Profit Demands Make Minimum Wages Inevitable

As we watch the GOP pretend to politically pursue an answer to poor wages, we could use some honest conversation about this problem. Both parties in Washington seem to agree that WE all feed off the land and the yields from a record harvest should be shared, just as Native Americans suggested. What we can't  figure out is how to pry open the hands of those who have it to fairly share it with those who produce it.

As a means to that end, one political party in America hopes to legislatively force fair wages through mandatory minimum laws, while the other party insists more vibrancy in the market combined with an ample tax break will magically cure our confounding wage issues. Although this game we are playing seems complex, it can be explained quite simply.

Profit demands something. 

At times, the pursuit of profit demands production growth, while other times, raising prices to increase demand gets it done. In either scenario, the size of the apple farm and the market price of apples have constraints.

When the long, arduous hours of apple picking became a significant time and cost detriment to the harvest, technology intervened with machines that harvest apples- because profit demanded it. Inflation makes growth a mandate, so eventually, every farmer must increase production and efficiency to take customers away from the competition- because profit demands it. Nearly every company in America places this intense focus on increased profit and market share just to avoid predatory behaviors inherent to a game in which competition looms.

If the free market was a big muddy pond, WE average workers are its plankton. Our sense of power and our bank accounts remain depleted because plankton is plentiful and often too small to see the collective power of also being the primary consumers. As inflation grew the free market pond, CEO's in America demanded their share. WE, the plankton, did not and thus cannot expect to repair our bleak realities or our fractured bank accounts until WE, like CEO's, learn to alter the demand we place on wages.

Our orange colored president may struggle to say words like regulation, but he does not struggle with eliminating any Obama imposed regulation. Trump's blind Obama hatred intervened to allow America's corporate farms (Monsanto and Dupont primarily) to move full steam ahead with the use of controversial pesticides that they produce all while seizing a 40% hold of the world seed market. Apparently, the same orange president had no clue that his Obama hatred and Big Wall love could subvert Monsanto's GMO seed use in Mexico thanks to Donald Trump's stand against  Mexico and the NAFTA deal.

Monsanto is but one of America's predatory fish, and even they could defensively reply- don't hate the players, hate the game. There are plenty of others who've used global expansion to improve their standing in America's free-market pond. The globalization of American corporations and the growth of American corporate wealth are conjoined to this chase for the cheapest labor sources possible. Globalization's benefits are now global news, however, it was the science of data that pointed American corporations towards utter disregard for our domestic job market long before most of us saw it coming.

Big Data or Big Brother?

Trump isn't only subverting NAFTA, he is subverting the #metoo campaign,  America's greatness and standing in the world, our recognition of media lies as well as the sense of decency we used to expect from our leaders. What Trump can not subvert is Roy Moore's dating history, video evidence of locker room talk, Billy Bush or the power and impact of Big Data, the newest way science and technology are being used to grow market share, pursue profits and steal presidential elections as well.

Beyond the use of poisonous pesticides banned in 5 countries, science continually searches to improve our lives or exploit opportunities for profit- depending on your perspective. If Trump does go down in provable shame, it will be from the science of investigative research and from a preponderance of incriminating data accumulated in a world full of it. Or it will be his own big mouth.

Our Twit-In-Chief is just one glaring example. Everything WE all do becomes a data point for profit. Whether we happily accept the potential societal improvements from Big Data, or we unwittingly or begrudgingly participate in its collection through our computers, phones, traffic cameras, television viewing patterns, etc.  We've become data points for more than just Vladimir Putin's political stature in the world.



America's overriding respect for turning a buck makes us eager for big data improvements and conveniences that appear to make sense but leave us willfully vulnerable to the pervasive ways data gets used against us. It's as if the Big Brother we feared all along is Big Data  and analytics, driven by our own incessant profit pursuits.

We've allowed the way we pursue profit to make decisions for us, including the limits we'll put on our own privacy. Consequently, Google asks you to review restaurants you never told Google you were eating at, and banks like Wells Fargo shamelessly create fraudulent accounts for 3.5 million of their own customers.

With a little help from a young person who understands location tracking, one can easily cure the Google restaurant problem. As for Wells Fargo? Consumers depend on government protection to uncover and punish criminal corporate actions like Wells Fargo's.

Instead of keeping consumers safe, Trump attacks consumer protection regulations and the Consumer Protection Bureau- the same bureau that uncovered the Wells Fargo scam- by appointing a person to oversee it who thinks the Bureau should go away.

All because profit demands it.

Because profit demands it, shady companies  similar to the Trump organization confidently ignore laws, assuming that elected city officials won't risk losing campaign funding by actually charging them with the laws they break. Shady CEO's use the stockholder applause for their profit accomplishments to drown out the contempt for their methods.  Whenever profit dares to threaten dividends, wages get slashed and profits are cannibalized from the producers themselves. After our recent collapse of the economy, most CEO's fear increased wages as a detriment to their dividend promises.

When you think about it, because of promised dividends, saying companies DO NOT increase wages to generate profit is not fully accurate. Spiffs have a long-standing history of use, even though the modern-day spiff is too stiff the workers and give all that money to the CEO's in exchange for squeezing more for less out of the wage frozen masses.

Smart companies actually give some of that money and the benefits to the front line workers so they'll become invested like CEO's.  But not enough American companies are "smart" when it comes to maintaining a happy workforce.

Instead, most companies follow the trend of paying the minimum and doing the least possible with hopes of uncovering the kind of people who work to justify a standard, not an income.

