Not Socialism

We are conditioned by our business funded politicians to believe that any attempt to manage the invisible hand is socialism. The invisible hand is a good metaphor for a market's ability to create wealth. But it can be cruel and even violent too. If you lose your job, then you have nothing to trade for food and shelter. That's the invisible hand too. The great depression was the invisible hand in a downswing (or possibly an uppercut).

There are ways to manage the swing and we invest in many of them since we learn from our mistakes, sometimes. We supply clean water through the government. We manage crucial services like disaster management and social security. Medicare, public power, investment in research, and health and human services. 

Consider group insurance. Why does it work? Well, you get a body of people to invest. Some will be sick and others healthy, but the coverage is there for everyone to help keep them from having to suffer the unfathomable tragedy the invisible hand deals if someone gets ill - it provides income to help them recover and get back to a point where they can manage.

The flaw in our thinking is that this should generate a profit. Group insurance is all about a zero sum game. Add a profit motive to it and all of a sudden you are aiming not just to keep people healthy, but to extract a dividend from the investment - this drives up costs and cause scarcity management in the process as they shorten the health goal in order to maximize the return, making insurance a different proposal. 

They start talking about not covering certain illnesses. They start talking about raising prices for those that are more likely to get sick. Suddenly we are back to "every man for himself" because we're told our neighbors are dragging us down.

This is a red herring. Health Insurance is one of those areas where business and the profit motive work against the basic idea of providing services to mitigate the negative impacts of market swings and profit driven decision making. Group insurance is not socialism.

How do we know this? Well, if you look at how businesses are managed internally, you will see the same dynamic. I'm in IT and my team provide central services for our business. I am not allowed to make a profit - just provide the necessary services to my businesses at the lowest cost. My business is a capitalist enterprise, so how is this possible? Because it's sensible. I cannibalize my business if I insist on an internal gain rather than providing the central service. Is my department socialist? No. It's still capitalism. But I choose not to make money in this area in order to facilitate the wellbeing of my other businesses. I don't do this for free - I charge a "tax" but I have to prove that I'm not profiting through the process - just covering costs.

But if I try in our society to introduce the concept of Universal health care, as a zero profit concept, I'm accused of socialism or communism. The same rules apply - profit motive eliminates the proper incentive of the zero sum game. It disables it. It causes it to fail.

It turns out that in order to shelter ourselves from the bad aspects of the invisible hand, we have to turn to systems that work differently. Still within its mechanism, capitalism can thrive while having certain aspects - like public care and education, being non-profits (actual non-profits, not the pseudo non-profits that mega hospital systems have become).

To do this, we have to overcome the socialism label. This is responsible democracy, responsible capitalism - and those arguing against it are arguing against the public good. They're arguing to keep insane profits for some and death and starvation for others, representing it as the way it has to be - but it doesn't. There's room for both. Many European countries illustrate the balance and ability to do this. It's those that profit insanely that are telling you you will lose your job if we try to help the poor. 

These are the same people responsible for the great depression and the 2008 housing collapse. They're the same people who called FDR a socialist. They're the same people who are paid by oil and gas to make sure we don't change to sustainable fuel sources. Who argued that smoking wasn't unhealthy, that climate change isn't real and that guns are true freedom. I'm not talking about the people that believe these things. They are lambs brought to the slaughter (and I'm sorry if I insult you because you believe one or more of these things - I'm not inherently against guns properly managed or that there's no space for fossil fuels or plastics for specific purposes).

I'm talking about the politicians and businesses that profit off of the human misery. And unless we find ways to mitigate it, we will wind up in a Shakespearean tragedy - everyone dies at the end. We need the better story of reconciliation and balance. 

And reconciliation and balance is the story of the Democratic party today, in 2020. It's not extremism as the Trump adds shout. It's the start of an alternative to the dog-eat-dog world that business and politicians are profiting off of. Republican politicians are not leading a way forward. They are trying to maintain the same old story with repression, wealth for a few, profiting off the misery of others.

