Prepare To Go Backwards

It is a strange thing to suddenly realize that the country you thought you lived in isn't there any more.

Perhaps it never was...maybe it was just a dream.

In any case, the dream is over.

The Trump boys have big plans for our country.

Sorry, their country.

There's money to be made! Make that MONEY!!!!

Oil to be drilled for, coal to be mined, pipelines to be laid. Federal land to be sold to the highest bidder. All of those National Parks need to be monetized! Otherwise, what use are they?

Away you pesky regulations! You only get in the way of progress; and all in the naive guise of protecting our air and water and health and common heritage.

Fuck that namby pamby shit!  There's money to be made! Make that MONEY!!!!

So fuck your health, fuck your feelings, fuck your future.

Fuck your so-called Constitutional rights!

The Constitution is only paper and ink. And ink fades and paper burns.

Gays and blacks and browns and uppity womenfolk and liberals and progressives and environmentalists and humanists and all the bleeding hearts in the fact based community will be taught a lesson now.

And they better not ever forget it:

Rich White Men Make The Rules.

Rule Number One: There's money to be made! Make that MONEY!!!!

We Regulate Businesses Because Some Businessmen Are Crooked As A Dog's Hind Leg

I love it when the bought and paid for conservative politicians (of both parties) start whining about "onerous government regulations" stifling business.

If only we could unleash the might of the free market and pure capitalism, everything would be perfect!

The primary reason we have these regulations is because at some point, some upstanding business man, usually a pillar of the community, and quite probably a life long Republican, decided to see how much he could fuck over the populace.

Whether by poisoning the air, water, or food supply, or screwing over his workers, or cutting corners on safety, or any one of a seemingly endless number of shortcuts to save himself a buck, all while potentially harming the rest of us.

Now, the conservative/libertarian argument against regulation is that, if you hurt and/or kill enough people, eventually you'll be forced out of business by the "self-correcting" marketplace..............

Eventually.

That is just about the stupidest argument I can think of. A clever child wouldn't make that argument.

And yet we have allegedly "serious" politicians who do just that.

Madness, I tells ya. Shear madness.

Hey, Let's Just Pretend None Of This Ever Happened

History is such a messy thing. I mean, gosh, you've got slavery and racism and religious wars, you've got genocide against native peoples, you've got Dark Ages, and Inquisitions, and all manner of barbarism. And let's not forget the constant ongoing thievery of the ruling classes.

No wonder our conservative Republican and Libertarian friends want to rewrite it, erasing all of the bad stuff from high school history curricula.

Children's heads should never be troubled by the truth. A questioning child is an unruly child, after all....

Thank God there are, all across this great land of ours, Republican controlled school boards and legislatures sworn to protect the little darlings!

Better to teach them happy fantasies and Bible stories about how well cared for and content the slaves were, how Reagan was a saint, FDR was the devil, how evil welfare is, how wonderful the free market system, how benevolent the job creators were and are. Evolution is the Devil's work, Darwin only wants to deceive you, Jesus rode a dinosaur, and the Founding Fathers were inspired by God Himself.

Don't worry, be happy! After all, ignorance is bliss, baby! Pure, unadulterated All-American bliss!

True Or False: Doug MacEachern Is A Libertarian Hack

Last Sunday, Doug MacEachern, who is one of the crack team of editorial columnists at The Arizona Republic, (to my knowledge the only daily paper in a major metropolitan area to NEVER win a Pulitzer Prize for anything other than cartoons), took up his quill pen, and ever ready righteous indignation, to warn us--yet again--of the dangers of creeping unionism in Phoenix. Oh, those pesky labor unions with their demands for a living wage, safe workplaces, and, horrors, benefits. They must be stopped! And MacEachern, the Paul Revere of the Arizona branch of the Free Market/To Hell With The Workers Club, is just the guy to do it.

For those of you fortunate enough to never have read any of his work, MacEachern has been writing essentially the same column for at least 20 years. Always some variation of "the unions are bad, regulations are bad, multiculturalism is bad, liberals are very bad, the free market is the only thing that will save us" crap that the right, and libertarians in particular, spew out on a regular basis.

The cornerstones of their "ideal" Arizona are low taxes and low wages and the "freedom" to fuck over your workers. Because, uh, I don't know, Ayn Rand? The fact that this method has never delivered the results they swore it would, and has in fact resulted in Arizona being the southwestern version of Mississippi, does not deter them from constantly repeating them. That's the thing about True Believers: They have faith and that's what really matters. Not facts--faith. "If only we could drive wages down even lower and remove all taxes...then you'll see how right we are!" Uh huh.