As a consequence of stingy wages and benefits, stingy employers corner themselves into few options but to bleed the life out of their underappreciated workers who swiftly leave for the next unhappy workplace that at least pays a little more than the last. Although our unemployment rate is at a relatively low number, can we call ourselves at full employment when so many people have to work more than one job to make ends meet?

It's not terribly hard to point out these perverse influences of profit or how WE the People are helpless to stop the depravity because- aside from ObamaCare- WE are United in name alone. In fact, we commoners envy the rich and divide our collective power into political and racial lines, to our own demise.

Profit sharks who are bad corporate neighbors need to be delivered an economic message. Like blood in the water, identifying and channeling our consumerism towards good corporate neighbors would create an immediate data point in the profit pond for all the fish to take note of- especially those bloodthirsty sharks.

Like the sharks in higher education for example.

An advanced degree can counter harsh realities. Yet, some of the worse sharks in the higher education profit game are also the last ones to remind you that many industries in America don't currently have enough domestic jobs for all of the people who studied and gained less than a graduate degree to work in that industry, rendering that degree they are overcharging you for obsolete before you earn it. At the cost of a degree, good neighboring colleges and universities fight to limit your debt upon graduating or work hard to get you a job. The awesome neighboring colleges and universities do both.

I mention the depravity in higher education to make a point about the depravity of our profit pursuits, not as an attempt to make an excuse for the educated poor. Whether the college-educated dreamers of America changed their dream or it was changed for them is simply life's evolution. Persistence overrides good fortune every time, and no person intent on reverie can blame the market for their wistful hopes or lack of drive to make them real.

We can blame the free market for dramatically narrowing our chances of enjoying the kind of dreams America promised when these truths were first held to be self-evident. The market should also be blamed for so many noble job dreams being nightmares etched on a glass that shattered before the pursuit began. This is not to say that the potential for great dreams doesn't still exist, but that the dream is broken when too many American companies refuse to offer the American workers their cut of the harvest.
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The current GOP tax plans prove this point.

Demanding a tax reduction bill to increase wages is sort of a declaration that the free market pond needs government assistance to achieve the fair wages that a record stock market and record corporate profits could not. As we watch Republicans push an immensely unpopular plan (75% disapprove), we have to sincerely ask ourselves if the GOP was more dangerous as obstructionists or as a party desperate to finally prove they can do something?

Republicans will insist they can govern and that the free market only needs government to "get out of the way". What neither chamber in Congress can really tell you is how much "out of the way" will be necessary to deal with North Korea, finish off ISIS, maintain our military footprint across the globe in addition to confronting domestic needs including our decaying infrastructure, fixing healthcare and education disparities for every human on our soil, all while lowering the deficit. Republicans in Congress nor God can explain why corporations would want to fairly share the harvest NOW when they never have before?

Cheap labor and corporate profits seem to be baked in the cake 

As we dividedly clamor for increased wages, we should take a moment to seriously consider our cheap labor hunger and how many organizations are just like the Trump organization and depend on an ample access to cheap labor. People who are desperate for work eagerly migrate to any jobs. As it relates to need and hope, cheap labor is not necessarily the problem. Hiring any human for long-term, low-wage work but not educating them, ensuring they are healthy and eventually self-sufficient is a formula for a mass epidemic of sickness, social decay and societal discord that can only feed into the Department of Corrections.

Aside from further expansion of the widespread use of prison labor (which deserves its own conversation), building a wall and getting rid of immigrants in massive numbers hardly comports with the GOP tax plan of increasing investment and production to raise wages and stimulate consumerism. Stated more clearly, America needs more good paying jobs, not just more jobs.

Thanks to those who left the job market altogether, wages have already been forced to rise a bit. Yet, traditionally low-wage employers seem to me to be stashing cash and preparing for the next market collapse instead of positioning themselves for the decades of growth that the GOP tax plan promises.

Some of the best jobs are in America are in higher education and healthcare, two industries with zero incentive to eliminate human ignorance or sickness. In both cases, their profit models depend on customers, not outcomes. Consequently, there are many horrible hospitals and crappy schools.

Unless I am missing something about this profit debate, none of your dreams or my economic disparities become conversation worthy without more corporate profit and lots of it. Because the demand for profit (dividends) makes most corporate decisions for them, we live with the necessity of corporate and personal welfare safety nets to catch the fallout caused by failed profit pursuits.

Wages seem to be a constant part of our focus and conversation, but inflation worthy wages are far from being a part of our current paradigm, and simply raising the minimum wage will only elevate the least of these, it can't repair the overall breach from years of stagnant wages. As companies insist they can't pay us more, have you noticed how much time and free stuff they throw your way to avoid the cost of bad publicity when you give them a bad review online? Is there a chance they could redirect a portion of CEO's wages as well as their damage control budgets towards higher wages and better service on the front side? Not if we don't make them.

I worry if WE will ever realize our fair share of the harvest absent a focused wages and benefits war against corporations, a war that can probably only be achieved through year-round Small Business Saturday type efforts to funnel our spending to companies who directly compete against the large corporations that currently get our money whether they choose to be good neighbors or not.

Republicans who truly wished to change the way WE view their tax plans should join this cause and direct their proposed tax breaks to the companies that actually allow it to trickle it down- but after the promises trickle, not before. For the House of Representatives and the Senate Republicans to square their disparate versions of tax reform and get it signed into law by the president, such a promise could be useful.

