, it was considered " stock manipulation " , which it is. It allows unrealized stock price manipulation through reducing the amount of stock available on the market. Creating a false price value. No one has noticed that stocks are no longer valued with the standard P/E ratio used since the stock market was formed. There are no metrics to set the value of a stock anymore. Its all based on supply and demand of the stock . It is no longer based on the sales of goods and services the P/E ratio gave.
Corporations should have a percent profit ratio before allowing the company to keep raising prices. Pharmasutical companies are the worst. They get money from the NIH to help develope drugs and are allowed to charge what they want. The National Institue of Health is a tax payer funded program.
If pharmacies get money from the NIH , it should be limited on profit margins by the GOP. Or the government should get royalties from the drug development. Use the royalties to fund national health care. Also, many pharmaceutical companies manufacture many of our drugs overseas. Cheaply. My mother had a statin she took. It was discontinued becase of a pissible carcinogen in it. The letter notifying us also said the pills were made in China! If they make the pills cheaply overseas, why can't we pay the price for that drug from the country of origin?
The Food and Drug administration should tell consumers where their pills were manufactured ! They do it for food.
Our pill bottles should state where they were made! The cost of those pills should be reflected on where they were made. Right now there seems to be a shotage in our area for the common drug Elequis. ( slower shipments from China, maybe?) . Cost of manufacturing in a cheaper country should be reflected in
pricing. The markup in pricing should be no more than "x" amount the cost to manufacture it if made cheaply in another country. Price gouging is destroying our healcare system.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Also, people keep spending. They complain about the high prices, but keep buying anyway. People need to stop spending. If they do that, prices will fall. That's why we need boycotts.
Difficult to stop spending on groceries, which is where the biggest price increases have occurred, by my observation. Our food bill has gone up 33% in the last few years, and we're buying run-of-the-mill produce and the cheapest cuts of meat at the discount store.
I'd venture to guess that most of us are NOT loading up on luxuries---we can't afford to.
My wife and I could afford to do lots of things. We chose not to. I see folks on FB getting evicted for FTP Rent, but they are eating crab boil bags. I didn't know what they were. I found out they are $30+. Hell no. 30 years ago I was working 2 jobs with 2 babies and a sick wife. We fixed a turkey on Sunday, and ate leftovers until Wed.
Raise the minimum wage, tax the rich, break up monopolies!
And don't reappoint Jerome Powell when is term is up. He also failed to regulate banks sufficiently.
Why on earth was he appointed in the first place??? Failed to regulate sufficiently... reality he failed to regulate AT ALL.
Trump appointed him. Nuff said.
Why wasn’t he relieved of duty? Jesus, we suck.
Why did Biden keep Wray as FBI Director? Why hasn't he gotten rid of DeJoy as Postmaster General? Why did he appoint Garland as Attorney General? And sticking by all these people despite their failure to do their job properly?
Biden reappointed him. He could have gotten rid of him but didn't
😬😬😬😬 no wonder!
Trump, in his wisdom, determined that Janet Yellen is too short to be the Fed Chair. He did not appoint her to serve a second term and appointed Powell in her place. Typical reasoning from a very stable genius.
All Fed Chairman , board members come from Member banks, in NY and Boston. The MFWIC's of the financial institutions run this nation via its credit, and they choose, or maybe the most important player chooses, the name of the Chairman of the Fed. The name is laid on the desk of the President who then goes to Senate for rubber stamp, err confirmation.
He has done better than Wall Street and the GOP have given him credit. Wall Street has lost its crackers over "high inflation" when it's about 3%. That used to be the norm. There has been no recession that they predicted for the last 4 years.
Nobody has regulated banks since before the mortgage meltdown in 2008. Nobody. And the anti regulation goons have been in power since Reagan.
Thanks Robert for some sanity! I actually made money on Wall Street today because I invest in gold and rare Earth mineral companies. Until the Middle East and Ukraine settle down, gold will be in demand. Second, artificial intelligence will require huge computer networks and the rare Earth minerals are used in the computer chips. I also bought one share of Warren Buffet’s company many years ago and invested in what he invested in! They do not call him the Sage of Omaha for nothing!!! I lived through 18% inflation during the Arab oil embargo of the 1970’s! That was real inflation!!!
Policing one’s self is a highly dubious practice. Especially when the policeman is part of a planet, raping finite resource stealing federal treasury crime syndicate. Hardly a credible overseer, don’t you think?
Hudson… I agree 100%
😉💪✌️
Don’t tell me you think we should back the dollar with gold. Please. All the gold ever mined would not fill up the LA Coliseum. Translate that to the amount of US dollars in circulation not only in the US but in the world.
Also, the Federal Reserve members are hired and fired by the Federal Executive - that is, the President. So no, they are not self policing as today’s supreme court (sic) imagines itself to be.
You have no reading comprehension. I’m talking about corporations policing themselves. You’re either one incredibly stupid motherfucker or your Cryllic to English software is terrible. Design by the same interns who did iPhone dictation……
Good Lord... this is way over the top. If Reich doesn't start policing the behavior on this board, I will leaving and not coming back.
Why the fuck would you assume I want to go back to the gold standard? Your reading comprehension software is fucked.
Hudson, your picture of the lilac and the attached poem in your bio are lovely. Your occupation as an organic farmer sets an example for us all. What confuses me is your language and name calling usually reserved for Trump followers. On this forum we are all stressed by these challenging times and sharing our insights with each other. There is no need for denigrating others points of views or utilizing obscenity to get your points across.
We can't even remove Louis deJoy. I for one will research the policies Elizabeth Warren has brought together for this year's campaigns. BTW She wanted to remove Jerome Powell from the start.
And she was right, just as she has been right on everything.
She is so wise. Has a plan to solve practically all our major problems. Why are Americans so blind as to not have elected her President?
Liz Warren is a crack pot.
When the entire establishment of scared of someone, that’s your sign.
Eh. Who are you James Carville?
I’m telling the truth.
You always did Karl.
About what? You haven’t spoken a word of it on this thread. Lol
They have been de-regulated for decades. If you want a reference, William Bill Black, PhD, Lawyer, former bank regulator The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. And the documentary TheCon.tv The bankers paid a pence and they are still up to the same appraisal fraud game. Just the facts, ma'am
Any entity calling itself a bank …..yet it’s being publicly traded, no thanks
Carolyn… I meant Jerome… not you!
Carolyn… a tRump lacking???? You betcha!!!
