Joe Biden served America as 46th president. Does anyone wonder why Americans, many of them, never got to know him?
Joe, we barely knew ye.
Media billionaires pushed Joe off mainstream media channels; billionaire-bros algorithm-cleansed him from social media like X, Tic Tok, WhatsApp, Instagram et. al.
Right?
Worse, wealthy lunatics water-boarded Trump down our collective throats daily; hourly—for years! Who doesn’t reflexively puke when they look at a picture of that guy?
Why would owners of everything inflict a bad person like Trump on ordinary people? What toxic thing made Joe Biden loathsome to self-loving TITANS enuf that they felt free to offer we-little-ones alternative-Trump?
Has anyone other than Joe received as many freely-cast votes for anything anywhere during Earth’s short history of free-world civilizations?
Well?
Think about it.
The answer must be, “no”. Joe got 82 million votes: a feat not likely to be repeated for a long time.
So, what’s wrong with Joe?
Some say the debate proved him unfit. I challenge folks who think this way to watch the debate again.
BTW, why did Dems ditch Biden for a brownish woman who sensible folks must have known could not win election in slave-towns-everywhere USA?
Everyone knows that many Americans disrespect people they think are old. Worse, they hate blacks, foreigners, and women. Not everyone hates, but many do—nearing majority, it seems to me.
Who agrees?
Some say, we know, stupid.What else is new?
Well, people miss stuff when they don’t or won’t listen to folks who have lived thru hell. For me, I mistrust leaders who have no history of suffering. Who can respect the wisdom of folks who take but don’t give? Who trusts people whose judgment depends only on what they read in books or see in movies?
When Trump was a million $ in debt & on verge of bankruptcy, daughter Ivanka says they passed a beggar on the steps of one of daddy’s hotels. Beggar asked for money, which the Don refused. When Ivanka asked daddy, Why? he said the bum was a million dollars richer than him, because he had zero debt. The geezer with outstretched hand should give him money, he insisted.
Suffering is what all life endures. Who has watched geese fly south in winter? It’s beautiful until one sees that they race against time & weather. Many perish on the way. They drop from the sky and die. Opossums wander by and eat them.
Those who haven’t suffered haven’t learned anything useful when it comes to serving people, which is what good people try to do, at least sometimes, right?
Conspiracy theorists say that ICC-accused war criminal Netanyahu (PM of Israel) asked friends to force out Joe Biden, who some think he hates, in favor of Kamala Harris. In this way, he himself & Israel would secure protection from the International Criminal Court whether Trump or Harris won the US election or not. Regardless, Bibi wins both ways, though he admitted to favoring Trump, right?
We Americans, most anyway, will never learn truth about anyone as powerful as Benjamin Netanyahu or Donald Trump. Guardians of fake news think we can’t handle truth. If we could many of us wouldn’t believe it anyway.
Joe Biden is prolly the only person alive who was both able and motivated to stop the killing of women & children in Gaza, to prevent illegal seizures of Palestinian land, & to block ethnic-cleansing of non-Jews in Israel, which everyone on Earth sees plainly except US.
But Biden’s enemies put him in a box. At least they think they did. When he’s gone, leaders in Israel & Russia believe their ambitions for conquest could finally be unshackled.
They might be right. I’ve read that one in seven Israelis are Russian. The two countries share some overlap in cultural & world views, perhaps. Israel’s material support for Ukraine’s struggle to remain free is rumored to be meager at best.
Meanwhile, during the past few years, Israeli citizens complain they lost freedoms. Some say the judiciary is toothless in the face of autocracy—worse than America, they claim. Street protests are common, but news outlets rarely cover them. Democracy seems to be crumbling in real time according to a few of those who build their homes in the lands of the Bible & War Everlasting.
With the USA election decided, doors to more suffering and dying of nameless unloved people are flying open. A Pandora’s demonic box spills into the holiest places, both in America and lands faraway.
Christ said a time would come when killers believe they do favors for God. It was one more crazy thing Jesus said that led to crucifixion.
Who heard North Carolina’s Michele Morrow, candidate for Superintendent of Public Schools, call for Pay-Per-View public executions by firing squad of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Shumer, Anthony Fauci, Andrew Cuomo, Roy Cooper, Ilhan Omar, & Bill Gates?
Yes, Michele got 49% of the vote, but she didn’t win the statewide contest, thank God. In fact, every Republican running statewide in North Carolina lost except one and one other: Trump, of course.
And yes, most readers will likely say, true; they didn’t hear or read a single word about Michele Morrow. Didn’t know story myself until I saw Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reporting it while I wrote this essay.
Another true fact: Elon is considering purchase of MSNBC, presumably to shut-up reporters like Maddow who don’t trust Musk & his buddies to do what’s fair and right for ordinary Americans. Is the noose tightening? Steve Bannon, released from Danbury prison during the election a few weeks ago, says MAGA will hold power for 50 years, according to Newsweek.
What I learned is that young people, many of them, seem to think the following: old people are generally dumb, fearful, & demented; black folks, women, & migrants are usually repulsive; MAGA gun owners are freedom fighters; Israel is right about everything; Ukraine makes Russia do bad things; social security is a joke; inflation is raging; rich as hell people are almost always righteous.
I was at a party and overheard women in their thirties laughing at “blue hairs”. Respect for older women seems to have gone missing somehow in America.
It’s clear to me that young adults, most of them, don’t understand what it’s like to live old in America. They fear aging like it was leprosy, which for most it is not. Young adults are oblivious to the wisdom that comes only to those who age to the natural end of life, a process that can last a hundred years or more for some.
Oppressed people sometimes disdain people like themselves. It’s strange. Black men and white women voted for Trump, right? Migrants & gay men voted for Trump!
Acolytes who chase money, sex, & power surround the man. He’s a magnet for deplorables. Ask Hillary, a Christian woman he slimed.
In 2015, I suggested to a group of Christians that Hillary Clinton was Mother Teresa compared to Trump. They laughed, because they considered the idea absurd on its face. False stories about a woman who endured humiliation to protect love that comes only from a family united poisoned their minds.
Everyone must know it’s true. The weird part is that most seem unable to grasp how hatred works to hold them back.
Love is the answer, yes, but is anyone asking right questions?
People bet their lives they’re right, not wrong. Russian officials have threatened nuclear war nearly every day since the invasion of Kiev on 24 February 2022.
Right-questions-time died a long time ago.
Humankind and planet Earth now depend on Donald Trump and his team to safeguard everything we love. During transition of power, how the GOP behaves, what their leaders say and do, will have major impacts on everything that’s going to happen now and in the future.
Last time it was Covid. One million died, some experts say two.
No one listened to experts then or now.
Could things get worse this time around?
God in Heaven, hear this prayer:
Deliver Earthlings from all harm. Amen
Update: 7 February 2023 Tonight, President Joseph Biden established himself, at last, leader of the Free World. He serves at the hour of Earth’s greatest danger, its greatest need. Pray, those inclined, he gets everyone through unharmed. Speech starts at minute 26.
The Editors
The New York Times surprised some readers by refusing to include the name of Joe Biden (current president of the United States) even once in the first and second sections of its Sunday issue (24 April 2022).
38 silent pages.
Think.
On the second-to-last page of another section—the Sunday Review—Ross Douthat stepped up. He wrote an editorial with the word “Biden” in it.
Joe Biden doesn’t like oligarchs, and they don’t like him. They called him Communist when he first ran for elected office. Who remembers? It wasn’t true then and isn’t now. To my mind it had more to do with his Irish roots and connections to other prominent, unpopular Irish Americans like the Kennedy’s.
How about that?
Is hatred why Americans see Trump in their daily media feeds more than Biden?
Oligarchs own media, right? A half-dozen men, give or take, hold ultimate control over 90% of what Americans see and read. Billionaires have problems with Biden because they don’t control him. It’s why they ignore everything he says and does—when they can.
Jimmy Carter had the same problem. Who is old enough to remember? Carter holds historical honor for being the only U.S. president who served his term without murdering anyone. But that was then. This is now.
Is Joe benevolent?
I really don’t know.
The entitled rich hope Biden will go away and that others more favorable to wealth and its privileges will take his place. Media announced today that a rich man bought Twitter for 50 billion dollars, give or take. The man claims to be acting in good faith to bring freedoms of speech inspired by public forums of ancient Greece.
He calls it digital town square.
Everyone knows he will unleash dogs of Trump on vulnerable Americans who lack protections afforded by wealth and gated living. Who wants to argue loud in public spaces where monsters lurk to harm their families and friends off-line?
Does anyone believe free speech emanates from the enterprise of unstable manic-depressives accountable to no one?