Call it the trickle-down promise plan if you wish since that theory is becoming as mythical as the Lochness monster. Even a forced appearance could keep the myth from dying and Republicans from failing again at major legislative change. The wealthy Republican political donors who are demanding this tax break will reject this idea, but I'd expect quite a few Democrats to support a trickle-down plan if it actually came with a promise.

Of course, this could all be the hopeful me rising to the surface again. Aside from ObamaCare repair, Democrats don't really seem encouraged to save Republicans from themselves by authoring sensible legislation or anything else that Trump could get credit for as a result of their help. In essence, they have no reason to be any better to Trump and the Republicans than Trump and the Republicans were to Barack Obama, who came to the table with plenty of negotiation worthy ideas- some created by Republicans- but to no avail.

Because Congress has been way too busy chasing Trump and politically biting off its nose to spite its face with obstructionist behaviors, it took the bipartisan voice of voters from all across America to save ObamaCare from the repeal and replace promise of Republicans who still have nothing stopping them from doing it except the United voice of bipartisan America. If our collective voices can neutralize a repeal and replace promise, the unity of our collective dollars has the power to force the wages we deserve using the same conscientious consumerism we employ during Cyber Mondays or Small Business Saturdays.

Small Business Saturday Should Be Every Day.

Small businesses have long since been the glue of our economy, but they could also become a trend-setting aspect of our economy with a concerted effort to funnel more spending towards them, strengthening the quality of our glue and simultaneously encouraging more people to take an entrepreneurial risk. Conscientious consumerism of good neighbor companies could boost stagnant wages, but most importantly, it could ignite an overdue conversation about what healthy capitalism looks like.

WalMart has almost 5,000 U.S. locations, and close to 7,000 international retail centers of various sorts. While they have increased wages in recent years, can you imagine how many of those 60 checkout counters at WalMart would actually open if they were made to value our visit instead of sort of disregard us as insignificant discount chasers like they do now? Would WalMart simply shut 5,000 domestic locations before opening their coffers to more inflation worthy job positions? Imagine if their profits depended on such a choice?


Whether we see the analytics on our growing power over corporations or not doesn't mean corporations haven't seen the data and analyzed their risk factors. The end of Net Neutrality is likely a reflection of corporate fears of our emerging political and economic power, not a way to reduce your bill as they claim.

Obama, his expansion of health care and a focus on small business brought renewed hope for the entrepreneur's of America who suffered immensely when our economy flopped. Any tax relief would help them, but not if it ends up primarily in the hands of the one percent who hardly need it right now.  Now is the time to invest everything we have in the small business market, in good corporate neighbors and into a declaration of our power and a demand for our cut of the harvest before we are cornered out of entrepreneurial pursuits and into low-wage realities forever.

The choice is ours to make. 

I'm A Socialist Who Doesn't Believe In $15 Per Hour

Before you take me to task for the headline, I truly am a conservative socialist, meaning I lean towards the efficacy of the free market way before I trust the viability of long-term welfare for anyone, including big corporations.

I am convinced that people who are healthy and educated don't need a hand-out, just an occasional hand up, meaning proactive education and healthcare reform could virtually eliminate the need for welfare as we know it.

That has always been a theory that assumes the presence of livable wages, something educated people will either find or create.

What I have seen from the mass job Exodus  that began the Obama years is a nation that found other ways to get by. No, not without an increase in housing and eating support services in some cases, but another way nonetheless.

In the space between the Exodus that accounted for some of the largest amounts of folks who simply left the job market altogether and the return of record stock market numbers, wages have increased by almost 3%. That may not sound like a lot, but that is just an average amidst lower unemployment numbers as well.

What that tells this non-economist is that a few people who left the job market altogether have now returned, perhaps for a fair wage?

I am not saying we don't need to insure that we have a minimum wage to avoid employers of low Integrity, I am saying we can't legislatively insure that the minimum wage meets the cost of living, no matter where you work. Bad state management will reflect on wages wages, so some states are a bigger victim of leadership than others.

I'm not saying that the money doesn't exist, I am just saying that laws can't find the proper balance of where it is and where it is not available. Record numbers leaving the workforce, however, CAN- and has- forced the wages we deserve, and the evidence is revealing itself every single day.

Once desperate employers stop trying to use a job to lure the rest of those that left the job market, they will finally start to offer a career path that makes the entry wage issue a less significant concern to the millions that have yet to return.

Jobs are increasingly losing favor unless you are fortunate enough to work for the handful of employers that understand the important balance between the care of your staff and the growth of revenue and profits.

In a global market place, the battle to monopolize industries has a new competitive inclusion, and it's all those people who left the job market.

They are and shall remain the hope for your wages, and their impact shall remain even if wages and career paths rise to something more livable.

Obama invested in the hopes of entrepreneurship while Trump is trying his best to drive those people towards the job market. Seeing a glimpse of something better makes it unlikely you'll settle for less, so this wave of entrepreneurship won't just die off.

                                             

Trump's legislative incompetence is the best hope for those who dare to create a career for themselves and, indirectly, better wages for everyone else. But even an imbecile can accidentally achieve poorly planned goals, like becoming the president for example.

Bernie's Running For President But From Socialism

I heard a recent commentator remind us how presidential candidates used to be sought out. Now, political candidates seek out the presidency like a flashback to high school politics. As if being head boy or girl is equivalent to staring down Putin to make him deal with Syria before you do.