He’s fine
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The opposition has not a damn thing to do with any political parties, proposals or platform. Stop the tribal stupid.
Define the rich.
Anyone that got trump's tax cut.
I think something trickled down, but it wasn't green.
Chartreuse, maybe?
That didn't happen in my household.
Hey Debunker - where do you get your facts from? I didn’t get a $11,800 refund from the irs - you sound pretty gassy
What BS.
Bruh, you’re just pulling shit out of your ass. If that was a legitimate claim, you would offer a citation from a credible source. Shut the fuck up and go the fuck away.
Holy cats, I shoulda grabbed a bucket of popcorn before looking at this thread...
Pollinators keep us all alive. I'll bet NOAA saves us money on disaster preparedness every year. Trump is an idiot with a sharpee. He's lackluster in responding to disaster. Doesn't have a compassion gene that Biden has. He made racism a motif in his response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. He threw paper towels at people and attacked leaders on the ground. He thought we should vacuum forests in CA.
There’s only one day more expensive than properly addressing the eminent climate catastrophe, that is, not.
Marx is a bot.
That's not it. I don't think William Farrar is a bot, I dont think AZ is a bot, I dont think Tom High is a bot, though I've had fact based disagreements with them all.
Az, and every other account with no picture, no note, no post, no legs and three friends are bots.
While the rest of us are paying MORE!😡😡😡😡😡😡
That means you are rich.
https://smartasset.com/taxes/trump-tax-brackets
Exactly. Big oil and corporate thieves want Trump in the White House. So, Biden gets in and, big surprise, Big oil and corporate thieves up their prices to choke the American middle and lower income people (we all have class, every one of us!). They've upped the prices so we'll blame Biden and elect Trump to get more money in their greedy pockets while the average man/woman end up on the streets!
Fuck.Off.
marcus816, keep your head out of the mud... It's much easier to breathe. Some posts, and posters, simply aren't worth responding to.
You’re right, of course.
You're welcome.
You're an asshole. You think that we stupidly don't know that the rich only pay a minute % of the taxes that they're supposed to pay. Your bracket charts mean nothing. EVERYbody knows this.
Still nothing to offer besides insults, I see. Go home, Ivan. we are not buying what you have to sell.
Yes across the brackets, but the wealthy received the biggest cuts - why do they need taxcuts ? They’re not sharing any profits with employees
Your numbers are simply bullshit. The percentage of tax revenue created is not 70% nor is it fucking relevant to people that make hundreds of millions of dollars actually billions of dollars per quarter don’t pay taxes but some of them actually receive a goddamn refund. Tell me how that works? Shut the fuck up with your lying bullshit
There’s no fucking restructure of Texas goddamn read fake ass accounts like you and the people behind them should be removed from this space-time continuum. You fucking bitch
So Biden is to blame for corporate greed?
Karl--All kidding aside, to me rich is a state of being. When you have accumulated enough wealth that you are no longer concerned with how much something costs you only want to know when you can get it.
Not really. My tax cut was $52…for the entire year.
Did you become a full-time voting member of the club? 😉
My tax cut was $2 or $3. Seriously.
Based on the OP's definition, you are rich.
I know, why don’t you go play your stupid-ass games with Elno and the morons over there who pretend to give a shit about what you “think”?
Thank you.
Idiot.
Good question. We don't want to scare people with annual incomes around $400,000. But definitely go after people with income tax dodges for investment income. Then there's extreme poverty which we allow to exist.
If there aren’t visible, homeless, starving people on the street in the richest nation on earth, how are we gonna motivate the losers to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
Two possible definitions:
1. the top 10%
2. the top 0.001%
#2 are the ones doing the damage, not #1
They’re both doing proportionally far more than their fair share. Unlike their contributions…..
What damage?
Rhetorical question?
Damaged brain, I think
You know the answer. Anyone with more money than me.
Justify your own existence first.
Tax corporations. Far more important than the rich. Antoinnette, the Eisenhower progressive tax bracket pain remove loopholes and shelters. All of this shit was figured out long ago. Shameful we aren’t smart enough just to copy a good wheel. We act as if we have to invent one.
I agree. Tax corporations as they were years ago and second excess wealth ( the gross amount above any reasonable needs ) say 10 million should get a significant. Rate increase to maybe 30-40% . That wealth has to be both individual personal ones but also the passively owned like stocks , monetary insurance investments , tangible assets such as land- bill gates owns 1/8000 of the US ? And so on. Federal budget deficit goes away with I’m sure a serious disruption in the philosophy of profit for it’s own sake when purpose maybe a better object
No. Simply return the Eisenhower policy and bracket a proven winner. Responsible for the most robust economy in our history.
Trump never shows gratitude to veterans. Maybe he keeps meinkamph on his bedstand. He wouldn't stand in a light rain to honor WWII veterans at a memorial in Normandy. He's cruel to five star families because of his racial animus.
Can I decided how much wealth you need?
Can I just say how far up your ass I’m gonna put my boot?
Hehaha
Eisenhower beat Mussolini. Harris beats Trump! Did I get my general's right? Trump never shows any patriotism. He likes Andrew Jackson. Wasn't he responsible for the Trail of Tears? Sorry no google machine for me. I am pretty certain that Andrew Jackson was one of our most brutal presidents.
That is the equivalent of an Olympic boxing bragging about beating up a second grader on the playground. Not fucking all of that. The opposition is never relevant to the quality of governance and the policy a party offers.
I thought I would try to teach you something before I left…..
Ain’t no loophole strictly enforced, 40% income tax on revenue over expenses generated within the borders of our sovereign on corporations would pay off the national debt in five years. Oh yeah, one of the things that mom and Pop could actually compete. Jesus fucking Christ you’re stupid all those things are a given. it must’ve taken an unbelievable amount of work to become that moronic. Or morally bankrupt. Whatever the case may be, I suppose they’re not mutually exclusive…
You have not thought this out.
The national debt is $35 trillion. Total corporate profits in 2023 were 3.2 trillion. Let’s take 40% of 3.2 trillion and we have 1.28 trillion. That won’t even cover the 2023 deficit.
You have not thought this out. I know what the fuck I’m talking about but, if you think you can lie with ridiculous numbers, just pulled out of your ass and I don’t know what I’m talking about, i’m just gonna let it slide without exposing you for the feces, filled Putin Geo peacock sleeve lying piece of shit that you really are.
You really really really have not thought this out .
