Then
March 25, 2013
Trying to Bring the Message Home
I have had my say about politics for now, at least I doubt I will be saying anything new; although, I will, of course, be fighting the good fight, since nothing is decided and the two dueling budgets will be going head-to-head (a metaphor for our two political parties). Sadly, the budget is not just a metaphor. It will drive our future and our American story.
Will we continue to kowtow to the wealthy and corporations? Corporations used to be our partners in the American success story, but now see most of us as burdens they carry in huge canvas sacks over their shoulders; now that they have escaped our insistence that they find ways to keep a clean environment. The American people are not burdens, however. Our spirits are strong even if our pocketbooks are temporarily empty. So perhaps, instead of passing laws that make the wealthy richer, this time we will pass laws which offer those of us who are not wealthy a hand up.
We need to feel that we can still progress as a nation, especially in updating our schools, our infrastructure, and our energy sources. We need to trust that our safety net, which we paid for, will not be yanked from under us at least until the American economy has re-invented itself, righted itself, and is ticking along to produce satisfying lives for Americans. Maybe we don’t have to live as if progress means only more, more, more, and up, up, up. Maybe we can kick back in our American way and let inspiration have its way with us.
Maybe for a while we can just live and tweak the things that need tweaking. How can we hope to shut out all the noise of those who are trying to prod us back onto a production line that is going nowhere right now? How can we hope to listen to our muses and tinker with the future if there are those who wish to turn us loose to do that struggling our forefathers already did, because they think a hardscrabble life will be what transforms America as it did once before? This is not 1890. Why would we want to give up all the ground we have gained as a society and go back and wrestle in the dirt? Is there any proof that this would produce the innovations we need? We can’t recreate the conditions that pertained when Henry Ford and the Rockefellers did their thing and assume that this old cauldron would nurture a new fire.
I have been very clear about this. Don’t dump us into the dust and dirt of the last century. We are already near the bottom, despite our puny safety net; stuck in the cul de sacs and the “projects” here at the turn of the 20th century. We don’t need to move backwards. We don’t need to shred the safety net. We need a carrot, a prize to chase. We need to feel valued rather than redundant and we need training. We need jobs, or we need patrons. There are people in America today who are as creative as any people who lived here two centuries ago. Scrap that Republican budget and give the people the budget they voted for, and I bet you will see plenty of growth. OK, I guess I did have something to say, but it is just beating the drum with the same message hoping someone responds to the beat. So, pass that Senate version of the budget and get on with it please. We have lives to live Cha-Cha!
This is the view from the cheap seats.
Now
April 29, 2022
Billionaires Are Having All the Fun
If giving makes you feel good about yourself, it might explain why our billionaires and multimillionaires are so busy and empowered these days. We have a slew of venture capitalists practically giving money away to small entrepreneurs and inventors to, I guess, create a larger pool of American millionaires so we will shut up about how money has collected in the pockets and portfolios of far too few Americans. We have our space cowboys taking paying customers to the edge of space and back, hardly conquering new frontiers in space travel, but the “stuck landings” are good. We have Elon Musk who has so much money he can use it just to have a crash dummy drive a red Tesla into space, to build driverless cars that are not ready for our roads, and to buy himself a whole social media platform so that Trump can speak again, and Steve Bannon and all the liars and cheats that our government, media, and nation is now heir to. Even Steven Miller can now speak. Can’t wait /s/.
We the people can also give. We can give to stop Putin from reducing Ukraine to an empty devastated piece of ground that once grew field upon field of waving wheat to feed the hungry. We can give to charities and foundations that concentrate on ending diseases or helping those who have those diseases until they can be cured or genetically excised through Crispr. We can try to help the young people in our inner cities who are living with anger, violence, and who feel trapped in poverty and turf wars. We can try to help people beat addictions to opioids and drugs. We can give money to food banks. We can save the elephants. Somehow the things we get to do with our meager bucks don’t sound like quite as much fun as the things those billionaires get to do.
But there is no method to billionaire madness. There is no overall plan to fix anything like climate change or inner-city poverty traps. These folks want to spend on their terms, not on ours. They say that the government will misspend their money, will waste it, will lose track of it. As if sending a red Tesla into space is not a huge waste of beaucoup dollars. They don’t want to pay taxes. They don’t want to fix climate change or solve the problems of the inner city. Apparently, billionaires tend to be a bit shallow and a bit fascinated by their own genius. They feel that they are doing enough on their own terms.
The wealthy insist they will be of more value to us if we don’t make them pay taxes or bow to any business regulations. But all we can see is them stuffing even more bucks into whatever shelters they hoard their dollars in or adding to their investment portfolios. Now that the real estate market is overheated, they have decided to buy up houses and rent them to people, rob them of the generational wealth that used to come with home ownership. Perhaps that will work out because it looks like we may be quite a nomadic society for a while following jobs across America. Who will profit? Billionaires and multimillionaires will succeed in widening the distance between the wealthy and all other Americans to a chasm that will soon separate us into aristocrat and peasant.
Please, billionaires and multimillionaires, think. Put some serious thought into building a livable society. Be a Carnegie, a robber baron with a vision for America rather than a Barnum Bailey exploiting people for entertainment and dollars. Your petty philanthropy has given you much satisfaction; imagine what some major legacies would feel like. Drop the ‘maker and taker’ story and instead use all that meditation you do to stay positive to direct your fine brains to saving America from decay and a fascist takeover of our government. I will not even pretend that I won’t say this again.
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