Senator Bernie Sanders started a revolution of thought that might have made him the only remaining candidate that was sought out for the post.  His poll numbers justify that idea thoroughly in that no candidate comes close to competing in a head to head with Bernie.  If the real reason that Mr. Sanders remains in the game, despite the hoops and hurdles he must navigate to win, is because he is the only candidate that can soundly secure the presidency, he is doing a noble thing.

Can Bernie actually run as a
Democrat but preside as a Socialist? Who
becomes a part of his bill making coalition?

Noble because campaigning is grueling on candidate and family.  Any real reason to doubt your prospects is a real reason to spare your family the strain and struggle of fighting from behind.  That is the reason most candidates bow out expeditiously. At some point when fighting from behind, you are mathematically needing to eat the whole pie- or most of it- while your opponent continues to get their fair share of bites.

Like a puppy in a litter, you simply can't eat fast enough to get all of the food, even if you are the bully of the bunch.

Sanders is not a bully, but he is trying to bully his way into a process that wasn't made for bullying.  In the end, he must convince the superdelegates to change their mind about Hillary and to cast their support behind the best chance Dem's have at winning.

Hillary can claim a lot of positives, but her approval rating and head to head polling against Donald are not among them.  She is stuck between needing Bernie and his support, and needing him to shut up already at the same time. Without the volume of voters that Bernie can inspire to turnout on her behalf, the republican party might have just enough Obama anger to energize their way back  into the white house.

If the real mission is to simply keep Donald Trump away from the presidency, I'm starting to get confused by Bernie and his pathway problems.  Not the problems he'll have procuring the lion share of the remaining electorate just to block Hillary's path, but the problem he and his surrogates keep having and declaring with the process and it's rigging's.

I hate to find myself lambasting my brother Bernie once again because we Socialist really do need to stick together.  Not that we are a dying breed.  On the contrary. Capitalism is simply way too notorious for attracting the slime of the world for any clear eyed young adult to view it without some skepticism.  Old folks like myself have been fairly brainwashed into our position on Socialism, so there really isn't a lot you can do to change that. We grew up with parents whose parents fought the last great war in this world, and they left that experience thoroughly convinced that we must draw a line.

Socialism bad.  Capitalism good.  

Our generations have the images of Mikhail Gorbachev and Nikita Khrushchev on the television screen and magazines.  TIME magazine had me fairly convinced that the odd birthmark on Gorbachev's head was surely as sign of something evil.  When President Ronald Reagan declared that he must tear down that wall, the world came to some odd sense of comfort that the age old Cold War had finally come to an end.



In reality, our nuclear race between the former soviet union was not a Cold War at all. In reality, the Cold War was always one that we've been fighting with ourselves.  The fear of the rise of the proletariat has been embedded into the psyche of old folks like myself and older.  Our generations read Karl Marx as a warning of something demonic and dangerous, not as a warning of what happens when Capitalism is not given the kind of balance that it demands.

Bernie Sanders is nothing more than the voice of the proletariat that Marx promised.  And surely, just as forewarned, they are fed up with economic imbalance and want to point a finger and find a fix.  If you're looking rather closely, Trump has quite a few proletariat's himself, except they are pointing their fingers at different causes while complaining about the EXACT SAME PROBLEM.

Some think Donald Trump can fix it while others believe he'd be more of the same since he's been rubbing elbows with the same candidates that we've grown weary of trusting. Candidates like Hillary Clinton in fact.  She is a notorious insider who has just a few points of favorability (42% versus 39% ) over Trump, probably only because she doesn't intentionally offend people on a weekly basis- but that is the only reason.

As  a result of these dismal polls on the two remaining front runners, Bernie Sanders now has a really interesting decision that he needs to make for himself and his so-called party, seeing as how he's Democratic Socialist running under the Democrat flag.  Sanders must fully legitimize the manner in which his party chooses a candidate and legitimately use it to whoop Hillary's ass in California and give the party a SERIOUS reason to believe that he can secure enough of the kind of voters that represent most of America.

Sanders has won plenty of state caucuses to fully justify remaining in this race.  What he hasn't won is more primary voters than Hillary or diverse populations like New York or California, places vital to victory for any Democrat candidate.

As a result of what he's doing absent the tailwind to justify doing it, the process itself has been brought into question- by Bernie himself no less. Process, meaning those superdelegates that are free to do what they want.  They (superdelegates) must want Bernie over Hillary for Bernie to be the Democrats nominee. But Sanders does not need them or any party just to secure more votes in a general election than Trump or Hillary. The numbers say that he could do that now, yet not from the inside. Bernie must come to grips withe the fact that either it's okay that superdelegates exist (without them, Trump might have run as the Democrat he truly is), or they need to go away right away and not be courted as a legitimate pathway to the presidency for Sanders.

The real point is this.

What if you actually win Bernie?  In essence, you will be declaring that an unfair game just unfairly flipped in your favor as you proceed to happily use it to achieve your presidential aspirations. Will you lambaste it similarly if you actually win?  In fact, by courting superdelegates while besmirching the process, you are offending them and asking for their support all in the same campaign speech. The integrity to insist that a system is totally unfair and must be changed, but then say their remains a pathway to make it work for you- so stay with me supporters- is beyond odd, it is disingenuous and destructive to the party you are asking for support from.

Bernie is the first candidate in the history of our political system with a legitimate shot at winning the popular vote over both of the two-party options, forcing the Supreme Court to figure out what the hell happens next when the laws are written to cater to the these two parties against the rise of another.