To edit. The fourth quarter profit a loan in 2023 were $3.8 trillion. Feces filled skinbag is always a bad optic. When your brain is so addled with rotgut bootleg ‘wodka”
You’re so fucking stupid you don’t see the stupid here do you? You are so far out of your depth engaging in a body politic conversation with me. The lack of awareness is almost to music, but I got better shit to do.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/222127/quarterly-corporate-profits-in-the-us/#:~:text=Corporations%20in%20the%20United%20States,and%20Product%20Accounts%20(NIPA).
Let’s take your lying fucking piece of shit and throw it in the Volga with a few concrete blocks tied around its neck
That’s absolute bullshit. I’m not going to allow you to pull numbers out of your ass there. Intentionally the fourth quarter profit in the United States won or 3.4 trillion pain. Go the fuck away and shut the fuck up. And whatever particular order you prefer. Seriously consider self immolation.
What about when a company raises prices (or declines to lower them when market conditions indicate that should happen) and then reports record-breaking profits? Is that still "rais[ing] prices to make up the losses"?
Another talking point.
We aren’t a monarchy yet. There are laws that have to be written and passed. The Fed chair though is another matter however.
And impeach Clarence and Sammy.
Okay - then why did a major airline cancel the job offers to all of their new hires? Yea, I know why the Dem are pushing such a great economy - it's election year. BUT Bernie Sanders (who is trying to help the Dems) points out. The economic decline for decades has pushed the 99% into less housing, less wages, less health care (medical debt anyone?).
The Dems need to talk about 2008 disaster. If we keep building more housing (which is the big reason for carbon footprints), we are going to destroy the climate and the last of the middle class. I'll keep sharing it. We must talk about the hardest issue : money. The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One - Bill Black, PhD. TheCon.tv
I don't just want the Dems to win - I want them to be successful and life the middle class - back to the middle.
AMEN!!!! I am a widow in her late 60s still working FT both out of financial necessity and because I enjoy helping others even worse off than me. I am a Social Worker with a moderate income. I make too much to get help with food and rent, but it is increasing difficult to keep to my budget. Millions more in the US are like me
VOTE BLUE AND PROGRESSIVE!!!! 💙 ❤️ ♥️
Bob…. You hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head!!
D 47
You are vaguely implying that tfg will straighten out all these issues for working class Americans.
How you come up with that nonsense is a mystery.
tfg has gone bankrupt 6 times. Now that should convince anyone who has a functioning brain cell that doom comes with that package. You need help!
Bruh, give it up you’re a laughingstock.
That’s called price gouging Collin market, fixing and many other antitrust violations. The only fault of this administration was not immediately indicating and prosecuting it. Fumbduck
And not enough to keep up
How does the Biden ministration have anything to do with that? Fuck do you need serious help. Real professional mental health care. We aren’t connected to reality. Even coincidentally. Do you not have anyone in your circle? That gives a fuck?
We have now reached the point where the stock market and the media are driving public opinion by breeding panic with every breathless headline and overreaction to financial news.
NAILED IT, Mark! Exactly! All by design, I'm absolutely sure.
Definitely by design. Investors and corporate media owners both will do anything they can to engineer a Trump victory. The job report (still reflecting an increase in job growth) was their excuse. The companies that comprise the stock market have themselves been driving up inflation by indiscriminately raising prices since the pandemics supply chain shortage. Harris has to bring down the antitrust hammer.
BIG TIME on that hammer! Also, make stock buybacks illegal again. Basically, re-implement all the regulations that have been stuck down since Ronnie Raygun's time.
Absolutely keep Lina. The fact that the donors asked Harris to fire her is the best reason to keep her.
Do you suggest that she keeps Lina Kahn? Lina seems to be going after monopolies, the first time in a long time.
I hope she does! We need more progressives in office
Like she’s going to change anything? She is a donor class tool. My god there’s nobody more gullible than the average democratic party can schedule OK the party has all 10 or 12 legitimate liters in Congress, save Bernie all but three of them women, Britain, and the dummies go for HRC, Nancy, Kamala? There is a very special place in hell for a woman of color who passed corrupt old white guy water.
They are under current paradigm. Of the 2.2 million employees at Walmart half of which is owned by Sam’s 11 airs, 800,000 of them are on some sort of federal assistance. I don’t know about you but I’m sick and tired of fucking subsidizing the Walmart airs. And the Amazon, exacts and major stakeholders, along with the rest of the Fortune 500. You are a despicable piece of shit I am positive. You know your claims are complete and utter bullshit.
Were you in dictation mode? Just wanted to point out "heirs," certainly a sound-alike. "Exacts" maybe for "execs?" What a world of "madlibs" we are in!
They are finite resource raping, environmentally, destructive fiduciary duty only entities that kill life on the planet and exploit labor capital. If you don’t recognize that, you should leave this conversation.
No one is buying your bs. Why are you even here? To troll?
Obviously. Some poor bastard that’s been drinking far too much toxic bootleg, homemade vodka for far too long. Obviously, they need to get out of the basement in St. Petersburg occasionally.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mmansour/p/the-democrats-problem-and-some-ideas?r=tcxup&utm_medium=ios
That's how to start a market crash
Notice it happened the same day that Google has been deemed (finally) a monopoly.
Not lost on me!
This is just the beginning of the “hurt” that billionaires, the face of corporations, and corporate organized crime who unduly influence our corporations intend, especially for the next 91 days and up until inauguration of Harris. This is the power we allow them to hold over us. This is the nasty side of capitalism and it’s probably going to get more painful until our laws reflect fair taxes for all, including the uber rich and corporations.
It’s true, this won’t end their power, but it will allow a much needed update of the various systems we all share and others that some of our population depend upon to survive—not to mention balancing our budget or paying down our debt. The richest country in the world is gradually drifting further and further behind the rest of the world in education, healthcare, old-age benefits.
Where’s our cross-country high-speed rail? Hell, where’s our cross state high-speed rails? Our cities are old and our energy grid is falling apart and the GOP won’t move to allow things to change because the people who really influence their representatives aren’t getting the OK from the billionaires who control them.
Our current macro economic model is “rape and pillage. Having absolutely nothing to do with capitalism. Capitalism requires a free and unfettered market with strictly enforced, thoughtfully emplaced consumer protections. We have neither. As the aforementioned, rape and pillage paradigm correct label is known in Econ, 101 classrooms around the world as “imperialism“ words have definitions. Let’s try our best to use the correct ones.