Please vote - and please consider voting for the alternative.

The Census, Weaponized

Citizenship is great. It defines our place officially; it offers access to benefits of being born in our country or having pledged allegiance to our country.  Citizenship describes a standard we can apply to many things.

What citizen is not - what it's being twisted into, is the definition of a human being.

Since the birth of our country the mandated census has provided the means from which to determine representation = not of our citizenry exclusively, but of all those in the country.  Legal and illegal. 

Why would we represent those that are not citizens in our lawmaking process you ask?

I answer: for lots of reasons. First, Country is an artificial construct. If you put two people on the opposite sides of a border and shoot them both, the loss is unfathomable on either side of the border. Their contribution to the world around them easily could be the same. Their basic human rights that we consider fundamental - that we are all created equal does not change.

And yet, the census is being brought before the supreme court by the Trump administration to change that - to change the definition of all men being created equal and introduce into law the idea that some are better than others.

First, there is an attempt by the administration to cut off the Census because traditionally it takes time to get good report of those who are not on the official radar. The Republican party wants to keep them from being counted and is using the excuse that they need to deliver a report in December.

The real reason for that is they intend to challenge how the electoral college and the house of representatives is distributed fundamentally to enable a Trump win and ensure Republican dominance in populations where they aren’t the majority. If they remove the immigrants from the population count, then more representation is apportioned to areas with fewer immigrants - it takes power away from California, New York and other centers of population.

There are a myriad of reasons it is important to stop this and highlights the importance of balanced constitutional interpretation - by not giving representation to centers of population, we pull back the ability to provide food, aid, education, funding for public transportation, allocation of health resources, effect environmental and housing regulation, effect minimum pay, get funding for mail service, infrastructure... and on and on and on. 

It's just one more attempt to put more power in the hands of old, white heterosexual men. How? Well, our migrant populations live in cities. by removing them from the count, rural areas get additional representation, having small or nonexistent migrant populations and much smaller minority populations. So, in areas that are largely white (over 70% of the country) they get more power and in areas that have higher, more mixed populations, where laws for sexual orientation and gender equality are fairer, they get less. 

That translates into humans being treated as lesser, based on the idea that certain people, who are part of our population and are mandated by the constitution to be counted suddenly are not. 

 And it's wrong.  It denies them representation. It denies the community resources. It means more populated areas get back less of the tax they pay in.

 It also provides an opportunity to change the distribution of the electoral college before the results of the 2020 election are finalized, especially if an abundance of legal challenges are put up delaying the results.  It's why the Republican party deployed an army of 6000 lawyers to oppose election law and set the stage for extended legal battles. 

It's a political power grab and a chess move, meant to entrap a majority under minority rule. It's a violation of "All men are created equal".  It's wrong and it's evil. 

 It makes your vote ever more important. Please vote.

We cannot afford the status quo

Wall Street, Big Insurance, Big Pharma and Oil pay huge campaign donations into the people that tell you they know how to save the economy, but who had to be saved in 2008? Business and Republicans preached the invisible hand needed to be left unhampered and a policy of hands-off management of the economy (laissez-fair for those economists and political scientists in the readership). They held up corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy (advertising that taxes will cause you to lose your job) as the biggest evil affecting the US internally. This is a load of horse_ _ _ _.

13 years ago, many of these businesses lost the market on bad speculation and backed their trucks up to the treasury and George Bush started the program to bail them out – and big business grabbed huge chunks of money from the American taxpayer. 

Obama was elected into office and reset programs and managed the recovery, started programs for smaller business and healthcare for folks who needed it. 

Here we are in 2020 and we have 200k+ dead and laissez-fair mismanagement has put us there. In addition to failing to manage public health, they’ve failed to manage economic stability and recovery in the face of a need to minimize contact among people for a period. Countries that have managed this better have seen death rates 1/5 of ours. 

But I’m being generous by using the term mismanagement. That implies culpability but not premeditated decision making or even promoting, with an understanding of the impact to people and proceeding down the path of greed anyway. Which is what, in many cases, has happened in this administration, Senate and local and state Republican governments.