By all means, Bernie Sanders should press on to the convention and make his claim for the portion of delegates (super or not) that he truly deserves.  Trump and Clinton are just as flawed as the numbers say they are and every attempt to tell US that they are actually something different and better than what WE already know of the two is kind of pissing me off.

Yet, I'm much more enraged by my brother Bernie who wants his cake and wants to eat it too.  When Marx described the rise of the proletariat, he might not have anticipated the two-party counter efforts from those who've feared their arrival ever since he warned of it.  Like it  or not, the Two-party system was, and is, made to resist that rise.  Either accept it and overtake it nonetheless, or shut the hell up and run as a third party candidate.

Stated more succinctly.  Be a damn socialist Bernie or not.  You can't run as a democrat and not accept the full implications of that choice.  Since I am totally convinced that Sanders has not the courage to actually blow the whole thing apart and run third party, I am a mad Socialist who wishes he'd just shut up and stop helping Trump.

One Way Or Another, Those Lazy Milleneals Will Determine Who Becomes America's Next President.

Was the emergence and anticipation of Elizabeth Warren for president the red carpet that Bernie Sanders used to initiate the populist revolt that has turned American politics upside down? Populism is a easy description of all of this because it fits the narrative we wrote in anticipation of capitalism's demise and socialism's rise.  What few have accepted is that those leading this wave of populism are also those who missed the Cold War and don't appreciate everything capitalism has accomplished.

Much like all things in hindsight, there is perfect clarity upon experiential analysis.  With eyes now wide open, Sanders. who we all wished had been Warren instead, should have simply remained under the democratic socialist label that he clearly feared when he chose to dump it to run as a democrat. He was unlikely to dismantle the two party blockade to win either way, but the agenda of a democratic socialist is different than that of the party he chose to run under. By scrapping his true label, he beholds himself to the party cause of winning an election, not just fulfilling an agenda.

Yet, as he currently insists on the right to press on, listing reasons other than winning to justify the choice, the potential to help improve the democrat party is among the main reasons he says he won't discard his agenda and quit the race.

Quit the race, or quit lying to yourself, Bernie?

I'm sorry, but with all due respek (teehee), Mr. Sanders is not a democrat.

He is a somewhat proud socialist who believes in invoking the democratic process to his variety of socialism as a means of implementing socially healthy socialist and capitalist programs.  Nobody fully understands his plans to break up the big banks, or how he'll democratically redistribute taxes, because the assumption he provides with the intensity of his revolutionary rhetoric is one of a socialist agenda applied with pressure, not established in a conciliatory way.

Donald Trump, the GOP populist candidate,  really doesn't come off as a conciliatory negotiator either, but anyone in business and everyone close to someone who is in business understands the win win of deal making, so they assume what is vital for being successful in business is also translatable to the business of being president. Trump appeals to intentionally ignorant folks or really smart folks who play ignorant when they fill in the blanks and clean up the mess in their minds each time Trump speaks.

Speak bad about milleneals if you will, but they are clearly the only ones not fooled by this dude.

I'm currently confused as to whether or not the apparent apathy of the generation called milleneals is healthy for our democracy in ways we've not quite understood.  While we pretend to desire wide reaching participation from the general electorate, the movements milleneals have made towards things that mattered to them- first Obama, now Bernie- has forced everyone to recognize the immense risk of agitating these young folks into action.

Milleneals may catch a lot of heat for a lot of apparent apathy and not holding doors open for others, but the 99% movement, Black Lives Matter, Bernie and the Hell No To Donald movements have all been ignited by milleneals.  Some look at that list with contempt, but only fools look at it without the respek (sorry) they've earned. These movements are headline grabbing, and headlines create the type of attention that creates change. For better or for worse, any actual movement towards better wages for all must be creditted to milleneals.

Those who support the mainstream Stop Trump movement need to recognize how useless and dysfunctional it has been.  In fact, that mainstream movement might be the fuel that feeds his growth since republican voters are insisting that they need change too. Both parties are hearing the exact same message since Clinton has yet to prove that she will inspire our youth to do for her what they did for Obama and what they are trying to do for Bernie with $27 donations.

Disregard the milleneals at your own peril.  They have the collective power to show up and dictate the direction of this election, or stay home and make the whole damn thing a total crap shoot on election day.  Polls show Trump and Clinton way too close for statistical comfort while Sanders destroys any candidate that the GOP can muster up. Why?  Because milleneals will clearly show up for old man Sanders, not for Aunt Hillary.

Who Doesn't Love Aunt Hillary?

Aunt Hillary is the recently unleashed embracing of the age and disconnection of Hillary Clinton instead of pretending it doesn't exist.  Even Barack Obama has started his surrogacy for Hillary by making humor of her age disconnect in the midst of his comedic monologue at his final White House Correspondence Dinner recently.  

From the appearance of things, Aunt Hillary- wary of who caused her to get beat by Obama- is now trying to bake some cookies and put out some milk to entice milleneals to embrace her in a different way. Trump, the ever observant media watcher, is hoping to expose her for every hustle she tries, especially the woman card.  As for old age pandering, Clinton, Sanders and Trump all must accept age as their shared shortcoming since each is in their late 70's. Bernie is the only old person with milleneal support, so in some ways, he might actually have a right to demand the nomination.

Our three real selections for our future president are each going to be in their 80's if they live to complete one or two highly stressful terms as president, much less survive until November given the grueling demand of campaigning to become a party nominee, and each are at the mercy of millineal consent. We've seen millineals move in many ways lately, so we know they can show up.  If they choose to stay home as a political statement, it will be just as impactful as if they actually show up to make a different statement.