"Rape and pillage!" Yay, loud and clear! I have been opining here and there for a while that the Overlords are not disturbed primarily by taxes: there will always be a dodge around that. It's the REGULATION, darlin'! Current Supreme Court taking care of that annoyance nicely.
I as if there was any legitimate regulation before this court? Not since Nixon.
You say that, as if the democratic party platform is a legitimate policy proposal fuck. You know it’s the Democratic Party constituents that are continually holding us back and not allowing us to move in this Third World shit hole. It’s a given the GOP constituents are never gonna be smart enough to chew gum and walk. You’ve proven no smart. The political acumen have a fucking River rock.
Neither party is going to do anything like paying down our debt!!!
What fairytale are you reading? Are you clean the Democratic Party? Somehow offers quality policy and good governance? I suppose corporate oligarchy enable fascism is better than totalitarian despotism …
And you wonder why we can’t have anything nice.
Yes, and one jobs report does not a trend make.
Hyperbole reigns
Yes, because it entraps ears and eyeballs in service to media profits.
We were always at that point, no? I cannot recall since the 90s it being any other way. Wall Street is like chicken little running around with its head cut off every time there is a bear market or a serious adjustment to their gambles.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
The economy was so much better when there were laws against monopolies. I remember Ma Bell having to diversify, which opened up the market for other telephone companies to emerge. Large retail outlets, like WalMart and Amazon, have taken over almost all areas of retail, and the smaller business could not compete. This led to the fall of the middle class.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
I agree with you and thank you for pointing this out. I learned this on a small scale the hard way myself, when I started a local community newspaper and was subject to a larger paper threatening my advertisers, teachers who didn't agree with my editorials taking it out on my children in school, and being taken to task at council meetings because I exposed corruption. Trying to educate the public to the truth of their surroundings can cause repercussions for those who are trying to make a living in journalism.
Because the conglomerates are such bullies, newscasters are afraid to lose their jobs. Some, like at Fox, will even compromise their own ethics and lie to the public in order to appease their superiors.
For this reason, we must take other tactics in order to get the messages out. Each of us should be vocal on social media. Encouraging more group zoom calls. Send postcards. We need to be creative, and sitting still won't make anything happen.
Wow Toni wasn't expecting quite such a powerful personal story about repressive responses to stories in your local newspaper. Here's the concluding paragraph here and the first section of the paper below that's going to take down the whole house of cards. on 9-11.: So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Exposing The Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissist As A Moron
A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency with Donald Trump's
Recently the media focus has been on the 'age issue' and the question of the mental competency of an octogenarian during President Biden's second term. So let's compare his mental competency with Donald Trump's starting with his most recent gaffow followed by a list of what he said and his cabinet members said about him during his first term. (A short list of my faves:)
Did Biden call Nancy Pelosi Nicky Haley when recently talking about the 1-6-21 assault on the capital?
Did he claim the ability to properly identify a giraffe in a multiple choice of three animals, proved he was a "real stable genius"?
Did his former college professor call him the "dumbest f--king student I ever had"?
Did Biden suggest we could build a wall with transparent concrete?
Did he ever say to the camera he wished his wife were present with him while she was literally standing next to him looking confused?
Did his own sibling say in a recorded interview that he paid someone to take the SAT for him because he was too stupid to get into college on his own?
Did Biden think people needed photo IDs to buy groceries?
Did Biden say Paris was a city in Germany?
Did he misspell basic words in dozens of different tweets only to "correct" them by misspelling them a different way?
Did he suggest injecting disinfectants into our bloodstream to kill COVID?
Did he say he didn't know what a blind trust is, despite having a "degree" in Finance?
Did he bankrupt every business he tried starting on his own, including a Casino?
Was Biden the first President in history to utter the sentence, "Belgium is a beautiful city"?
Did Biden ever say our captured prisoners of war are only heroes because they were captured?
Did he have more than a dozen of his hand picked cabinet members resign because they couldn't work with his incompetence?
Did his own Chief of Staff call him an "idiot"?
Did a Senator from his own party say, "The White House has become an adult day care center”?
Did his own Secretary of State say he was a "fucking moron"?
Did his own economic advisor say he was "dumb as shit...an idiot surrounded by clowns"?
Did his National Security Advisor say he was "a dope...an idiot [with the intelligence of] a kindergartner”?
I saved the above collection of quotes that was originally posted on a Facebook page dedicated to insuring Joe Biden's second term last year. That was before that Republican special prosecutor in his VP document's case harped on the age issue and Joe's forgetfulness of details when the guy interviewed him. I was going to submit the above to the Daily Kos before reading the two following articles updating Trump's mental problems amidst the failure of a media focus on the orange moron at the president's expense while he's trying to run this country as the GOP is fixed on trying to tear it apart.
On 2-26-24 I read their lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia, cataloging his further mental decline. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a new site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Trump has obviously been both a low IQ moron and a fascist all his life, his first attorney was Roy Cohn Christ's sake. For here's precisely how he became the Perfect GOP Candidate: A supreme Narcissist who first builds Hotels with his last Name plastered all over the top of each with a Will To Power Fixation that drives him to become a TV Star where the whole game was to have the contestants kiss his ass to see who was His most 'competent' Apprentice, Firing all the Losers before finally picking the Winner, Like Me. Which sets him up to run for President, Wrapping Himself In MAGA Flag to Beat all those Loser Politicians in the Primary and Lock Her Up Hillary in the 2016 Electoral College. Rejoice, rejoice an absolute field day for all the fascists, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, plutocrat billionaires, corporatists, corporate media, atheists, evangelical preachers and six Supreme Court Justices all Backing a Moronic and now progressively Demented Fuhrer for the MAGA Masses Who Worship Him Like A God, Further Feeding Its Insatiable Sociopathic Narcissism!!!
Turns out I also hadn't read the whole issue with A.J. Pennyfarthing's 10 stunning moments from Trump's late-night speech to religious broadcasters. You ain't going to be changing any preacher's or MAGA's minds about how unhinged DT is with any raft of articles cause that is the Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron's Lowest Common Denominator Appeal To The Wrap Yourself In MAGA Flag And $60 Bible Masses!