Not to pick on any particular oligarch—all pose dangers—but Elon Musk didn’t become a U.S. citizen until age 30—a short 20 years ago. Despite tenuous ties to America, he manages to gather popular support. He plays Congress like a fiddle. Congressional appropriations flow like water. Clearly, he keeps more than a few Benjamins for himself.
It’s not right.
Our founding fathersbelieved that power corrupts those who wield it. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s why we govern ourselves with three co-equal branches of government.
Checks and balances are fundamental to prevent fallible humans—whose success blinds them to their own flawed visions—from overwhelming the Constitutional freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights.
Who disagrees?
To cut to the chase, it is insane for civilized society to permit private individuals to accumulate the wealth and power of governments. What is the point of civilization if not to limit the horrors of jungle living?—to stanch suffering, which always follows when might makes right in those arenas where the strong disrespect and eat the weak.
Proud people create elected governance to protect their rights; they don’t hide behind private cartels who don’t really care about us,Michael Jackson warned.
Sergei Lavrov is one of Russia’s wealthiest men. Yesterday, this privileged strongman threatened nuclear war. He said, “…we must not underestimate it.”
It is never good to permit dictatorial power and nuclear weapons to mean-spirited bullies who intend to destroy civilization should they not get their way. The USA put leaders of Russia on notice that they will not outlive Ukraine.
Who is brave enough to acknowledge what everyone knows? Ordinary people are fed-up with oligarchs and dictators. People want to breathe free without fear.
Secretary of State Blinken said, “But we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.“
The most notorious terrorist threatened by the USA was Osama Bin Laden. They fed him to sharks. Later, they killed unrepentant members of his family. Putin might be wise to apologize now and start nuclear disarmament talks. Then again, it might be too late.
Who believes he will take the opportunity? The chance to survive Hell is better, some advisors might argue.
The Russian “president” seems to think that because Bin Laden didn’t possess nuclear missiles or hypersonic technologies of war, he couldn’t win. Is it really possible that Bin Laden could have conquered Earth had he mastered the alchemies of the current crop of Russian leaders?
Who knows?
The international scene requires x-ray vision. One in five sanctioned oligarchs seem to be Israeli citizens—according to a recent analysis published in the Jerusalem Post. Say it isn’t true, Joe. Apparently, USA’s closest ally and friend is protecting powerful people who are entangled with Russian wise guys. It’s not a good look.
I’d say it’s terrifying. Who wouldn’t?
Kentucky politicians—readers, some of them, know who they are—sleep in the same bed as Russian oligarchs who control much of the world’s aluminum supply. Reports say they operate a manufacturing plant in Kentucky which employs thousands. Is there anyone who understands how difficult the situation becomes for countries where international thugs accumulate vast monies and political powers?
The mighty must know that with age comes loss. Everyone they love and know will die before them should they enjoy long life. What good does wealth and power do anyone who is confined to a wheel-chair unable to control even the beating of their own heart?
What chance is there that the powerful will give all they have to the poor to serve the cause of love for the unlovable, which is what most of 8 billion humans are. Will anyone say it out loud? Most people are unloved and uncared for by those who together have the resources to make a better world for everyone now living and for those who will come after.
It is incomprehensible to me that advantaged people would shell the shit out of people simply because they are in the way—through no fault of their own. Apart from the love of God, I don’t see how human civilization as we know it today will survive.
Perhaps the powerful have made a calculation that Earth is better off when humans are reduced to a few hundred million souls, not billions. They have the ability to minimize us all—to zero, I suppose.
The United States has the power and skills to get everyone through the current crisis unharmed.
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
I want to believe it’s true. I don’t know for sure.
Who will save us?
Joe Biden walks in the gap between civilization and Armageddon. He’s the last man standing able to rescue humanity from the slavery that follows the victory of totalitarianism.
Maybe it’s time to climb aboard his peace train while all sides still can.
Billy Lee
EDITORS NOTE: Added 8 May 2022: NYT Joe Biden blackout blooms. No mention of Joe Biden & family in Sunday Edition. In fairness, the Friday May 6 online newsletter published a briefing on page 10 titled, “Biden’s Unpopularity.”
NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: 19 August 2020. Billy Leeinforms us that tonight Kamala Harris gave best VP acceptance speech ever. He understands why Biden picked Harris for VP.
In spite of Billy Lee’s loss of skepticism, WE THE EDITORS insist his original essay stay in place to provide historical context for 2020 election.
People who read my blog know that I consider Trump a lunatic who is looting our country on behalf of his family and billionaires everywhere.
The irony of course is that his opponent just picked a VP who is married to one of the world’s wealthiest men — an attorney who may have made hundreds-of-millions representing billionaires in court. Kamala Harris claims they are worth together a mere $5.8 million.
I remember reading reports about her husband’s wealth being much more, but it was years ago, maybe it was fake news or the money has been moved, I don’t know. Anyhow, I cannot prove it today — mainly because much seems to have been rewritten on the internet about Kamala to make her palatable to voters.
That’s what it looks like from where I sit. In a few years everyone will know the truth, right? The truth always comes out, does it not?
Douglas Emhoff apparently made his money and powerful friends by helping certain oligarchs secure almost perpetual rights over intellectual property that they neither created nor are entitled to own overly long under the law; it is a battle about money and power that few regular folks know anything about.
Copyrights and patents expire for a reason — to prevent oligarchs from securing monopoly powers over the technologies and art that improve the lives of ordinary people.
Patents and copyrights expire to prevent the wealthy from securing for their families an infinite future of privilege they haven’t earned; to stop billionaires from becoming feudal lords in a country that prides itself on individual liberty and the innovation that comes from setting liberty free.
Copyrights and patents that are passed down from generation to generation — or sold to corporations to be held nearly forever — are un-American. Defending the unfair extension of such ownership in court is not an honorable way to make a living, at least to my way of thinking.
Today, oligarchs — the rich and powerful — are tightening their grip on countries around the world. People do not need a degree in political science to know that a 77-year-old man might not survive to see 20 January 2021, which is inauguration day. Joe Biden’s first major personnel decision has made it more likely that Kamala Harris will be president sooner rather than later.
Does Kamala Harris have the wisdom, maturity, pedigree, and experience to be president? These questions have to be asked, because it is possible Kamala Harris is going to be president soon.
By the time readers finish this post they will understand why I believe her ascent to power might not necessarily be too good for either the world or the United States. They will understand why I believe that Election 2020 is going to become a brawl between wealthy people who do not really care about us; the four candidates have almost nothing in common with ordinary people.
Media commentators on both left and right are parroting the same talking points. A black woman is running for VP. Isn’t that something?
The truth as I see it is far different. Kamala Harris is not a member of that group of suffering people in the United States whose great-grandparents were traumatized by slavery. She shares precious little experience with a people whose lives were torn apart by forced family separations, segregation, and Jim Crow.
Harriet Tubman. She knew all the players in the Underground Railroad. She was a spy for the Union during the Civil War. Bad things happened to her, but she never stopped fighting for what was right.
When Kamala claims she shared the black experience of racial discrimination because she took the bus to a school already integrated, she is misrepresenting her personal history by making it seem as though she suffered in some tragic way. Her story sounds phony. She comes across as inauthentic, at least to me.
Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a cancer researcher from India. Shyamala passed, sadly, in 2009 from the disease she spent her life trying to understand. Kamala’s dad, Donald Harris, is a retired Jamaican economist who emigrated to the USA and worked at Stanford University in California where he holds the title of Professor Emeritus.
Kamala’s dad is the progeny of the prominent sugar baron and slave owner Hamilton Brown who was Irish. The heritage of Kamala’s dad is that of owner, not slave, plus he’s mostly white; indeed he’s Irish.
Kamala has many admirable qualities but a slave heritage is not one of them.
I think Biden might have picked Kamala because of their shared Irish ancestry. He says she and his son (who died) were close friends.
Kamala does not have the blood of American slavery running through her veins. Because of a sadistic repression, American slaves were unable to throw off their chains to free themselves like other slave populations in the Western Hemisphere. The cost was too high. The ancestors of some of my black friends had their bones broken, were castrated and boiled alive for trying.
Kamala does not share this history. My friends can speak for themselves. They don’t need me to tell their history. It doesn’t mean that they don’t take Kamala’s side against Trump, who is an existential threat to minorities because he is an unrepentant racist.
The feeling for me is that some will see little or no difference in the two tickets; the pundits will not be able to convince enough people to vote in 2020 to ensure that our current president relinquishes the power he seized against the popular will in the last election when minority voters, some of them, stood in line for six hours to cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton.
Trump lost the presidency by 11 million votes; 3 million of the margin went to Hillary Clinton; the rest to 3rd party candidates like Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, and others.