So, of course, unions are the root cause of all the bad in our would be capitalist paradise--at least in the bullshit fantasy libertarian world that Dougie Mac flits around in.

A Letter To America From The Koch Brothers

Greetings!

First of all, we love this country. Which means we love you. Well...most of you.

Those of you who are willing to work hard, for whatever we want to pay you, for as long as we ask, with whatever benefits we're willing to offer. Or no benefits at all. Those of you who don't want government meddling to impede the natural progress that a truly free market brings. Those of you who don't worry about global warming or clean air and water or safe working conditions. In short, rugged American Americans, the kind who made this country that we love so great. You know who you are.

Some of you, though, constantly whine about the unequal distribution of wealth and continually beg for handouts. Like health care you can afford. And a living wage. And free public education. And government oversight of corporations. And the right to vote. Parasites. We don't love you. You are what's wrong with our beloved country.

Wise up. Life will be so much easier once you surrender your pathetic, little dreams and acknowledge that rich people are simply better. Honestly, would God, in His infinite wisdom, have made us rich if we weren't superior? No, He would not.

So, relax. Rich people know what's best. We will look after you. We will provide. Trust us.

Never forget, government is your enemy. We are your friends.

Remember, a rising tide lifts all boats. Yachts and dinghys, both. Even cardboard rafts, strapped together with vines and taking water at an alarming rate.

God Bless this great land of ours. God Bless us all!

Your friends,

Dave and Charlie

The Best Health Care System In The World

Did you hear about the lady who was charged $83,046 by a Chandler, Arizona hospital to treat a scorpion bite?

Sounds fair, right? After all, as the opponents of "European style socialized' medicine are so fond of reminding us, "we have the best health care system in the world."

Of course, in Mexico, which for those of you who went to school in Arizona, is not in Europe, pharmacies charge about $100 per dose for scorpion anti-venom.

But we're not in Mexico, dammit!

So watch what happens through the magic of the "free market" and unfettered capitalism:

The American importer, using the efficiency of the best economic system ever devised, sells that same $100 anti-venom to its distributors for $3500. Per dose. Because, uh, well, because they can. Hey, people gotta eat!

The distributor then sells it to hospitals for $3780. Per dose.

And the hospital charged the lucky patient $39,652. Per dose.

Throw in the emergency room expenses and, voila, the total is $83,046.

For what pencils out to about three grand worth of treatment.

The lady's insurance company, no dummies they, agreed to pay only $57,505. Because somebody has to draw the line against soaring health care costs...(yes, I am being sarcastic again.)

I'm sure that everyone will agree that we'd be crazy to tamper with a system that works so well.

[The hospital involved has announced that they are lowering their charge for the venom to "just" $8000. Per dose. I guess going from grotesquely ridiculous to merely ridiculous is how we measure progress around here.]

SB1070 And The Law Of Unintended Consequences

The other day, or maybe it was last week or even last month, I don't know, when it starts to get hot I get confused about time...anyway, somebody important, a businessman or something, said that SB1070 was hurting business, because all the cheap labor had disappeared. Well, yeah.

Arizona has run on cheap labor for as long as I can remember. Even before Taft-Hartley and the "right to work" laws (back in my construction days they were known as "right to starve") crippled unions, a living wage was unheard of in the agricultural industry. Itinerant produce workers, many of them Mexican nationals, moved from crop to crop and state to state, doing back breaking piecework from dawn until dusk. They worked so hard and for so little that it wasn't long before other businesses took notice. Construction, restaurants, lodging, landscaping--all wanted their share of cheap labor.

The math on this one is pretty simple, simple enough for even someone with an Arizona public school education to understand: Keeping wages down keeps profits up. Not having to pay any benefits and having a large, disposable, faceless workforce helps too. My God, the beauty of the unfettered "free market"! Pure Capitalism at work! Before outsourcing to China, India and everywhere else, was even a gleam in a businessman's eye, there were hundreds of thousands of  "illegals" willing to work for next to nothing in the Southwest.

Everything was fine in the Land of King Dollar until somebody scared the locals with lurid tales of headless corpses blanketing the Sonoran Desert. Be afraid, be very afraid! Somebody better do something! Enter the SB1070 crowd.

But in their efforts to be tough on illegals, the Rabid Right may have ultimately shot itself in the foot.

In all likelihood the most successful push-back on SB1070 won't come from the left, or from a basic sense of decency and humanity. And it certainly won't come from the Supreme Court.**

No, it will be from conservative Republican businessmen worried about their profits, because all the cheap labor has disappeared.