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Excellent list Sean, and that only taps the surface. It is my opinion that the emergence of Trump is funded by billionaires and organizations like the Heritage Foundation. In order for them to insert their own man (Vance), who encompasses their Christian National values, they have to have a shill, like Trump. They are aware he is demented, but with the help of Russian, Turkey and even China's misinformation streamed through social media, people will believe anything once they have given to it repeatedly in small bites. Trump will be found to be unfit once he has taken office, and Vance will be made POTUS. I am not usually a conspiracy theorist, but this only makes sense to me that so many would not see how mentally unstable Trump was without some outside forces in play.
Toni, all my comments to you were removed as I was banned by substack from posting anything. I saved this in my earthlink inbox and took two sessions with Tex from their support tea, to get this resolved from 241mumbers website. Tex said is was barred for spam and not to post the same thing in succession like one can freely do on Facebook.
This was on Robert Reich's post where Musk got 57% of votes for second most despised person after Trump. Here was the the last paragraph in that paper:
So now that we have fully summarized Anti-Trump News Suppression In Corporate Media, the first question is how in the hell can Progressive Media Counter Mega Billionaire Support Of Trump? Easy and Only Answer – make sure everybody is presented with this Comparison Between The Candidates: Since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Thomas Paine On Religions Keeping Mankind Ignorant Of The Creator
As Governments Keep Man Ignorant Of His Rights
by Terry K.
So let us briefly update and address the two central themes in Thomas Paine's precocious quote: "It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of governments to hold man in the ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support."
So let's talk about the relation between religion and polytrix in the US government. We have a Supreme Court with six Catholics, steering religion and politics to the far right, away from the Creator. We'll comeback to the original conclusion after this read about the last act taken by the Supreme Court on the first of July. TruthBeTold's post from Jim Hightower's daily news letter on 7-2:
Today the US Supreme Court overturned the centuries long conviction of Pontius Pilate, absolving him of any responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
In a 6-3 decision along party lines, Chief Justice John Roberts found in error the long standing verdict of history that the Governor of Judea had acted out of personal motivation. Quite the contrary, Roberts wrote, it was strictly within Pilate’s official capacity that he ordered the crucifixion.
In support of his conclusion that Pilate was not acting out of personal motives, Roberts noted a heretofore unrecognized fact. Pilate actually admired Christ and had for a time considered making him court jester after being told of Christ’s whimsical parables. However, after Christ fed the multitude on three fishes and five loaves, Pilate sought to have him elevated to high priest, a plan denounced by Joseph ben Caiaphas, the incumbent. To mollify Caiaphas, but primarily to remove a threat to his regime, Pilate reluctantly ordered the crucifixion, an act well within the governor’s official duties. The first duty of every official, Roberts wrote, is to preserve and perpetuate his rule, be he governor, satrap or inspector of hides and brands.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh noted that crucifixion was not a death sentence, merely a punishment. Unfortunately, he wrote, some individuals perversely elected to die on the cross just to embarrass a government toward which they were ill disposed. Likewise in the case of time honored punishments such as keel-hauling and flogging there were the occasional fatalities, regrettable but hardly of consequence.
Justice Gorsuch noted in his concurrence that in olden times, measures which today are deemed cruel and unusual were in fact a necessity. Trial by water and trial by fire, he observed, were the only ways to get at the facts before the advent of the polygraph and Fox News.
Remarking the perspective she had gained occupying the Tomas de Torquemada Chair of Jurisprudence at Notre Dame, Justice Barrett stated with apodictic certainty that had prosecutors been deprived of the rack, the thumbscrew and the iron maiden, many great truths would have gone unrevealed.
Despite having been challenged to recuse himself when it was learned that Harlan Crow had given him Pilate’s solid gold death mask, Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion, the gist being: redemption. Romans, he observed, had long since become good Catholics and were thereby redeemed by Christ himself; they had hardly bothered anyone since their conversion, with the exception of Al Capone in Chicago, Lucky Luciano in New York, and Sam Alito in Washington, DC.
Justice Alito declared that no way could Pilate have gotten a fair trial, with the populace spreading the word that Christ was the only begotten son of God. The scriptures, Alito emphatically stated, say that we all are the children of God, and scriptures take precedence over man’s laws. “We here in this very court,” he continued, “we six justices are a testament to that divinity. If we don’t sitteth at the right hand of God, I don’t know who does.”
Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson, knowing their six confreres better than anyone, dissented.
We have a new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president. Who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025, as outlined at the end of Thom Hartmann's historical analysis of what led up to The Shocking GOP Plan to Dismantle the American Government. And all the while you've watched the Republican Party champion the idea of "freedom" while you have also watched the same party openly assault various freedoms, like the freedom to vote, freedom to choose, freedom to marry who you want, freedom for your children's teachers and librarians to have them read what they want, freedom to form unions and so on. If this has been a source of confusion, then your assessments of what Republicans mean by freedom were likely too generous. Here is what they mean: 1. The freedom to tell people what to do. 2. Freedom from being told what to do.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/31/2190709/-The-Shocking-GOP-Plan-to-Dismantle-the-American-Government-Revealed?detail=emaildkre&pm_source=DKRE&pm_medium=email
Just copied my test response to you and sent it to Tex at substack support. Here's my concluding questions: So Tex, how can one Successively Or Not Successively Post This Hugely Important Message On Substack? What's the Purpose of Progressive Media If They Suppress Free Speech Because Of Spam Algorithms?
Concluding paragraph of On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia:
So now that we have fully summarized Anti-Trump News Suppression In Corporate Media, the first question is how in the hell can Progressive Media Counter Mega Billionaire Support Of Trump? Easy and Only Answer – make sure everybody is presented with this Comparison Between The Candidates: Since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Yesterday I sent On Media, Exposing, Thomas Paine and The Shocking to every progressive media outlet for publication in that order.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
by Terry K.
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long rant about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So now that we have fully summarized Anti-Trump News Suppression In Corporate Media, the first question is how in the hell can Progressive Media Counter Mega Billionaire Support Of Trump? Easy and Only Answer – make sure everybody is presented with this Comparison Between The Candidates: Since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
And the proletariat subsidizing billion dollar per quarter profit major stakeholders.
Most of our popular stores like Dress Barn, KMart, and The Vitamin Shop which we had in our communities are gone!😡😡😡😡
When 50% of the market is owned by 1% of the investors, any time it is to the advantage of the 1% to all sell off some of their holdings, the market will skid. They do not have to discuss selling. They just have to agree a down market would be bad for democrats, hmmm... "I think I'll take some of my earning now."