Without a huge turnout of black voters, Joe Biden has no chance against Donald Trump. The president has already promised to challenge any election that doesn’t go his way. He has no plans to step down.
Shyamala and Donald Harris divorced when Kamala was 7; by age 12 Kamala moved to Canada with her mother. Kamala has more in common with Canadians than black Americans.
If Biden believes that Black Lives Matter, why did he not select the most qualified and prepared person he could find? Why not select Susan Rice whose dad Emmett J. Rice forged the original Tuskegee Airmen of World War Two?
Why did he not choose Val Demmings? — who Wikipedia says was ”one of seven children born to a poor family; her father worked as a janitor, while her mother was a maid.”
Ms. Demmings rose to become a Chief of Police in Orlando, Florida, of all places. She organized the impeachment hearings against President Trump. Who better to galvanize Democrats for Biden in the great state of Florida? — a state he is now likely to lose.
One thing that concerns me about Kamala Harris is the unfortunate circumstance of her not having birthed nor raised children of her own. Perhaps it wasn’t her choice. But it means that she lacks the wisdom common to women who birth and raise babies to adulthood. It gives them a dose of wisdom and experience that childless people including men don’t have.
It’s not something that can be easily minimized no matter how much we want it to not matter. I’m not trying to insult people who remain childless. But one reason to vote for a woman is to gather that wisdom common to mothers for the benefit of our country and its children. Kamala Harris doesn’t have it. We’re missing an important piece of the jigsaw that makes women good choices for leadership.
Another concern is the reports circulating on the internet that she is estranged from her father. I think it’s more likely that at age 82 he might not have his wits about him enough to manage a television interview. But he has criticized Kamala in the past for bragging about smoking high-quality Jamaican weed.
Professor Harris considered his daughter’s remark a self-aggrandizing slam against Jamaica’s reputation. She made it to garner support from pot-smokers, he said according to reports.
An inability to reconcile over disagreements about marijuana use seems far-fetched to me. I worry that hatred generated by some other issue might be at its root, and Americans should know what it is. It might be nothing at all. We need to know before we cast a vote that if it carries will change all our lives.
The reason is because anyone who can’t reconcile with their own family is not someone who should hold in their hands the briefcase of nuclear codes. It doesn’t matter who they are or who their family is. They can be the best person in the world. But it’s better that they be well-adjusted with a head unclouded by any desires for revenge; without any imagined scores to settle.
After all it’s the power of the United States that’s being entrusted. Every family has problems, but serious family problems are a red flag that voters are wise to consider. Voters have a duty to know as best they can the truth about a girl whose world was ripped apart by divorce at age 7 and again at age 12 when her mother moved her against her will to a cold, foreign land where she couldn’t speak the language (French).
Her only marriage was celebrated inside a courtroom during August 2016 to Douglas Emhoff, a single parent with two teenagers. It was a marriage that helped her career in politics, because it gave her access to a reservoir of money and the powerful friends of her husband.
Douglas Emhoff’s ex-wife is Kerstin Emhoff, the Hollywood and British film producer and co-founder of PRETTYBIRD and Ventureland. According to its website, ”PRETTYBIRD is one of the world’s most prestigious production companies in branded storytelling”. Apparently, Kerstin manages a stable of artists that number, I don’t know, in the hundreds, maybe?
Douglas, Kerstin, and Kamala behave like they are good friends both in public and on social media.
Maybe the court-approved union between Kamala and Douglas helped them avoid the awkwardness of a marriage ceremony normally held in temple or church when Kamala had no plans to convert to her husband’s religion nor he to hers. Neither did she intend to take on the mantle of his name — something as American as apple pie. Perhaps Kamala Emhoff didn’t ring the right tone in the ears of someone who was plotting strategies to grasp the golden ring of ultimate power.
Who doesn’t agree that the words Kamala Harris-Emhoff have a pleasant resonance? It’s like the smell of incense. It is. Who wouldn’t want the name if they had the opportunity to carry it?
Anyway, Kerstin Emhoff continues to carry her ex-husband’s name without any problems at all, apparently. Why do people make the decisions they do?
There is nothing wrong with a woman choosing to not carry her husband’s name. I personally wouldn’t marry a woman who made that choice, but it’s a personal decision that is none of my business unless it involves me personally. I don’t care one way or another when it comes to someone else’s marriage. What I’m worried about is that this “name thing” might be a way to camouflage a fortune in assets that Kamala doesn’t want the world to know about.
Or maybe her husband doesn’t want Kamala to know about his true worth. I wonder if the money is under the control of his ex-wife. Maybe there isn’t any money.
Who knows?
Not me.
But this power-couple is running for what is going to turn out to be the presidency. People kill for that kind of power. So I raise questions because someone has to. Hopefully the answers are innocent and nothing untoward or unseemly is going on behind the curtains.
If everything turns out to be on the up and up and folks are telling the truth, then we have nothing to worry about that can’t be fixed by experience and learning from one of the best — Joe Biden.
I don’t know Kamala, so I can’t ask her. Maybe someone close will ask about the circumstances of her marriage and her name when the subject comes up. Kamala is a major public figure now. Americans have a right and duty to know everything about her. It’s the price of power in a United States where leaders are expected to sacrificially serve ordinary people — not just the wealthy and the powerful like Trump so often seems to do.
Kamala doesn’t lay claim to a religion, but the Tamil region of India where her relatives live is primarily Hindu. Muslims, Christians, and Jains also live in the area. Her sister, MSNBC commentator Maya Harris, says that she and Kamala were raised in the Baptist and Hindu traditions.
Kamala Harris wrote in her book The Truths We Hold that she attended 23rd Avenue Church of God (a black Christian church) before moving to Canada. No problems there.
As for Trump, he also seems to have an unusual relationship with his spouse. It’s not because she was born two years after he graduated from college. No, it’s not that.
Apparently, Melania doesn’t live in the White House. For some reason no one has the courage to ask why. It’s not clear that Trump lives in the White House, either. He has a hotel across the street. I heard he has an entire floor to himself. No one ever asks him.
Maybe the same deference will be shown to the Harris-Emhoff family when Kamala becomes president in the next year or two. I don’t think it will, nor should it.
Who knows?
Not me.
I’m asking questions, nothing more, because this team of Biden and Harris doesn’t feel right to me. Something doesn’t add-up. Something isn’t making sense.
We know that Israel plans to annex the West Bank at its earliest opportunity. It’s what Haaretz and the Israeli press write about all the time. Perhaps Biden felt that Israel would be more acquiescent to his candidacy with Harris-Emhoff at his side. I just don’t know.
Annexation means possible war with powerful enemies. Is Kamala equipped to carry the fight? I don’t think she’s ready.
Editor’s Note:Within hours after we published this essay Israel announced an agreement with the United Arab Emirates. According to the New York Times, “…the two agreed to ”full normalization of relations” in exchange for Israel suspending annexation of occupied West Bank territory.” Palestinian authorities called the agreement a “sell-out” by the UAE.
Maybe someone will put their finger on why Demmings and Rice didn’t make the cut. Maybe cabinet appointments await them for which they are better suited. It’s speculation. It’s something to watch. Maybe Biden will tell us in the next few days.
Meanwhile, pig Trump snouts about for something nasty to engorge his advantage. Biden and Harris will have to become as meek as lambs and as smart as serpents. They might want to take an oath to keep their wits about them.
A significant portion of the voting public tends to be racist and misogynist — perhaps more now than ever, because of Trump. Kamala is a fighter who isn’t afraid to slash and burn when politics demands it. I wish a more righteous path could bring victory. I believe one exists, but I will never know for sure because my time on Earth is coming to an end.
Kamala made claim that both her parents were active in the American Civil Rights movement. As first-generation immigrant professionals, it’s difficult to understand why they would jeopardize their citizenship doing political acts that might prove disqualifying. In those days, Civil Rights leaders were labeled Communists by FBI Director Hoover. America blocked Communists from citizenship.
I hope Kamala is speaking truth. She might not know what the truth is. Maybe she romanticizes stories parents told. She wouldn’t be the first.
This contest is going to be cast by liberal media as a wrestling match between billionaire Trump and the little people represented by Biden and Harris. We’re in a carnival funhouse of mirrors, politically. Americans, many of them, always seem to feel that the next candidate, the next election will open a door that leads to their extrication from all the lunacy inflicted upon them by the wealthy and the power-hungry.
This election 2020 is not that election. The wealthy, well-connected, and powerful are here to stay into the foreseeable future. As Trump always says, It is the way it is.
Is it really true?
Some are advocating an election boycott — at the very least they plan to ignore the top of the ballot to send a message to the watching world that Americans are fed up by lousy choices and elites who refuse to defend and protect them.
I’m tired of throwing the dice to pick our leaders. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.