Love them or hate them, our lazy millineals are speaking with a resounding voice. Ignore them at your own demise.

Trump Won Iowa, Sanders Proves Socialism Okay

Nobody really wants to hear me say this, but I have to keep it SquareBiz for those of you who need it.

Trump won Iowa.

No really.

Trump won Iowa, and it wasn't even close.  Well, it was close, but not in the way that you think. Iowa is AS full of religious fundamentalism as any state in the union.  Not only is Iowa full of it (so to speak), it is full of religico's who are highly politically active as well- possibly more so than any other fundamentalist spot in America.

In other words, betting Ted Cruz to win in Iowa would have been a wasted bet in Vegas because you would have had to put down $3,000 just to win $100.  I just made up those odds, but you get my point.  Iowa chose Mike Huckabee two cycles ago, and Rick Santorum during the last presidential election primary/caucus season. because the Tea Party has owned Iowa for some time now.

Polls might have threatened to hand Iowa to Trump, but they didn't have a great way of knowing who would actually leave their home and caucus for Trump.

Now we know, and the numbers are staggering.

Cruz might have stopped Trump from finishing on top like he claims he always does, but he barely kept Iowa from shifting itself away from its religious roots and firmly into the area of social dissent with many other parts of the American electorate.

If there is any reason for Marco Rubio to be doing victory laps over a third place finish (and there is), Trump has just as much a cause for applause for finishing second in a place that his heathen arse should have never finished so high, but he did.

Without the benefit of a real ground game in a state that he knew would be a waste of money to fight in, Trump still came up second.  Cruz committed mightily to the outcome he got, and should also consider the Rubio result to be a considerable challenge to his evangelical claim over the GOP.  As for ground game, the same could be said for Clinton who had a representative in each of Iowa's 1681 democrat caucusing precincts.

Hillary and Cruz worked like crazy to insure the Iowa outcomes that they sorely needed.  Trump and Bernie Sanders will be hard to beat in New Hampshire, so a loss in Iowa too would have been a rough start for Hillary, too rough in fact for either to allow for such an outcome.  So she didn't lose, and neither did Cruz. 

But they almost did.

Did Cruz win by a wide enough margin to celebrate?

Rubio can feel happy about the large portions of Cruz's voters that had to be a part of the results he enjoyed last night.  Yet if Rubio has any legitimacy to his joy (and he does), than Trump and Sanders should be sipping champagne too.

From my perspective, they answered the question of how loud will the voice of the angry populist actually be in this upcoming election.  Will unusual voters show up to do something that they've rarely done before?


After our first sampling, it is clear that they will be pretty damn loud if we heard their voices all the way from fundamentalist Iowa. 

Pretty damn loud indeed.

Socialism Unleashed Like Rap Music 40 Years Ago

It would be terribly easy to write about every moment that Donald Trump attempts to keep the limelight upon himself, but that would require an article per day- and two on Friday.

After the first Democrat debate, what we have clearly discovered is that #BlackLivesMatter and Donald Trump is actually worth the circus he creates simply because everybody loves a circus.

Entertainment was primarily low last night, except for those moments when that boisterous, white-haired college professor looking dude boisterously said something that many of us wish we could have said.

Like, enough with the email issue already.

Bernie may or may not already see this, but if this Hillary Clinton email matter has real legs, the press would let it walk on its own and stop giving Clinton the extra shine that she really doesn't need or want, although I am personally convinced that the email mess will eventually be the rough road she travels to prove she can handle the presidency.

In reality, Hillary is just as eager to clear her name before the Benghazi committee and the world as they are to try and ruin her name some more if they can. After last night,Trey Gowdy and the Benghazi committee should reconsider their political tactic against Clinton. I would not be looking forward to giving her a microphone and the chance to look presidential because we are all clearly recognizing that it won't be easy to make Hillary sweat even with a proceeding created solely for that purpose.

News Is That Collection Of BAD Things That Happened While We Slept.

Obama's hair isn't white for nothing.  The first demand of the presidency begins with the pressure from the press to make you into the news they seek.  News reporters quickly forget that they are moderators and can easily begin conducting an interview right in the middle of a presidential candidates answer (even before they've gone over their time limit Anderson Cooper).

Pundits must consider themselves somewhat smarter than the people they cover or they would not condescend when describing politicians and the ideas to which they subscribe.  The press is clearly more informed simply as a function of the job description. But true smarts could come off as stupidity and still dominate the GOP primary race.

Trump (and no other GOP candidate) lofted the first grenade upon the #DemDebate  last night by announcing his upcoming hosting of Saturday Night Live and his plan to live tweet side by side with the debating Dem's.  Unless you didn't already know that Americans vote in dismal numbers and must vote in mass to complete that populist revolt, there really was no significant discoveries from this debate until Bernie Sanders asked US to stop bombarding the electorate with constant coverage of those "damn emails".

That sounded like a political calculation error from Sanders, but in fact, Sanders is the person who will most benefit from an opportunity to advance the campaign conversation down the road towards real solutions and not trapped underneath the umbrella of trickle downs promised prosperity; handcuffed by politicians who want to lead simply for the sake of winning, or those damn emails.

There are no winners with the kind of congressional gridlock that would rather conduct repeated political witch hunts instead of  displaying the courage to fight a legislative battle in today's blood thirsty, polarized congress.  Even our president can only nip at the edges of possibility with the use of executive orders that set federal directives but have little power over truly fixing these Divided States of America.