According to Forbes: Here are the political affiliations of America’s 50 richest families, ranked according to wealth: 2015
1. Walton – Republican
2. Koch – Republican
3. Mars – Republican
4. Cargill-MacMillan – Republican
5. Johnson (Fidelity) – Republican
6. Hearst – Republican
7. Cox – Democrat
8. Pritzker – Both
9. Johnson (S.C. Johnson) – Republican
10. Duncan – Republican
11. Newhouse – Democrat
12. Lauder – Both
13. Du Pont – Republican
14. Hunt – Republican
15. Ziff – Both
16. Johnson (Franklin Templeton) – Republican
17. Busch – Both
18. Dorrance – Both
19. Mellon – Republican
20. Brown – Both
21. Carlson – Both
22. Fisher – Republican
23. Butt – Democrat
24. Rockefeller – Both
25. Gallo – Democrat
26. Marshall – Republican
27. Bass – Both
28. Meijer – Republican
29. Bechtel – Republican
29. Reyes – Republican
29. Simplot – Republican
32. Rales – Both
33. Rollins – Republican
34. Scripps – Republican
35. Crown – Both
36. Stryker – Democrat
37. Smith – Republican
38. Pigott – Republican
39. Shoen – Both
39. Simon – Democrat
41. Lefrak – Both
42. Hughes – Republican
42. Phipps – Republican
44. Kluge – Both
44. Tisch – Democrat
46. Johnson (Johnson & Johnson) – Republican
47. Marriott – Republican
48. Kohler – Republican
49. Perot – Both
50. Barbey – Republican
Since this article pointing out these affiliations, the wealthy have been pouring money into the party in power to stop attempts by democrats to cohere around an economic redistribution policy agenda, in an era of rising inequality. Some here want to believe these new contributions are because the wealthy have seen the errors of their ways. Oh dear!
Insinuation that there is a statistically significant difference for the proletariat, and that the Democratic Party summer offers legitimate government is proof of our absolute stupidity. Especially yours. The motherfucker who called us a confederacy of dunces completely overestimated.
Hi Hudson, As a fellow poet, your poem is beautiful, I know you know about the use of language. So please tell me, why you chose to use such vulgar words and disrespectful tone to another human being trying to understand what is happening in our world.
What member of a proletariat *really* understands what statistical significance even means, much less the general populace? I mean I know people still thumb through books in the 2020s ... right? Ok wait .....
There’s no fucking redistribution of wealth policy on the democratic party platform. Fuck you believe anything been more golden, mini GOP constituent pit. Have you read ever? If the largest fucking corporate subsidy in history. Goddamn stupid twat.
Hi again, Maybe if you wrote what you want to say, about how an individual or group chooses a direction (policy) to move as a poem, I would be able to understand your point. As it is fucking seems to be distracting the essence of what you want to say.
I see exactly what I want to say. I like to Weaponize words. They have definitions. Very few are so open to the opportunity of learning something but most of them remember the sting. Words have the power to inspire create and destroy. I try my best to stay on task. I’m not a poet, not my gift. I am forward, blunt tactless, but correct. If you can’t do that you need to leave the conversation. Not you specifically I’m just saying.
PR ain’t my wheelhouse
Just learned that Steve Forbes, the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine was a Republican candidate for president in the primaries of 1996 and 2000. Thought it interesting. He hasn't prepared an updated list, but most of what I'm seeing on Quora indicates the Republicans are the biggest recipients of the largesse of the wealthy. For a while, it was pretty much half and half, but not now.
I too found it interesting there are not updates, that I could find.
Yeah, well try the corporate donations. The Dems completely make up for it. Fact, I think there’s a significantly significant difference is the height of fucking probably ignorant and it intentionally stupid.
Thank you for this post. It is from 2015, so I am looking for an updated version. It will be VERY interesting to compare then and now!
Republican rich "think" they care about one thing: further enriching themselves. That means lower corporate taxes and ways to get out of paying taxes on personal wealth. It also means making sure the middle class/poor stay that way: take away rights to unionize, union busting, etc. This is the same way it was in the Gilded Age. What they don't realize is that long term they are making enemies of common people, who will rise up against them (riots of late 1800's, early 1900's), and are creating political instability which will ultimately hurt everyone--including themselves.
Marxism was a political manifeststion of the kind of wealth hording and power grabbing that we are seeing now. Tax the rich, break up the monopolies!
Thank you David, I see the world they way you describe also. Stability comes when people see, and serve, the relationship among Me ) We ) Many. The economy likewise must serve Me ) We ) Many. 50% of the wealth of a nation in the hands of 1% of the people is not sustainable long term... especially with global warming threatening life. People are not going to allow the wealthy to continue their life style at everyone's expense. I often ask myself if this is the dynamic at play, instead of simple greed. Am I totally wacko? Or is it just greed?
There’s no proposals on the part of the Democratic Party to do anything but those very same thing you people are fucking straight up delusional bring there’s no order a Third World shit hole
I think the consciousness of the rich is more guilty now than that of the "Gilded Age" nabobs. In the past, the culture took it as "the natural order" for those with African blood, Irish, Polish, Italians, and always, always females to be (naturally) less human and suited to subservience. The Betsy Voss's of today are maliciously pursuing a program of repression to social engineer a perpetual slave class.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
They on both parties.
You are, I gather, listing only families. But if individuals are added, the Democrats or Democrat-leaning individuals like Buffett, Bloomberg and Pritzker are near the top of the list.
You will have to ask Forbes. I don't know.
However, think man, even if a wealthy person gave $50 million to a democrat once, we have let the wealth of the nation slip into the hands of so few people it is irrelevant. Even $50 million is a pittance of their wealth... but it might buy policy we we don't watch out. It is the long term support of policies that matters.
I wrote in a piece recently that the Democrats have to stop taking corporate money if they want working Americans to take them seriously.
Do completely insane things like propose best practice policy….
There is no way that you or anyone else can know what DonOld's net worth is because of the complexity of his finances and holdings. The IRS doesn't know. But, so things from his time in office: His daughter was granted numerous, hard to get, Chinese trademarks shortly after he made a surprise announcement that he was working with China’s president to save jobs at a major Chinese telecommunications company.
His son-in-law secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince despite objections from the fund’s advisers.
Good reminder! If only more than a couple of hundred geeks ever heard about it! (But Trumps groupies wouldn't believe it if they did hear about it, so futility anyhow.) Sorry about being a drip.
Drumpf has been villainized because he is despicable.