Or do we?
Trump is authentic but crazy. Kamala might be phony, but she’s smart as hell and in the prime of life. Which candidate will do the least harm to everything Americans believe in and defend?
I’m not sure anyone knows.
We don’t have much time to learn more about Kamala. We have to ask questions and move fast to understand her as best we can before putting her into a place where everything she says and does will affect our lives for good or ill.
I’ve watched elections come and go. One president in my lifetime was the poorest. He owned a peanut farm. He was the only president who never killed anyone or ordered anyone killed.
Everyone knows the name ”Jimmy” Carter, right?
I met him once. His righteous aura scared me almost to death.
The country spit him out like a bad seed.
Billy Lee
Postscript: 19 August 2020: Acceptance speech by Kamala Harris thrilled me. It was better than expected. I regret some portions of essay above, but my Editors have chosen to embarrass me by not allowing retractions or alterations.They have reasons.
Note from Editorial Board: Our policy is that everything Billy Lee writes be true. Opinions are fine, but fake facts are prohibited. When mistakes are discovered, it is policy that they be fixed ASAP. Meanwhile every issue raised in the essay is to be viewed not as statement of fact but as question begging answers. We agree it’s not enough to be anti-Trump. Hating Trump is not by itself qualifying. Caution advised.
It’s un-American for the wealthy to leave fortunes to their children and grandchildren. It creates a caste system, which is what we fought a revolution to avoid. Under current tax policy anyone who dies can leave up to $5.5 million tax-free to relatives. Any excess above $5.5 million is taxed at 40%, generally speaking. It’s a bit more complicated, but taxation always is. Loopholes are important to rich people. They pay tax attorneys a lot of money to maintain their power and financial privileges.
Forty percent is not generous enough for people like our current president and his GOP associates. They want the “death tax” (as they derisively call it) eliminated. I’m arguing that the rate should be increased to 100%. Handing out hundreds of millions of dollars to spoiled brats is destroying the USA. A corrosive degeneracy is creeping into every sphere of the lives of the wealthy.
The billionaire who lived here died at age 82 from cancer in 2009.
It’s not like there is no precedent. It happened in ancient Rome. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon was required reading when I was a young man in the 1960s. Modern printing companies have consolidated the history into three volumes and into an abridged version of one.
Gibbon, an English historian, published his first volume in 1776, the birth-year of the USA. His six-volume masterpiece relied exclusively on original sources and, as the remaining five volumes flowed out over the following thirteen years, heavily influenced the builders of the American republic for seventy years beyond to the brink of the Civil War.
Gibbon disapproved of Catholicism and challenged its version of history and the role of martyrs. His history was controversial, which resulted in revisions that he continued to write until his death in 1794. His work remains controversial to this day for a number of reasons that aren’t going to be discussed in this essay.
Gibbon understood that cruelty and insensitivity in an entitled class of rulers contributed to Rome’s decline. When the barbarians walked into Rome, they were greeted as liberators by ordinary people. Rome fell like a rotting apple. Gibbon’s History was a warning to the future.
In modern-day America creative workarounds have enabled the wealthy to hand out to crazy relatives a lot of clout they didn’t earn. Yes, it’s difficult to stand up to mob bosses, crooks, and their families. It should be obvious that it’s impossible to accumulate billions of dollars legally, but many have. Behind every fortune is a dark secret — sometimes many secrets.
It’s true.
So much for freedom and equal opportunity. Freedom is easily lost to wealthy people who think that those who dare to challenge them are misguided misfits — lower and dumber than farm animals, in many cases.
Wealthy Grandpa, it turns out, had hundreds of legislators on his payroll, which bought him all the advantages of a modern-day emperor. His adult children — who haven’t done a darn thing but argue about which-of-them-should-get-what after Grandpa dies — seem to think that they deserve all the power and perks they didn’t work for and could never earn had they been born into the impoverished family whose mother got her start working in Grandpa’s sweat-shop.
Any American who has traveled outside their comfort zone has seen the poverty these children are experiencing. Is anyone doing anything about it? This family lives in a state that rejected the Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Care Act.
I like math, so let’s do some. Divide the Gross National Product (the GNP ($17.1 trillion) by the population (309 million). Use a calculator, anyone who can’t figure it out on their fingers (just kidding!).
If incomes were equally distributed in America, a family of four would earn $221,000 per year. Yes, I agree, it’s not a lot of money — some folks would really suffer trying to raise a family on so little — but try to understand that half of black families earn less than $35,000; half of white families earn less than $70,000.
We have a fairness problem in America that runs far and deep. It includes:
Segregation by race and income;
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Unequal administration of legal protections and justice;
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No access to health care for tens of millions (despite ObamaCare);
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Discriminatory hiring, promotions, and firing based on race, political beliefs, and looks;
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Defense by a mercenary military isolated from the general population — a major contributor to the collapse of the Roman Empire, according to Edward Gibbon);
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Endemic corruption of politicians, church, civic, and business leaders.
Does anyone disagree with this list?
Go to Florida and try to find a safe place to live. Gated communities dominate the new housing markets. The majority of Americans don’t have enough money to gain access to this private world.
As for legal protections, anyone who has suffered arrest and spent time in custody knows that indigent people rot inside our jails, because they can’t afford bail or high-priced private attorneys. It’s a no-brainer.
Believe it or not, some of the incarcerated are innocent, but they are treated as guilty and forced to plea-bargain; many are unable to articulate a coherent defense. They end up with false criminal records that make staying out of future legal traps more difficult.
As for healthcare: Aided by the complicity of the Supreme Court, twenty-eight states refused to set-up health-care exchanges under ObamaCare. Twenty-one states (where five million low-income persons with no health care live) refused to expand access to the poor under Medicaid despite it being fully funded and paid for by the federal government.
Tens of millions of poor remain outside the care of our state and national health care system of hospitals, medical specialists, and general practice doctors. Wealthy GOP donors hope to destroy health care for the poor and lower-middle class with the help of our newest president, because they don’t want to finance medical aid for indigent people — despite all the privileges and protections that they accrue by forcing a myriad of taxes on middle income folks (like social security and sales taxes), which the wealthy avoid for the most part due to their immense incomes.
Also, many of the super-rich make their money in the stock market, where the capital gains tax rate places them in the lowest tier of tax-payers. It’s hard to believe, but it’s really true.
This scene reminds me of the oft-told Bible story about the day Moses returned from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments from God. He caught his people worshipping a golden calf. In this pic the calf is grey and the worshippers are white-supremacists. It’s Charlottesville, VA, Sunday August 13, 2017.
Has anyone ever wondered why so many of the racist, alt-right, neo-Nazi, white-supremacists are clean-cut, shaved, symmetrical, and well-dressed men?
A visitor from the Philippines who attends a weekly Bible-study with my wife said that after watching the Charlottesville riots, clean-cut white American men now scare her. The reason these Nazis look the way they do is obvious, of course. They have good jobs! Another reason is that they hide their nasty tattoos under expensive shirts, many of them.
Mega-millionaire business owners don’t hire people they feel they can’t trust. It’s that simple. Progressive, clear-headed men and women who care about fairness tend to dress and speak freely. They can be troublesome in a workplace, especially if they question unfair practices in pay, hiring, and promotions.
If you are wealthy and run a business, why would you ever hire anyone who thinks for themselves? Hire instead an ignoramus from the alt-right or the NRA. They follow their ideology like lemmings; discrimination against blacks, gays, women, and progressives doesn’t bother them.
Look at professional football, for an example. The billionaire owners of teams (many have the reputation of Neanderthals) hire players who have a PR (public relations) personality. Skill comes in second. Any high school coach in America could recruit a football team out of America’s prisons that could win a Super Bowl nine contests out of ten. Yes, their players would be poor and in some cases, inarticulate.
In America, talent on the field of sport doesn’t work that way. Compliance is a player’s highest virtue, then charisma (as evaluated by billionaire owners), then talent. Hard work? Anyone can be forced to work hard, and most do who aren’t born wealthy. Any thinking fan knows it’s true.
Let’s move on.
How come we don’t require people to fight for their country as a responsibility of citizenship? Everyone knows the reason. The wealthy don’t want to risk their kids in a potential combat where they might be wounded, maimed, or even killed.
In this photo from 2010, reservists are preparing for deployment to Iraq. They are dressed to protect themselves from chemical, biological, and nuclear attack.
And why should they? Hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged kids line up to sign-up for service “voluntarily”, because they need a job and, hopefully, an education they currently are unable to afford, even if they have a job. The military provides both, supposedly, but in recent years cut backs in benefits for non-officers have been enacted, because, once again, the wealthy don’t want to put up the money.