In 2020 again the Republican solution was again a money grab (already following huge tax credits pushed to the businesses and wealthy) to throw huge amounts of money at large business and the 1% and force small business to take loans and individuals to increase their risk in order to continue to live, resulting in huge economic loss and increased poverty, huge death and illness rates that continue to pound away at our population, coupled with ignorance and impatience that will continue resulting thousands more deaths until a medical solution is widely distributed. 

All while Republicans are trying to hide the results of the policies by trying to control CDC communications and recommendations, through propaganda tweets twisting the life saving work that many Democratic state and local governments are organizing, Republicans continuing to make political decisions on opening states rather than trying to help small business and people. And yet they preach lower taxes and continued face-to face employment as the solution. It’s a hoax. 

The only world where chronic disease and death, starvation and homelessness aren’t more important than taxes and productivity is one where chronic disease and death, starvation and homelessness don’t exist – in the world where these are ignored because the population of voters  don’t have this as part of their reality or, they have received assistance that has kept them from that.

And that is the Trump Republican demographic; Whites wealthy enough to ignore this, Whites poor but on aid that prevents their poverty. Farmers in conservative rural areas given aid while working against those impoverished in the cities.  Smatterings of other ethnicities and race in the party, but a general understanding that the Republican party is promoting racism by labeling racial protests as terrorism, by supporting white nationalist candidates and collaborators, by representing a restructuring in the funding of local government social aid as the abandonment of safety. 

Just watch the ads lying about the nature of racial justice protests, the amount of money Republicans are spending on repressing the vote and disqualifying ballots on technicalities, like not using the correct envelope and restricting  where ballots can be dropped off to one box per county in PA (but similar lawsuits brought by Republicans all over the country) and working to restrict voting places only in areas where the Demographic doesn’t favor them. They cannot win on their platform.

We cannot continue down the current Republican path. It’s suicide. The economy needs to be smartly managed. We need to use our tax income to help everyone not just the wealthy or big business. We need to make our healthcare affordable and available to everyone, especially with pandemic. Now.

Economic recovery is not the recovery of businesses without the population. Economies work from the bottom up not trickle down. Businesses only create jobs when there is demand.  Demand starts with each consumer and if that consumer has money and spends it or invests it, businesses prosper. Not the other way around. 

So the first step is making sure people can live – eat, breath and stay warm. The Republicans have no plan for that – they've made up of propaganda falsely relating protest to crime to scare people into voting, but they have no plan on how to keep people safe from the real threats. They don’t need a plan for the crime they’re talking about because it exists only in very limited situations. They made Portland sound like the overthrow of the state and the issues were contained within 2 city blocks. 

Republicans have no plan to help people and small business. They have no good covid plan (push billions to Pharma companies with no fiduciary oversight using military money they already have control over. All the while, investing in these company’s stock getting ready to make a killing on inside information. 

They preach small government, but that only translates into no investment in the country. Cut NASA. Cut assistance. Cut Social Security. Cut Medicare. Cut Veterans benefits. Cut diplomacy, treaties with allies and real trade negotiation. Cut education. Cut climate and fuel and medical research (overall). Cut FEMA. Cut equal opportunity. Pack the courts with people that will keep bad legislation from reaching the public,

Read Bidens site. He has good plans for fiscal recovery and public health. For investment in the country and in education. For the rebuilding of our trade capability and working towards renewable energy. It takes mindful management to do these things. You have to plan, manage and adjust. You need scientists and data, economists and diplomats. You need oversight and checks and balances, so that what we get is a good balance of priorities for all of us, regardless of race, sex, sexual preference or gender identity, age or religion.

We cannot get there with the current people in power. They have already shown they won’t do what is needed to help Americans, have plans to do worse and have lied to try to scare you into voting for them. 

Please vote regardless of your decision, but please make that an educated decision. We cannot afford or survive the status quo.