Aside from hearing Socialism's music played before the masses, the debate was somewhat dull for us Socialist' who already know the Democrat party line and expected this eventual espousal of Socialism evidenced by the predictable rise of the boisterous proletariat's that Sanders roused up in Las Vegas, Nevada last night. Las Vegas happens to be one of the last strongholds of labor unions, so a crowd that Bernie Sanders had eating from his palms came out in full force to infuse the audience with hoots and hollers for populism.

The struggle I have now is the same one I had at an early age of employment.

How Do You Find A Healthy Relationship Between Capitalism and Socialism when one is always seeking the death of the other?

Maybe I started working way too early as a kid.  When you are a leader by nature, every job you do will call you into leadership.  Such was the case for my early working years in which I was quickly drawn by the money and mindset of management versus the poverty and limited perspective of the general worker.

Even my paper route forced me to learn the entrepreneurial reality of supply and demand, managing expenses and yielding a profit that you fully keep for yourself or use to upgrade to a banana seat, Bronco orange, Schwinn 5 speed bicycle that allowed me to expedite delivery and grow the business.

The view from above showed me that a little brother who actually worked for junk food and snacks adds a particularly alluring means of making more money and minimizing paper cuts from folding too many papers too fast.  It also showed me how difficult things get when Wednesday or Sunday circulars came out and I had more newspaper than I could carry on a Schwinn; or my little brother became too lazy to wake up during those ungodly hours of morning newspaper delivery; or it gets tough to make it to middle school on time when the news is running late; or you, the sole proprietor, are feeling just as lazy as that helper of yours who no longer appreciates junk food for payment.

One day you finally do the math and realize that you are working really hard for very little profit, and you start to wonder what the big boys at the top would do if you didn't deliver your 120 newspapers every morning? How would they make all of their millions without you and those of your kind?

Newspapers remain around mostly because of the generations that still enjoy them, not because delivering them is a good gig.  I appreciate print publications and even dreamed of starting one of my own back when I was young and didn't see the coming of the Internet.  Now, newspapers embody the stark separation of the generations.  The very future of print media, even Playboy, seems tied to our parents and them- the precious few Americans that were raised to want to read and prefer not to scroll.

I love the music of my parents and them. Yet, it is not exactly the same as the music of my own childhood, and I can't help but notice that, unlike the music of our parents, the music of my youth continues to play on my children's playlist. The youth of today and their parents are the first generations in modern history that hear and enjoy the same kind of music. We never listened to our kids music and ask the question of "what is that", even though we scream at them to turn "that" down, mostly because we think our version of "that" is superior to this new stuff anyway. While that might seem like a simple coincidental observation, it actually might carry a deeper meaning when the protest music from 40 years ago has yet to stop talking.

Rap music started this revolution first for young black people.  FOR ME! Though me and rap are not as young as we once remembered, our voices of revolt are still resounding.

Starting with the youth of the late 70's and early 80's, Black America's rap music has inundated the voice of all of the youth so completely that the message oozed outward and is now speaking through every mouthpiece imaginable.

Plenty of sensitive and caring whites and older Americans saw value and purpose in electing Barack Obama as our first black president, but they all would have failed if not for the power of the minority and youth turnout; the same group of voters that are forcing us to Feel The Bern as we speak.   For the revolution that Sanders seeks to take soil, these voters must place boots to the ground and achieve an Obama like turnout and beyond.

Some of that young crowd includes the Black Lives Matter movement and those that they have PROVEN to inspire.  #BlackLivesMatter crusaders are those same hip-hop loving kids of ours who grew up on our subliminal message of social liberty layered with a heavy bass beat or a beat boxer spitting into his hand when no better accompaniment could be found.

 It was a message that nothing and no one could stop us from busting a rhyme making a social revolution happen, or silence the message once it began; a message of rising above the efforts that seemed systematically contrived against you. Even the efforts to denigrate black street music culture only further exposed it and expanded it.  Much of that same dynamic can also be applied to the journey of populism.

It is a message that even has republicans talking wage equality. They might be trying to add more of that comfortable banjo background, trickle down tax cut measure talk, but they hear the music that is making everyone bob their heads up and down with that stink face you get from a funky rhythm- and in your face rhyming  rhetoric to go with 'em.  Like a hard hitting lyric from Public Enemy or KRS-One, even the old folks who hoped to conserve their traditional forms of music, had to stop and listen at least to discover what was objectionable.

 If you tryna say you want a revolution?
Mandate voting in the f- -kin' Constitution.

One way or another, the beat and the message kept playing, and it won't be stopped even if Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift collaborations have to keep the message and the music alive.

Before long, even country music lovers, inside the reddest of Red States, have had to endure rap's social invasion simply because the youth heard it and couldn't ignore the music or the movement.

Because America is far from the day that 80%  participate in an election (54.9 percent turned out in 2012), Bernie Sanders can't get elected as America's next president. But he showed up, took a seat in a place without welcome, and turned up the sound of Socialism last night. 

Capitalism must now do its best to insure that most won't remember the hook from his song or the moves in his dance. But you can best believe that the beat will stay in their heads forever.

Sanders Softening America On Socialist Ideology

Since my socialist brother Bernie Sanders has finally grabbed America's ear relative to the matters that matter most- I feel compelled to jump on board and further tug the well tweaked ears of the populace.