We hire a lot of kids from other countries to serve our military, both as “contractors” and as a “path to citizenship”. In conflict zones, like Afghanistan, the majority of soldiers on “our side” are foreign nationals. It’s the fastest route to failure according to Gibbon. Read his history, those who don’t believe it.
Many kids won’t re-enlist after their first tour. Military service, despite all the ads on TV, is a tour into hell for many of them. Living far from home and being under 24/7 control by officers who can throw anyone in the brig without trial for any reason is too much stress for most people.
The wealthy continue to degrade the benefits of service for the disadvantaged despite the fact that without a military to protect them, the wealthy could not hang onto their privileges. Common, everyday people are not as blind as the self-serving narcissists who refuse to do heavy-lifting, even as they order drones and the young alike into the killing zones of battle.
Moving to number six on the list — endemic corruption — let me ask this question. Is it honest to accept money for political favors? Just asking. Enough said. I’m not going to waste your time or mine discussing the obvious. An encyclopedia could be written about the history of corruption in the United States. At least one volume could be devoted to corruption during the twenty-first century, a short period of seventeen years.
Hillary Clinton warned America about the current president, but few believed her.
The most honest man in the FBI, James Comey, helped the Russians wreck our last presidential election by responding to fake news reports planted by Russian agents. Comey behaved like Inspector Javert in the Victor Hugo novel, Les Miserables. He pursued the Democratic nominee relentlessly during her campaign.
Comey grabbed Hillary by the jugular in the final week by reopening a closed investigation; by holding a news conference to smear what little reputation and dignity she retained. He undercut Hillary Clinton in the final week of the 2016 presidential election. Comey tore up the trajectory of the nation’s history in ways that won’t sit well with future generations.
Corruption disguised as virtue is vice. Any idiot can figure it out. And now our country is paying the price. We elected an unqualified buffoon to be our president. We hope against hope that someday he will change. Maybe someday he will.
Who knows?
Let someone else write about graft; about dishonesty; slander; lies; corruption. I haven’t got the energy. Who wants to risk death by lunatics for writing what everybody already knows to be true?
I don’t.
My general statement is this: the United States is hiding behind a pack of lies about its past, present, and future. It’s not so easy to tell the truth to people when large numbers of them start to read your stuff.
Fortunately for me, few people see my essays. Yes, I’ve been threatened, but thus far the threats have been manageable.
I don’t know what the solution is. I do know that our current president is making a bad situation worse and less safe for average people. Character is destiny, some say, and I believe it. The president lies and slimes and slanders pretty much everyone except sycophants. He plays the bad boy on an almost daily basis. It’s not going to end well for him or us, if we refuse to do what’s right.
We are so screwed. Read my essay, RISK, those who don’t believe it.
Risk has little to do with who is president, but admittedly some presidents increase risk. The verdict is still out on our current president.
I heard Elon Musk say that our country is like an aircraft carrier with a small rudder. The president sits by the rudder — it’s about a foot wide and three feet tall — and tries to steer the carrier to the right. By the end of his term, the carrier will not have turned much. However, its forward momentum is unstoppable. Are we headed toward the correct horizon? Does anyone know for sure?
It’s not good, peeps, what’s about to come. My advice is to take things a bit more seriously and prepare as best as anyone can for the problems that always arise from boorish leadership and its hostility toward minorities, the impoverished, and the disadvantaged.
During his Thursday April 20th sports-talk television show, The Herd, Colin Cowherd asked a question he couldn’t answer. The question bothered him, he said. It puzzled him to the point that he asked viewers to message him with their perspectives; he felt discomfort not knowing. Something wasn’t making sense.
He said that he had spent time thinking about why it is that no matter what anyone does to bring about parity in sports or in life, nothing seems to work.
Despite rule changes and new regulations designed to do the opposite, good teams emerge that always seem to dominate their leagues season after season; great players leave the mediocre in the dust; even the gap between the rich and poor in society seems to be accelerating — despite safety-nets such as the Affordable Care Act, whichhave become pervasive and more accessible than ever before, at least in the United States.
Colin Cowherd is an outspoken sports commentator and media personality who recently signed with Fox Sports 1 to host a number of popular radio and television shows. He has published two books: You Herd Me and RAW.
Nothing works. The rich get richer faster than the poor; the talented become more talented; performance gaps become more pronounced; inequality increases. Nothing anyone does anywhere ever changes anything. Inequality persists and intensifies.
The Bible quotes Jesus to have said, The poor will always be with you. For some conservative Christians, that statement alone seems to make equality a hopeless aspiration; fairness will always be just out of reach. It’s pointless to try to organize government to address an unfixable problem.
It’s true that Jesus added, You can help the poor anytime you want, but most folks understand that it just isn’t going to happen. It never has in the past — not consistently.
People, many of them, simply don’t care. It seems like the more wealth a person has, the less they care about the poor and the ruined. Providing parity to teams, countries, and ordinary people who are challenged by adversity seems to be an impossible endeavor; a pipe-dream of weak-kneed liberals who lack common-sense.
But why? And is Colin right? Is it true? Are hearts as hard as Jesus implied; are people so cold, so ruthless, that no one has the will to make parity work; to make life a fairer process for everyone who lives it?
Is parity in sports and in life a fool’s goal? Is the situation hopeless for the vast majority of people who find themselves living in squalor, in ill-health, and in hopeless despair? Does anyone care enough to search for an answer? — if they find it, is anyone strong enough to set things right?
Well, I have an answer. I do. The problem is that I’m weak; I’m an anonymous blogger; I pontificate in a pile that is 7.4 billion humans high.
Most don’t blog. Most don’t own iPhones or computers. It doesn’t matter. The pile is a teeming mass of screamers. Only a few voices at the very top of the pile are ever heard by the crush of misery that groans beneath their weight.
I live somewhere very deep in that mass of misery. I broadcast from inside the pile.
No one in the pile cares what anyone thinks or even what the facts are. The top of the pile is covered by a slime of celebrities whose value is that they mollify the mess beneath them; they entertain and distract; they bring a flicker of pleasure to a miserable landfill of very uncomfortable humans who have no more chance of being heard or noticed than do sea mollusks dying in the Mariana Trench on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
This layer of celebrity slime is green because it lives closest to the sun. The dark mud of humanity that nourishes it lies beneath; the mud never sees the sun; many in the pile don’t believe the sun exists. During their lifetimes, they will never see it; they will never know anyone who lives green under a warm sun and gentle breeze. For them, the top of the pile is an unknowable, unreachable destiny; an incomprehensible fantasy.
The rewards for being clever are astronomical. There are no limits. The clever can hide behind walls and gates — beneath radio-frequency shielded domes of invisibility, hidden from the eyes of GPS and governmental surveillance. They live on the best land, in the best climates, among the most exclusive people; they dress well; they flash beautiful teeth, skin, and hair; they possess the most exquisite material possessions — luxury homes, cars, planes, boats, and art.
The last thing the green-slime people on the top of the pile want is to share their space with the organic mud that holds them up; that supports them; that pays them homage. It’s the very last thing they want.
Right now elites are reasserting their control over the entire earth. Billionaires are taking control of governments around the world and securing their advantages at a frenetic pace. Any idea of governance that even hints at equality, of parity, or fairness — any idea of sharing advantages — is ridiculed, suppressed, and ignored.
Old political ideas designed to bring fairness, like socialism, are laughed out of consideration. Simple solutions, like progressive tax policies and estate size limits, are never mentioned.
Only morons and losers would ever espouse something as unworkable as parity; it’s as unfair to the worthy-wealthy as equality, right? Billionaires control media and education. They teach the pile, they mold and shape it, and the pile learns.
What do the mud people learn? The sun is out of reach; it’s not attainable; forget about it. Get on with life and forget, forget, forget. Hang your head, mud person; shuffle your feet, look down, not up. Ignore the obvious. Give up. Surrender to the weight of the pile above you.
Sleep. Doze. Ooze. Despair. In this life, abandon all hope, all who live in the pile. Go blind. No one above is going to reach down to help. Love is cold. Hope is dead. Forget what you think you know about what life should be. Give up on what you think is right. It’s not going to happen. Not in this life; not ever.
John D Rockefeller, 1839-1937. Portrait is a section from the John Singer Sargent painting of 1917.
Capitalism is just a modern word for slavery — surely everyone must know by now that it’s true. So is Oligarchy. So is Republic. So is any system anyone can name that codifies privilege and denigrates any form of compulsory sharing. Because — can we face unpleasant facts? — the wealthy don’t share well.
Old man Rockefeller used to throw dimes to the kids who chased his Model T down the streets of New York City. That’s not sharing. It’s nothing more than throwing peanuts to monkeys at the zoo.
Billionaires don’t share well. Not really. It’s why they are billionaires.