**As a rule of thumb, don't expect anything good to ever come from the Supreme Court as it is presently constituted.

Aiding And Abetting The Enemy

Since the Republican debates just won't go away--not unlike a particularly nasty venereal disease--and since the level of the debates has been, to be kind, abysmally low, I thought I'd help them out by coming up with a line of questions that should liven things up a little.

I think we can all agree that money is our one true God here in the good old USA. And the Walton family (of Wal Mart fame) has been the biggest capitalist success story of the past 40 years. (If old Sam Walton were still alive he would be worth 3 or 4 times as much as Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. As it is, his immediate heirs are all worth $20 billion or more each.)

The Walton's business strategy has been a ridiculously simple one: continue to demand that your suppliers lower their costs year after year. That means breaking unions, cutting workers, and ultimately shipping millions of jobs overseas. Until everything is made in China. Along the way, the Wal Mart economics of scale drive their competition to either do the same or go out of business.

It's the kind of unfettered free market approach that makes guys at business schools go all giddy and weak in the knees and Republicans everywhere break into spontaneous applause. Break the unions? Yeah! Drive down labor costs? Yeah!! Move all manufacturing off-shore to a place without any environmental regulations, and a billion cheap, disposable workers with no rights? Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!!!

So here's my first question for Newt and Rick and Michelle and Willard Mitt and Ron and other Rick (and you too Jeb, hiding in the bushes): as red blooded American patriots, how can you defend the end result of the Walton's highly successful business strategy, which has been to transfer enormous amounts of America's wealth directly to the Chinese Communists?

'Cause that's where it ends up. Oh sure, there are a handful of Chinese millionaires and I'm sure that they're enjoying the fruits of capitalism to the fullest. Private jets, and Bentley's, and shopping sprees in Paris and New York. But the wealth of these new Chinese "capitalists" is just a tiny, tiny fraction of the amount in question.

And more importantly, they can only continue to prosper with the permission and under the guidance of their government. And that government is still a Communist one. A Communist one that is starting to flex its muscles around the world--usually in direct competition to American interests. They need oil and minerals--we need oil and minerals. And these are finite things. We continue to send billions and billions of dollars to our fiercest competitor. As a nation we get weaker while the Walton's get richer.

Here's my second question for our distinguished panel of Republican worthies: if you all truly love this country as much as you profess to, what are you prepared to do about this?

The Free Market In Action

Because we don't really like to leave the house unless we positively have to, Mrs. Franklin and I always vote early by mail. (Her Mother was fond of saying "there are a lot of kooks out there", and the funny thing is, she was right.)

This time the ballot contained, in addition to the chance to vote for the ineffectual cipher of our choice for Mayor of Phoenix, the rare opportunity to engage in free market economics, the bedrock of this great nation.

See, somebody wants to build a gas station near a neighborhood and naturally, the NIMBY gene being so strong, this has caused an uproar.

In the past, the compassionate, caring part of me would side with the neighbors. But not anymore.

I voted for the gas station. Hey, this is Arizona, remember? The rights of businesses are more important than the rights of the individual. You folks keep electing a bunch of neo-conservative, free market luvin', "corporations are people" spouting, mostly Republican, punks and this is what you get.

Live by the free market, die by the free market.

Enjoy the toxic fumes and plumes.

A quick glimpse at the future

Since a 'free market' America, unshackled from any oppressive government regulation, seems to be one of the goals of the Republican Tea Party, perhaps we should take a moment or two and reflect on what that would be like.

First of all, you can kiss clean air and water goodbye. Environmental regulations only stifle business. Better watch what you eat, too, because without any FDA oversite salmonella and e coli outbreaks will be as common as the sun coming up. Mad cow, anyone? Also, why waste money testing drugs in controlled laboratory settings? Just release them to the public and see what happens.

Get used to working longer for less--that is if your job hasn't already been outsourced. Without minimum wage laws as a baseline, and with lots and lots of desperate people, employers will be free to pay as little as they want.

Social Security will be turned over to Wall Street, to treat as their own personal piggy bank, and to be invested in whatever byzantine financial instrument they can devise. Good luck getting it back.

Our public education system, once the envy of the world, will become only a fond memory. If you can't afford good private schools for your children--too bad.

The health care industry will continue to raise your premiums and increase its profits. If you can't pay, either don't get sick or go bankrupt if you do.

On the plus side, you'll pay a few dollars less in taxes, the back alley abortion business will flourish, and you'll be able to buy all the guns and ammo you want. It's morning in America!