Author: dennis

The latest data on wealth distribution leaves me with questions.  The 8 wealthiest families are worth as much as the bottom 50% of the World’s population.

My first thought is that really reflects more on the extreme poverty of so many people.  Billions of people with net worths of zero.  This is a serious problem, but, not it seems, one related to the concentration of wealth in the wealthiest.  Whether the wealth is in my middle class bank account or Bill Gate’s, doesn’t really matter much to the people living in Africa’s Rift Valley.

My second thought is our government.  We all know that the wealthy have bought our government, and that money is pulling the strings from behind the curtain.  Right?

But look at the 8 wealthiest.  These don’t seem like evil smoke-filled room schemers.  Gates? with all his charities, and Buffett? who says it’s not right that he makes so much more than his secretary, Bezos? who owns the Washington Post, Zuckerberg? bringing Internet to the Third World, Bloomberg? Democrat mayor of New York?

These aren’t people using their money to buy government to increase their wealth.  In fact, they’re giving it away.  Or using it to explore space.

So where is the money behind bought Congress people coming from?  Why haven’t these people, who are the most wealthy, standing in the way?  Why aren’t the wealthy on the side of good more effective at off-setting the wealthy on the side of evil?

–Dennis

This is the real business of government that affects our everyday lives.  Vermont (Bernie Sander’s state) has GMO labelling laws.  Food producers are currently adding GMO labeling so they can sell in Vermont.  But they don’t like it.  So they invested a lot of money and influence on a federal bill that will override the Vermont one.

It says, OK, so we have to label, but it’s too onerous to put it in writing on the label (as Vermont required, and many European countries do), so we’ll just encode it in a QR or bar code on the label.  Anyone with a cell phone can look it up.

Here is big business, buying it’s way into the laws of our land.  Maybe GMO is fine, that’s not the issue.  The issue is we have a right to know, and the government supports big agribusiness in making it difficult to know.

This is the crap that happens all the time.

Here’s my point — We have no idea how either Clinton or Trump will behave in this area.  We have no idea what sorts of decisions they’ll make for us day to day.  Will they support this type of business sponsored legislation?  Or not?

All we hear about is email servers and pussy grabbing.  Neither of those issues will have the impact on our lives as, for example, this latest GMO labeling act.

We DO know how Gary Johnson would govern.  His campaign information addresses this sort of topic.  He explains that the executive does NOT make the laws.  The legislature does.  So the president cannot create laws.  But, he can veto them.

And so he did.  He gives as an example a bill that crossed his desk when he was governor.  It was labeled something like The Fair Cable Act.  It was written and sponsored by the cable company to protect their monopoly.  Gary Johnson vetoed it.  And all others like it.

(He was disliked by his state legislature, and loved by his constituents.)

Nihilism appeared in two articles in this weeks Economist.  I had to look it up.  The first definition is about a rejection of all religious and moral guidelines because life is meaningless.

But what struck me more was the third definition, from the Russian Revolution.  It was the belief that there was nothing of value in the established Tsarist order worth saving, so all could be destroyed.  And so they did, the downtrodden rose up and destroyed the existing order.

A while back peace was reached in Ireland.  The bloody revolutionaries of the IRA came to terms with the British.  Why?  Well it seems the under lying reason was that the economy of Northern Ireland was beginning to improve.  The people were no longer desperate, and didn’t want to be bombing stuff that would hurt their growing businesses.  Economic well being.

We read about the Sunnis and the Shiites, and, I suspect most of us don’t get it.  They’re both Islam.  What’s up?  Well, the Sunnis used to be in charge in Iraq and suppressed the Shiites.  The Sunnis, comfortable, weren’t really into the whole jihad thing.

The Shiites, on the other hand, were economically depressed, and they are the ones who believed in nilisitic jihad.  That’s right, nothing is worth saving in the current ruling order, destroy it all.

Well times are changing.  After we invaded Iraq and threw out the Sunnis, the Shiites took over.  And suppressed the Sunnis.  And guess what, the Shiites beliefs are softening on jihad, and the Sunnis are starting to embrace it.

Time and again, the economically downtrodden feel they have nothing to lose, and see nothing worth saving in current ruling order.  Destroy it all.  Nihilistic jihad.

And in America?  Well the economy is no longer working for a large segment of our country.  There are frustrated, desperate people out there.  They see nothing in the current ruling order worth saving.

The 1% have grown at their expense, the 1% have created them.  About 30% of the 99% left over have reached the state of embracing nihilistic jihad.  The destruction of the current ruling order.

They have a leader.  A visionary speaking to them (exploiting them?).  His name is Trump.

Who stands in his way?  A well-funded woman on very good terms with the 1%.  Hillary.

Isn’t it obvious what’s going on here?

I have never been so emotionally affected by an election.  I was getting to a state of comfort, as Hillary was ahead in the polls.  Safe from Trump, I could cast my vote for Johnson/Weld hoping they make it to 5% to create a legitimate, government-funded third party for next time around.

And now the latest on the goddam emails.  And her numbers are tanking.  And she might lose Florida.  And Florida is key to a Trump victory.

OK, you say, vote for Hillary, and that’s what I’ve said I’d do in this case in the past.

How bad does that feel.  If I vote for Johnson and Trump wins, I’ll be one of those who wasted my vote and helped Trump win.

BUT, and here’s what I realized, BUT, if I vote for Hillary, and Trump wins, I’ll have wasted my vote which could have created a third party.  I’ll have voted to support the DNC to put up another candidate like Hillary next time around.  And for that to be my ‘only’ choice.

I feel much worse about the second scenario.

Why?  Well of course I’d much rather see Hillary in office than Trump, Trump is nuts.  And she would be more of the same that we’ve had.  And what is that same, to me?

That’s a government highly influenced by Wall Street.  Wall Street which caused me to personally lose $200,00o of money I earned over my life time and squirreled away for retirement.  Not money I made in the stock money, money I actually earned working.

Wall Street, which depressed housing prices so that my house in Asheville is very close to underwater.  Still isn’t worth close to what I paid for it at the peak.  I’d like to sell it and use the funds to buy something elsewhere, but it’s lack of value is standing in the way of my dreams.

So yes, I personally have been directly hurt by government the way it’s always been.

And did the government help the retirees, the people with the mortgages?  No it bailed out Wall Street.

Hillary seems very competent, and that competence will be used to continue to govern for the people pulling our financial strings.

I just can’t vote for her.  She’ll have to win this without me.

Johnson/Weld 2016, and with a better shot in 2020.

–Dennis