Those of us who live in the pile are slaves. Who will admit it? Who can bear the shame of humiliation that crushes anyone who finally understands that the green slime is pushing them down. It ruins them; it sucks them dry; its roots grind like jackboots against their heads to keep the slime on top; to keep itself green, to keep itself in the light of the sun, which it worships like a god.
I don’t know much about professional sports, but I know about salary caps. The billionaire owners of teams have no qualms about limiting the amount that teams spend on their players. It has the effect of limiting what players can earn, while doing nothing to prevent team owners from squeezing as much money as their greed and clever machinations will allow.
No limits, no caps on owners. OK… agreed. On players? Of course not! Caps are for everyone; everyone who lives in the mud pile, anyway. Pro athletes might not believe it, but they find out soon enough — after a career-ending injury, retirement, or replacement by a more talented player. They too live in the pile.
The pile is a vertical column of filth that — if only it could be flattened like a pancake — would provide a huge surface of exposure to a greening sun; a sun that will shine parity and hope and pleasure into the lives of the vast swarm of suffering humanity, which desperately deserves to experience good things.
It’s possible that people have one shot at life. Admit that it’s possible. This life could be all there is. This could be it. When it’s over, it’s over. The end comes quickly.
The wealthy won’t live among the poor. They won’t fix any injustice unless the pile becomes restless; unless it shakes like an earthquake, nothing changes. The green slime believes it will live forever, that the sun will keep it alive, but in the end mud and slime share the same fate — certain death.
Then again, maybe people live more than once; maybe they live twice. It might improve the odds that life will be better the second time around if people reshape the pile.
Forge the pile into a shape more favorable to the majority of folks who will live in it or perhaps on it, someday. Make it better all around for the people who will come later, who might be — can anyone imagine it? — ourselves. Does anyone know anything at all about their own future for sure?
I believe that limits to income, estate sizes, and inheritances are the only effective way to flatten the pile and expose more people to the pleasures of life, which our creeds assert are these: every individual has a God given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Success by any reasonable measure is making $20 million per year; not a dollar more. Success is accumulating $500 million; not a dollar more. No one should ever be permitted to inherit more than $5 million during their lifetime.
Caps like these encourage both innovation and the sharing of advantages. They force the successful to invest their excessive wealth in the lives of their employees, their communities, and their governments — federal, state, and local. Why? Because they can’t keep the excess. Caps prevent individuals like our current president, for example, from seizing power, because his enormous and unbalanced financial advantages made his presidential run unstoppable.
One more way to bring parity and fairness to real people: make segregation a felony. America segregates itself by both race and income. I can’t think of a more vile way to live.
Outlaw gated communities. All neighborhoods, all housing, all apartments must be compelled to provide living spaces for people from all income groups; from all ethnic and racial backgrounds. The problems we have understanding one another and living peacefully have the best chance of being solved for the well-being of everyone, including the wealthy, when people of all backgrounds live together, interact with one another, and share their unique understanding and experiences of life.
One more thing, and it’s important. The minimum income should be no less than one-thousandth of the maximum income. It means that no person, working or not, makes less than $20K per year. Businesses will have to pay higher wages to encourage people to work; that’s a good thing.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. Free health care can remove a lot of stress from a population. We can provide it, if we lower the salaries of doctors and health-care administrators. It’s counter-intuitive but lower salaries will, over time, attract better doctors and more patient-centered administrators. People who want to be rich can work in other professions. Why not?
Have I answered Mr. Cowherd’s question? Maybe not. Not yet. The dynamics of groups is complicated. It’s much easier to evaluate talent in individuals and distribute it more or less evenly into groups or teams.
It’s impossible to know in advance which players will become force multipliers on any given team. Where does the personal chemistry lie that can be identified and measured; that can transform a pack of randomly selected players into world champions?
If the owners knew, they could find it and use what they learn to create parity, where any given team has a 50/50 chance to defeat any other team on any given day.
How many times have winning coaches traded away a seemingly less talented player only to stand by helplessly as their team suffers melt-down? It happens a lot — more than some people might think. Sometimes a great player on a losing team is benched due to injury. Mysteriously, the team starts winning games.
Too many unknowns and variables make the task of predicting team performance based on individual performance evaluations impossible. When people run in packs like wolves, success or failure in the hunt can depend on the interplay among alphas, betas, gammas, and only God knows what other variables. It’s not easy.
People are not equal. It’s true. Teams are even more unequal no matter what anyone tries to do to strike that balance and get parity right.
But I want to make a larger point, which involves society and how people are punished and rewarded. Isn’t it obvious that less capable people are happier and more productive when they aren’t mistreated and humiliated?
Does any reasonable person mistreat their dogs and cats because they can’t spell their names or perform basic addition and subtraction? I don’t think so. Does anyone deny their pets health care, good food, and a comfortable place to live? They don’t.
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) wrote the classic novel Atlas Shrugged, which portrays fictional inventors and industrialists as Christ figures.
Most billionaires won’t give the time of day to regular folks. They are predators, every one of them. They know it. They want to think well of themselves but being pigs means that they must work hard, many of them, to convince themselves otherwise. Many find hope in the books of Ayn Rand who preached when she was alive that selfishness is the highest virtue of humankind.
I hope that someday it will be a felony for an individual to possess a billion dollars — in the same way that possessing pain-killing narcotics can lead to the incarceration ofLes Misérables.
I pray that someday life will change. People will learn to love others and share. Does anyone believe it is possible?
Note:Those who have followed the events of the past month will be relieved to learn that Billy Lee and his illegitimate son, Billy Lee Junior, have reconciled. (Can we all just accept it and move on?)
Billy Lee encouraged Junior to write this newest essay, Segregation Tax, to reassure the little b*****d of his unconditional love and trust. The matter of Junior defacing our offices and almost destroying our web-site is behind us.
No hard feelings, says Billy Lee, no matter what the haters say.
The Editorial Board
We Need a Segregation Tax.
Thank you, Daddy, for letting me publish my essay. And thanks to Fanny Jean who fixed grammar and punctuation.
From now on schools, businesses and homeowners in America will be taxed every year they continue to operate in all-white, non-black settings.
The segregation tax doubles each year until these schools, universities, businesses, corporations, and neighborhoods either integrate or go into default. The revenues from the segregation tax will be ear-marked to reduce national debt and fund programs for the poor.
The number of black people needed by businesses, schools, and neighborhoods to trigger avoidance of the segregation tax will be tied to some agreed-upon fraction of the population of black people in the states where they live.
For practical reasons related to difficulties of implementation, my recommendation is to set the fraction to one-quarter. If black folks are 12% of the population in the particular state where they live, then at least one-fourth of 12% (that is, 3%) of their neighbors, school-mates, and co-workers must be black to permit any who are not African American to dodge tax penalties.
2,500 delegates attended; 18 delegates were African American. Under the formula, the RNC would pay the segregation tax because at minimum 83 of the delegates should have been black. If the number represented their full proportion of the population, 330 black delegates would have participated.
Everyone knows the GOP is racist; especially its new standard bearer, right? Under my proposal, the GOP could remain racist, foolish, and cruel as long as its members fork over the money.
If my proposal (described below) was in effect this year, the GOP would have paid $50 dollars for pigheadedness. But consider this: had the segregation tax been enacted the day President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the GOP would owe—due to the tax law’s yearly doubling—$22,500 TRILLION dollars. The tax would pay the national debt one-thousand times over.
The sooner the United States passes a Segregation Tax, the better.
If we get it right with the folks we abused the most, maybe other minority groups can follow and everyone will be treated fairly—once everyone understands they don’t have a choice.
We have to start with black people because they were brought to America in chains; they’ve been abused by slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, state-terrorism, and a system of regulations both written and unwritten known collectively as systemic-racism. They are the one minority least able to conceal their ethnicity by dress, hairstyle, or make-up. They cannot hide like other minorities sometimes do.
Freedom to discriminate against others based on the circumstances of their birth is not freedom; it is a vile attack on freedom and not only freedom but also the dignity of every human being who, according to the sages of old, is created in the image of God—a cosmic force of truth and love who is alleged by some to have ignited the Big Bang.
Shunning and abusing an entire race or group of people is national suicide. No country that does it survives, right? History is proof. Racism has to end sometime. Why not now? Why not right now while we still have time left to save ourselves?
Maybe start with a tax of $50 dollars the first year. It won’t stop discrimination but it will get people’s attention because everyone will be put on notice that the tax exists and is certain to double to $100 the following year and keep doubling year after year. By year 10, the tax will rise to $25,000 per year per household, business, and school. By year 15, the tax will affect the wealthy; it will by then be nearly one-million dollars.