I do not know what your definition is for taking on the system, but the way has has challenged the system has mostly been criminal. The list is long, but includes: $2M in damages for fraudulent use of charitable funds. $25M settlement for Trump U fraud. $5M for sexual abuse. $83M for continued lying and defamatory statements. $355M in damages for business fraud. Serial adulterer (even with a porn star). Indicted for withholding top-secret federal documents. Indicted on Federal charges for conspiring to defraud the U.S. government. Indicted on state forgery and racketeering charges. Ten time found in contempt of court. Guilty of felony in NY court for falsifying business records in conspiracy to hide info from voters. Plus 6 (six!) bankruptcies.
You're just mad Dear Leader won't be able to gift the 1% YOUR hard-earned tax dollars when he goes to jail. Face it: BUNKERBOY WILL NEVER BE PLAYING PRESIDENT AGAIN.
More bullshit you just pulled out of your ass.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Basically, they base their measurements of the economy not by how the average American is doing, but by how the richest 1% is amassing more wealth. Just because the rich are getting richer doesn't mean the rest of us are doing well, especially when this country is allowing them to be so greedy. Honestly, I partially blame trump for that with his tax cuts for the rich. Mostly, I blame reagan and republicans since then for taking away all the regulations that kept the corporate greed in check. I'm voting Dem, but, if they have Congress and Executive branches, they need to start putting those checks back in place and make them permanent.
Agreed, we need to get back to what was working for the middle class before they conned us with their Neoliberalism/Reaganomics/Trickle Down Economics/Voodoo Economics. Yet few people realize what that really means. I am guessing that most people had no idea what Biden was really saying with his bottom up - middle out talk. We need more politicians to start talking about helping the middle class by doing away with Neoliberal policies and what that means.
We need to not settle for politicians talking. It’s about policy. Jesus.
Yes, but policy is only possible with enough votes--votes for President, votes in the Senate and House, votes in state legislatures. Our system is set up to make change difficult unless President and Congress have sufficient power (60 votes in Senate) to enact change. The best legislation in recent memory has come when we had a Dem Pres, Senate, and House.
So talking good policy is absolutely necessary. Biden's proposed changes to the SCOTUS are terrific. They are good policy. But we need MANY more votes to make them possible.
That’s a bar that a fucking snake would have a hell of a time limbo going up. Your insinuation that the Democratic Party has proposed any quality palsy since Eisenhower, wait, he wasn’t a democrat…..
Jimmy Carter to be gracious is asinine. The only contacting machine Democratic Party in United States legitimate is in comparison to the fucking opposition.
Some talk about it like Bernie and Warren, but I don't think that it gets talked about enough. I hope that politicians and people are finally waking up to this Neoliberal garbage. I would love to hear it mentioned more often. Policy in this case will have to mean winning elections.
No. Policy is always good party and the democratic party constituency need to understand that the most electable candidate is always the best candidate. They are one in the same. But hey, nominate the wrong person is what we do.
I don't think many people have a clue. Policy would be great, but I think they might have to warm the people up a little. There might be people on the other side that could be converted if they understood the economics a little more.
We don’t need to convert anyone. Simply propose good policy always, implement it when you can and wife will improve for everyone. That is how you win elections.
But people are impatient, and some policy takes time for the results to show. It seemed to take take almost 40 years for people to realize Trickle Down was bad for the middle class.
Actual experience is irrelevant. If you fool enough of the people enough of the time that the economy is a zero-sum proposition, and (name your scapegoat) is sucking away at their share, job done.
Amen. The only economic statistic relevant to the proletariat is the wealth gap. Which has reached the record under every single president since did Jimmy Carter. No matter the party affiliation.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
What I'd like to know is whose idea was it to transfer our retirement savings into the hands of Wall Street gamblers? My father and grandfather didn't have 401(k) plans; they had guaranteed pensions from their employers, based on years of service. Apparently, somewhere along the line, someone decided that it would be a good idea to give our retirement savings to Wall Street speculators and let them gamble it away. Now every time there's a recession, my 401(k) gets wiped out and I have to start over from scratch. No wonder people are losing faith in capitalism.
401 Ks were the pablum richy rich and the Corporations hung us with as they deconstructed pensions and every other benefit we used to be offered. Remember short term disability? Long term disability? Free banking accounts? Pension incentives?? Some of us knew the downward motion in which we were pitched!!
On the one hand, 401(k) are about providing financial firms (the trustees) with a guaranteed stream of fees. On the other hand, pensions may be less secure because not all corporations survive, and they may be no better regarding fees because a financial firm (trustee) is "manages" the assets. I like the 401(k) system better.
Requiring companies to make good on their pensions rather than stealing all the ‘good’ would go a long way to ‘righting the ship’. But, none will do this voluntarily. Humans have proven themselves as Apex Predators, that fouling their own nest and beating out the other is their top priority. And, the rest of us will have to suffer with the ones who don’t look like Barbarians but act like this at every turn.
Good points. The possibility of a company going belly up and not being able to pay employee pensions did cross my mind. But I'm not entirely convinced the 401(k) system is "better." Imagine you work for decades building your 401(k) savings, then a month before you retire, along comes another "black Monday" and you lose it all. Is this scenario any less likely than losing your pension because the company didn't survive? I don't know.
A major problem with 401(k) plans is that most do not allow you to buy FDIC insured CDs or Treasury issued securities outright. But 401(k) rollovers do.
Their lobbyist’s ,of course.
There's probably a book about that: probably one of Thom Hartmann's "Hidden History" series, but I'd bet Prof. Reich has written about how 401K's came about. Look it up!
Would you love to have retired in 2007?
Our current legislative mandates for Sez to invest in killing complex lifeforms on the planet. Probably not a good idea…..
Would I love to have retired in 2007? No. That's exactly my point.
Really?
We are so well and truly fucked if I’m the smartest guy in the room …..
I hope Democratic supporters will make it clear during the campaign, that the torch Biden lit, of acting against monopolies and excessive corporate power, and strengthening unions, will be carried forward by Kamala and her team!
PS. Here's a webpage on how to report offensive messages:
https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/23155795368852-How-to-report-a-note
I hope someone shove that imaginary George cup your imaginary ass until he shoots out your nostrils. Trik morally bankrupt professional wire for the DNC is not exactly somehow metaphysically better than doing the same for Putin or the GOP you lye for a living bitch. Your existence is a Lie
Oh my God. None of that happened. He has delusional as any GOP constituent. Hell Biden is a strike breaker. He wouldn’t give the fucking railroad workers. Holiday pay and healthcare. A basic first world country dynamic. Any action taken against monopolies has been like all democratic party, proposals, and legislation, nothing but an insulting token. Name the market Center, it is market fixing, monopolized, and nothing but a myriad of antitrust violations. Why does Walmart not busted for monopolizing the grocery market? It has three times the market Sheraton Southwestern Bell ever did a long distance.