At year 20, the tax on businesses that operate with the help of less than, say, 3% black people; or the tax on a family who chooses to live in gated-community with less than 3% black people; or the tax on private and public schools with less than 3% in their faculty and student bodies will rise to 30 million dollars.
If America continues to remain as segregated in year twenty as it is now, our national debt can be paid-off by the collection of the segregation tax; our government will at last be profitable; it will accumulate surpluses to enable the funding of social-programs-on-steroids.
A segregation tax spent reducing debt and funding programs for the poor is a win-win for everyone. After integrating and diversifying neighborhoods, businesses, and schools we become a more righteous nation worthy of less derision than we now receive from a world watching everything we say and do.
The benefit of righteous living is that we avoid revolution; we avoid chaos in our streets from humiliated people who have nothing left to lose. Of course, some haters may choose to live with this risk.
Some haters might continue to choose segregation. They might choose to pay the segregation tax, which by year 26 will be 1.7 billion dollars per year per family, per school, per corporation, per business, per university, per club, per political party, per whatever institution or organization haters choose to join.
If some refuse to integrate and diversify, the segregated poor will have showered on them by the tax code all the wealth of the nation’s haters. They will no longer need them. The world will witness the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of humankind.
One more thing: a segregation tax has to benefit African Americans only; otherwise other discriminated-against minorities will muscle their way in; blacks will find themselves standing at the end of the line one more time as they have under other programs such as the infamous “affirmative action” programs of old.
Some may remember how unfairly applied these ancient programs were. Everyone but blacks benefitted. People substituted white foreign-nationals to gain advantages. They pushed black folks to the back of the bus like they always do.
When I grow up, I’m going to need a safe place to live with people who love and respect me. I’m going to need a good job, and police to protect me. How about it, America?
The process of discrimination against blacks under affirmative action became so institutionalized and ingrained that the Supreme Court of Michigan banned affirmative action programs in their state colleges and universities last year.
Statistics proved them right. Blacks were being admitted to colleges at the lowest rate of any minority group based on their population. (Read daddy’s article on the Speedos page, anyone who doesn’t believe it.)
Every other minority group benefitted from affirmative action except black people, who the legislators intended to be the primary beneficiaries.
Uh oh…. Am I imagining readers jumping off sofas, throwing laptops, and wagging fingers in what they think is my gutless-liberal face?
I think I am.
Are you out of your mind? they scream; foam spewing. Black people won’t live in our neighborhoods. They can’t afford it!
Well, maybe some neighborhoods will have to chip-in to set aside a few houses where black families can live for free. What could be the harm in that?
Some neighborhoods might have to take up collections to actually pay families to live in their disagreeable hollows; maybe large sums if the neighborhood is overrun with hillbillies carrying pitchforks and oversized stun-guns.
When people stop to really think about it, I believe they will find that it’s going to be cheaper to hire black people to be their neighbors than to pay the segregation tax.
I think folks can see where I’m going with this. No imagined obstacle is going to be as difficult as paying the segregation tax. People who can’t or won’t pay will go bankrupt; even have their houses and businesses seized.
And that is how it should be. People who malign and exclude African Americans—after all the hell they’ve suffered—are no better than farm animals. Put racists in a pen and let them rot in their own manure. They are fit for nothing. They certainly aren’t fit to live in a modern, civilized country, which the United States of America aspires to be.
Under my proposal, nice homes in integrated neighborhoods everywhere in America (not just in a few hundred or so enlightened districts) could become available to black citizens within a few years. Good jobs and quality education might become available to a people long denied in every state—severely denied in some places, like southern Florida.
Some people might have noticed that I haven’t said a thing about churches. A writer on Wikipedia claims that 37% of Americans attend church every week. No one needs to be reminded that churches are among the most segregated places in America.
I don’t go to church, so I wouldn’t know, but I asked my daddy, Billy Lee, about it, because he goes to church almost every week. It’s mostly because his wife makes him, but still…
Daddy said my proposal won’t work with churches that ostracize minorities because we don’t tax churches in the United States. Churches belong to God. People who persist in sin and resist God’s Will go to Hell, where they are nailed to two-by-fours and hung to bleed until the end of time.
Churches are safe places for raging sinners to hang out until they discover how really evil they are and change more or less voluntarily. My plan, daddy said, is coercive. It forces people to be good.
God doesn’t work that way. He gives people plenty of time to set things right—an entire lifetime for most. Eventually, they or Jesus ends up paying for the bad things they’ve done. It’s a choice, and most folks get a lifetime to make it. That’s daddy’s explanation. It sounds crazy.
Anyway, maybe we could write-in a clause that gives preferential treatment to black veterans and their families—you know, the people who risk their lives so we can live like plantation owners compared to billions of impoverished people in other parts of the world—not to mention tens-of-millions of anonymous poor who rot inside inner-cities and ghettos.
Another idea, which daddy said I should not write about, at least right now: why not charge police unions 100 million dollars for each black citizen they kill? During the past few years we could have raised billions for the poor.
Another forbidden idea: any cop who kills someone, even when justified, loses the right to carry outside their house for 5 years—on duty or not. It might cut down on non-judicial executions.
Another idea: anyone who has contact with a prisoner who dies in custody for any reason loses their right to carry for one year. Think about it. It might encourage law enforcement to take better care of humans, who in the USA are presumed innocent until found guilty by a court of law.
B L Junior
P.S. Thank you, Daddy, for letting me publish my essay. Sorry I fired your editors and messed-up your office during your vacation. It won’t happen again. Promise.
Billy Lee returned from vacation today to find his offices in shambles. It might take a few days to get our high-tech equipment working and to clean-up broken beer bottles in the offices and parking lot.
Apparently, Junior and Fannie Jean seized control of our web-site, fired our staff in absentia, and started publishing rogue articles, while we vacationed unawares at the abandoned Trump Casino in Atlantic City.
Billy LeeFaceTimedJunior on his cell-phone — just to see how he was doing (he was missing him, he said) — only to discover that Junior and his slut-girlfriend were drunk and partying with friends in our offices; celebrating what they thought was their successful takeover of everything Billy Lee has worked so hard to build during the past two years.
Junior seemed unsteady and agitated during the call, according to Billy Lee; he waved his iPhone round and round; he slurred his words; Billy Lee thought he might beseeingin the background an orgy going on; he demanded that Junior cease and desist; that he take his friends and leave the premises.
Junior and his Fannie threw a hissy-fit. Their feral friends trashed pretty much everything, including furniture; they even plugged the toilets.
Billy Lee does not know where Junior and his pals are right now, but he ordered us, his Editorial Board, to find Junior, somehow, and make him understand that he forgives him; that he wants him back — parking cars and emptying trash cans, just like old times. (Billy Lee actually broke-down crying, he misses his Junior that much.)
So, Junior, if you’re reading this, pay attention. The important thing — the most important thing — is that we, theBillyLeePontificator Editorial Board, are back. And we are staying. We’re not going anywhere.
Junior, you can rot right now, wherever you are, for all we care. We don’t share the Pontificator’s misplaced confidence in your non-existent future. Our offices are an esteemed citadel of erudition and edification, not a sanctuary for your neurotic drive for drama and discord. You are a bozo-head. We hate you.
Yes, it’s true. Billy Lee told us not to delete your essay; and to leave Fannie Jean’s intro in place. We didn’t believe it at first; we didn’t want to — you shamed us, Junior; can’t you see that?You and your putain malodorante humiliated us; you discredited the family; our organization; our equipe de freres-–yet Billy Lee summoned the grace to say he liked your styles.
That’s what he said. He liked your styles. Everyone knows you type with one finger and can’t spell your own name. If it wasn’t for your Fannie, you’d be useless. At least she can spell and type.
So how about this idea, Junior?
We’re leaving you and your girlfriend’s know-it-all, trash-talking essays in place. Billy Lee said so and unlike you, we do what he says because we’re loyal; we’re professionals; we’re team-players with skills and standards and values and born-in-the-USA work-ethic.
We type with all fingers. We understand spell-check. The mysteries of punctuation don’t intimidate us.
No, Junior, we aren’t going to kill you.
Your punishment is knowing that your essays will never be deleted; your essays are going to stand as permanent, unread, embarrassing reminders to every wanna-be; to every bonehead who lusts like you and your Fannie to control a famous blog-site.
Plots really do go awry; especially those directed against hyper-alert pontificators like Billy Lee.
The Editorial Board
My Very First Official Notification: (June 28, 2016)
Actually, Billy Lee — his writers and editors — are all on vacation right now until July 15. They left Junior in charge. He’s never been in charge of anything. He parks cars most mornings and empties waste baskets afternoons.
I’m Fannie Jean. My girlfriend and me hang with Junior, because we’re both hoping to get jobs at the Pontificator. Junior knows Billy Lee pretty good.
Yesterday, Junior asked me to kiss him for good luck and spell-check his stuff; he wants me to be his editor, sort of, because he trusts me, he says. Billy Lee never lets him write anything. He can’t spell, for one thing, but I respect him because he always tells the truth most of the time — at least to me and sometimes to my girlfriend.
With Billy Lee and the staff gone on vacation, Junior decided to publish something. Why not? What’s the worst that can happen? Get fired? He already makes exactly $0 per hour so it isn’t like he’ll starve or anything. He lives free in Billy Lee’s basement and eats his food all the time so no worries. No worries at all.
We both have high school diplomas by the way but I used to crush Junior in spelling bees when we were in grade school together. Also, I twirled baton in high school marching band. So I’m completely qualified. So is Junior. He told me to spell-check his post so I did. It was pretty simple. I think he liked it. I’m an Editor now, he told me. It’s a dream come true.
Junior is a swell guy. He’s bona-fide. It don’t matter that he’s ugly and everybody hates him. My girlfriend is hoping to have the honor of working under him too some day if he’ll have her. Maybe, someday, he will.
We didn’t put any pictures in. No one trained us on how to do that. Junior’s dumb when it comes to hi-tech stuff. Anyhow, we published Junior’s very first essay with no one’s help below this note. Amazing, agreed? Junior said to warn readers that any spelling mistakes are totally my fault.
Fannie Jean
FREE TRADE
People wonder why Republicans control so much of the government when the majority of folks seem to dislike them. The most recent New Yorker Magazine contains an article, Drawing the Line, which explains how the process works.
The essay reminds us: in 2012 Republicans carried 3/4 of the congressional districts in Pennsylvania — though Obama carried the state by 300,000 votes and the Democratic congressional candidates garnered 100,000 more votes than the GOP.
During that same election cycle the Democratic candidate for senator in Michigan won his statewide race by more than 20 percentage points — Obama won by 10 points — but brazen redistricting by GOP Governor Snyder (famous for poisoning Flint City water) enabled GOP congressmen to win 2/3 of the state’s congressional seats.
Governor Dick Snyder put his newly acquired political clout to work by seizing control of nine cities — all having by some crazy coincidence black-majority populations; he in fact disenfranchised a million black voters. He then switched the source of drinking water for Flint city without voter consent and lead-poisoned thousands of residents, many of them children. But that’s another story for another time.
Violating basic constitutional rights of citizens never ends well. Throwing elections, like the Republicans did in Florida to deny Al Gore the presidency in 2000, or what they did in Michigan to redistrict voters and seize city governments that favored Democrats — pranks like these aren’t good for democracy. The melt-down of the Middle-East and the poisoning of infants are two concrete examples out of many where paranoia and disrespect for democracy and freedom ended in disaster for ordinary folks.
This un-democratic pattern is firmly imprinted into the majority of our state election protocols — almost always, it seems to me, by the GOP.
Imagine how big their majority would have been had the GOP received a two-million vote lead instead of the Dems. The Democratic Party might not have survived. Our two party system could have become one of the world’s biggest political jokes.
What does our un-democratic election process — some argue it is a corrupt process — have to do with free trade? Here’s a question to ponder: Is anyone out there who thinks it is kind of strange that the party that advocates most vociferously for free trade and strict adherence to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights is now promoting a presumptive-nominee who advocates none-of-the-above?
The Republican nominee is an advocate of trade policies that are the exact opposite of free trade. Just a few hours ago (as I construct this essay) he read the seven parts of his trade policy from a teleprompter on CNN. He called it “smart trade.”
Anyone who has taken even a single college level course in macroeconomics knows that “smart trade” is a euphemism for “dumb trade.” Smart trade works really, really well for business owners and oligarchs in the countries who practice it, while it degrades the wages and purchasing power of the vast majority of citizens who don’t own businesses.
It’s important for ordinary people to understand that during this election a fox is running for president of the hen house. We are the hens; the fox is the Donald. He is, he says, a billionaire who promised today in his carefully prepared policy-paper to renege on a number of trade agreements, which have enabled Americans over the last several years to buy inexpensive products built in third-world countries where wages are low.
What Trump plans to do (according to the transcript of his speech) is make it possible for his American billionaire pals to make more money by closing our borders to less-expensive products now being sold to us by overseas competitors. He seems to have forgotten one thing: we don’t have the labor force to make all the replacement products he intends to produce here.
It’s why he is building the wall. Yes it’s counter-intuitive. Readers who don’t understand should now squint their eyes and think really, really hard, until they get it. Trump hasn’t forgotten anything. He intends to use the wall to control the flow of South American labor — lots of it — into and out of the United States. The wall will enable him to keep the flow from getting out of hand; out of his control.
The wall will enable Trump to turn the flow of cheap labor on or off like a water-faucet to keep wages down while preventing our streets from being clogged with undocumented beggars who might otherwise end up stranded with no way home that doesn’t carry the risk of arrest.
Every worker who enters through the wall will have their picture taken and their fingerprints recorded with smart-phone-like ID apps. A swab under the tongue with a sterile Q-tip, and a DNA profile will complete the entry process. The word “undocumented” will disappear from our lexicon.
Trump is counting on what he believes in his heart is a truth about America. Most Americans are uninformed and easily manipulated, he believes. He actually said that Republican voters were stupid a few years back, when he wasn’t running for president.
If Trump tells voters that free trade is taking their jobs — if he tells this lie over and over — he knows that a lot of people might believe it; he might actually win the election. His family immigrated from Germany, where Adolf Hitler perfected the Big Lie technique to seize power. Hitler’s delusional thinking led to Germany’s destruction. Tens-of-millions of people in dozens of countries lost their lives.
It’s never good to be led by delusional liars, no matter how well-intentioned they insist they might be. It’s even worse to believe lies, especially lies that are used to manipulate people by playing on their fear of people who aren’t “us.”
The current trade agreements work very well for the United States, even when other countries cheat to make their products and currencies cheaper, because we can buy things for less. Under Trump’s policies, which he explained today, the cost of products is going to go up; American billionaires are going to become much more powerful than they currently are, because they are going to be better able to direct purchasers to their own (more expensive) products.
Average workers are going to get nothing except a lot of propaganda designed to make them feel better about a bad situation. (That’s where people like Rush Limbaugh come in — they agitate the hens to desperation when the fox is away; once he’s back, when he’s stalking the hen house for a meal, they help create a climate of optimism.)
The chorus of optimism could get loud, because all media outlets are led by people who have a lot in common with the Donald. Money and power make them happy; happiness can be contagious; especially for clucking hens, who have no clue how dangerous a fox can be. Most hens never see the fox that eats them.
Free trade works, both in theory and practice. It’s the first thing college economics courses teach. A typical course goes to great lengths to prove it to any student who is skeptical.
Free trade works even better when the other side cheats to “game” the system. That’s the beauty of it. We actually do better as a country, when competitors in other countries do the stupid and dishonest things they sometimes do to secure advantages for their elites, while they throw their working-poor under the bus. Our side gets to buy a huge array of inexpensive goods we couldn’t possibly produce on our own with our relatively small working population. Math, experience, and common sense prove it’s true.
Trump is advocating “smart trade” which is just another name for a system of tariffs and taxes, which work for individuals who own businesses in the countries where these tactics are used. They don’t work for average people, who must buy the more expensive products that these business-owners will offer under the protections of tariffs and rigged tax policies.
I hope people are smart enough to figure it out. The British are not going to do well in the coming years, and neither will we if we shoot ourselves in both feet like the British just did. Our billionaires will do well, but they always do well (don’t they?) and besides, they don’t live in the world where we live. If they did, we could visit a few of them, which we never will.
The walls that our billionaires live beyond are the very best high-tech-wonders money can buy. While we remain free (sort of), we should make a few tax-policy adjustments. Otherwise we will continue our drift into a world that is beginning to resemble ancient Rome.
It didn’t end well for Rome; it didn’t end well for anyone. Rome was a slave state, like the United States. It provided its common people just enough “bread and circuses” to prevent riots. The common people came to hate their country so much, they refused to defend it. Unwashed barbarians walked into Rome one day, and the world changed.
It took a thousand years to recover from that classical melt-down. The United States (and other industrial countries) have already exhausted Earth’s resources to the point that a quick recovery from a tsunami of military defeats that always follow economic collapse might not be possible; it might take thousands of years to get back to where we once were, if ever.
There is no such thing as a bad trade deal when those deals lead to trust, cooperation, and goodwill among the nations; when they improve the lives of hundreds of millions of suffering people; when they lead toward peace and away from war; when they bring love between peoples and turn aside the destructive burdens of hate.