Do voters really want to elect a presidential candidate who roots against our economy, trying to induce a fiscal panic just so he can get elected?
In reality, no. But economic panic vibes feed willfully ignorant voters' addiction to outrage.
“Willfully ignorant voter” is the cliff notes version Murikkka 2021
Voters have been voting against their own best interest sense fucking at least Rayguns. almost since Eisenhower.
The American electric doesn’t even know what their fucking best interests are. Good God.
I assume you are referring to Sam Rayburn, correct?
My view of the electorate and their interests is that they are susceptible to demagoguery, propaganda and cultural conformity- adopting positions counter to their financial interests, agreeing with positions consistent with their cultural beliefs and going along with the ethos of the groups with which they affiliate. How else can we explain that Christians, who profess to believe in and follow the teachings of Jesus, become Christian Nationalists?
Jesus would chastises the bastards.
But, but: are you saying William F. Buckley was not a Wise Man?
No, I’m saying is political position was incorrect given anytime after Eisenhower. Which, by the way, would be relegated to the squad in present day body politic mean to Liberal for in the Democratic Party.
Mr. Reich, would you accept an appointment in the Harris administration similar to your work during the Obama administration? The nation needs your insight and knowledge on the economy and labor.
I think Robert already stated that his intention is to hand things over to the next generation. Take it a bit easier Robert. You’ve earned it.
Not really. He’s just a Nager tribal stooge. Well informed Ronald Uber, unless
You are awesome, Dr. Reich!
I am not an economist, but I wonder about the current freak-out. The economy added more than 100,000 jobs, but some economists EXPECTED more. Therefore the economy is IN THE TANK. So imagine a ball game: Your team wins by 10 points, but the bookies were expecting 13 points. Does that mean your team lost. Seems like economics is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Back in the arcane days of my college career, I heard this; "Astrology became astronomy; alchemy became chemistry. What will economics be when it grows up?"
Looks like we're still waiting to learn.
Like the eponymous book title: Freakonomics.
It’s a correction.
The stock market isn't the economy. It's a shell game for monied interests and individuals. Let's cool our jets and stop replying to the trolls.
The stock market is a game of musical chairs for adults, except you do not want a chair when the music stops.
Is it a hot seat? Electric?
The stock market is DraftKings for Finance majors
Which is why products such as food, gas, and meds need price controls. Still, if everybody went vegetarian all at once, meat prices would fall. What I'm calling for, keep calling for over and over again, are organized boycotts. Publish lists of products whose prices are gouging. Companies will lower prices just to stay off the list. This was done in the 70s. Nobody's doing it now.
How could such a notion get off the ground? Where could we start?
Well put Dr Reich
Corporate companies and the top 1% own and run this country.
This can be changed.
Using the anti trust act to break up the monopolies that have been allowed over the past 20 years. Enforce the "bank usery laws"
Credit card companies are now charging 34 and 1/2 % on credit cards !
In the old days when there were enforeable laws, anything over 10 or 12% was considered " usery" and mofia rates.
Stop allowing stock buybacks! Before 1980, it was considered " stock manipulation " , which it is. It allows unrealized stock price manipulation through reducing the amount of stock available on the market. Creating a false price value. No one has noticed that stocks are no longer valued with the standard P/E ratio used since the stock market was formed. There are no metrics to set the value of a stock anymore. Its all based on supply and demand of the stock . It is no longer based on the sales of goods and services the P/E ratio gave.
Corporations should have a percent profit ratio before allowing the company to keep raising prices. Pharmasutical companies are the worst. They get money from the NIH to help develope drugs and are allowed to charge what they want. The National Institue of Health is a tax payer funded program.
If pharmacies get money from the NIH , it should be limited on profit margins by the GOP. Or the government should get royalties from the drug development. Use the royalties to fund national health care. Also, many pharmaceutical companies manufacture many of our drugs overseas. Cheaply. My mother had a statin she took. It was discontinued becase of a pissible carcinogen in it. The letter notifying us also said the pills were made in China! If they make the pills cheaply overseas, why can't we pay the price for that drug from the country of origin?
The Food and Drug administration should tell consumers where their pills were manufactured ! They do it for food.
Our pill bottles should state where they were made! The cost of those pills should be reflected on where they were made. Right now there seems to be a shotage in our area for the common drug Elequis. ( slower shipments from China, maybe?) . Cost of manufacturing in a cheaper country should be reflected in
pricing. The markup in pricing should be no more than "x" amount the cost to manufacture it if made cheaply in another country. Price gouging is destroying our healcare system.
Just a few ideas to fight back.
We don’t have to use any legislative mandate. Stop fucking doing business with a billionaire donor class you’re fucking moron. Goddamn.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
It was on 2-26-24 when I first read the Daily Kos's lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that Both his Parents had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I Learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long spew about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. From a 12-6-21 New York Times article: That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank. So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public. And finally a more balanced transcript of a 7-12 interview from NPR: Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins. On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue.
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece, Deanne Zandt, barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States of America on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Parents Both Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
seems like the stock market controls just about everything in the USA. The exception is foreign money infused to private Americans.
Also, people keep spending. They complain about the high prices, but keep buying anyway. People need to stop spending. If they do that, prices will fall. That's why we need boycotts.
Difficult to stop spending on groceries, which is where the biggest price increases have occurred, by my observation. Our food bill has gone up 33% in the last few years, and we're buying run-of-the-mill produce and the cheapest cuts of meat at the discount store.
I'd venture to guess that most of us are NOT loading up on luxuries---we can't afford to.
Steal some nursery pots, a shovel and some soil. A few packets of seed.
I know!!!!
My wife and I could afford to do lots of things. We chose not to. I see folks on FB getting evicted for FTP Rent, but they are eating crab boil bags. I didn't know what they were. I found out they are $30+. Hell no. 30 years ago I was working 2 jobs with 2 babies and a sick wife. We fixed a turkey on Sunday, and ate leftovers until Wed.
Macroeconomics one01 for dummies you want to get Delmer. No wonder there’s a small demand for your lecture…..
We have to spend money on food and shelter.