You see, the populist message will resonate to the ear of the proletariat so long as the bourgeoisie don't understand how to silence the noise.  Bill Clinton understands.  He has seen life from both sides now, but his political days are mostly bedroom whispers now, and he is considered the problem and not the cure given the fact that his days in office created many of the policies that are being examined under the political microscope.  Bill called for the blitz on welfare benefits and signed the NATFA agreement jamming North America into the free trade corner that ruined Mexico, and wounded American politics with millions of new immigrants but no congressional agreement about how to deal with them.

Bill admits to doing all of that to America, and now Hillary is asking US for an opportunity to fix it, assuming we can trust her to get it done.  Her asset is an American public widely convinced about the necessity for the kinds of changes Hillary is parroting from Senator Sanders of Vermont, but don't want someone who looks like a mad scientist in the White House .   Her liability is Bill.

I'm still pulling for the world to meet the real Jeb Bush, whose bilingual ability and immigrant friendly policies could bridge many of the gaps in the system and save Hillary from 8 precious years of being a grandmother, but Jeb needs to start sounding more like Bernie too, not just Hillary.

Although he only survived one term, Jeb's daddy George, did not chase into Iraq and kill Sadaam Hussein like Jeb's brother chose to do when America was still pissed off about 9-11.  One day in the future, America might admit to itself that WE asked for that mistake and WE own it, not just little George and his cohorts. Quietly, recent polls about big and little George reveal that the shift towards each Bush has already happened, even though it hasn't appeared to help Jeb with his poll numbers yet.

Or has it?

Any real analysis of Jeb's running style or poll numbers begins now that he's finally in, not while he was trying on running shoes.  The same must be said for Chris Christie, who has yet to put his hand up for a full blown dose of a Washington media blitz on his family and worthiness to be president, even though Christie seems destined to leave his fingerprint before the story is told.  The ravenous media keeps distorting the process by forcing the hand of so many stupid candidates who think that early launching and lots of interview questions could offer beneficial media coverage and a chance to get in that upcoming FOX debate.

Jeb has finally declared, and might also be the greatest example of what happens when you expose yourself to an industry paid to make you screw up if they can.  Over the years, the ravenous American media has only grown more hungry to feed the beast, and make the newest news cycle fresh and interesting.  In fact, the very word "news" has become a pejorative for the sketchy details that drive opinion pieces.  Where once there were editorialized news articles, now there are only editorials about the news of the day- and Benghazi.  

I quickly abandoned my elementary dreams of the presidency when I stared wide eyed at crafty news reporters with a microphone in hand and realized who tugs at the strings of the politicians. At the time, the word lobbyist was foggy to me as were capitalism and democracy, since socialized unions were then and are still now, the only one's fighting for the common American- not politicians and certainly not Donald Trump.

Who Runs The World?  Sorry Girls, It's the Press.

Hidden inside of every opinion based news report is a grandiose view of said opinions.  Those who regularly make historical records of their opinions are declaring something that is universally meant to matter, maybe even change something.  Opinion sharers are not much different than policy makers, just less willing or able to expose our views to the unequivocal test of a voting booth.  The natural contempt that will always exist between politicians and the press that covers them, should be viewed like the friend who would date your hot spouse if things just don't work out between the two of you.

If you recognize this reality going in, then you keep yourself and your gorgeous husband far away from this "friend", and force all of your interactions to be on a governed and controlled basis, much like Hillary has tried to do with her white house press friends, whom she is VERY familiar with.   To nurture the friendship, Hillary is actually taking some questions lately, possibly feeling as though the constant negative news needed a coordinated counter measure.  Way too many candidate's, including Hillary, are falling prey to pressure from a contempt filled friendship, when speaking through surrogates has always been a better way to limit questions and control the messaging.

In the end, the early entrants and media blabber mouths will be chewed up and spit out by a White House press crew that is more experienced at this than the candidates who don't control the process or track the results like the press does anyway.  In the end, the ravenous penchant for a 'WHO'S NEXT' mentality will always play into the hand of the person most willing, and able, to hold out and be that person. Elizabeth Warren was working this angle to perfection by creating the clamor for her to run that would have become a forest fire had she not put it out early.  Even with the bridge scandal, Chris Christie seems to be the only republican politician who understands how to play this game and the media, and not let the media or the game play him.  If big timer LeBron is a timely example, Christie has the kind of game to shock the world like only big timer's know how to do (that was not a weight pun).

In the end, Christie's timed delay and dazzling debate skills could crush Jeb, Rubio and the field, and bully his way through the republican primary (that was not a weight pun either).


Assuming Christie is not slowed by his weight, he will be slowed by the fact that America needs a centrist in the White House, so much so that America is actually listening to the message of Bernie's Sanders at the same time that republicans are searching for a charismatic voice to do to Hillary what Obama did to her the last time.  What republicans don't realize is that democrats can have a  party coronation, but America will not do the same for the presidency. Hillary is not the first woman to run and Obama was not the first black person to run for president either.  Obama was the first black to win the democratic nomination, and the first to receive widespread backing from blacks for good reason, not blind race love. Americans of every color, don't accidentally or frivolously choose presidents, even if hanging chads suggests otherwise.


DO YOUR JOB!

 However ravenous it might appear, the chewing and spitting process of our media does help to yield transparency from people trained to fight it, and to eventually hand the keys of the White House to the best of two flawed party reps, since two party politics is the best America has been able to offer its people. Going in, WE know all too well that every president is nothing more than a governor of the unforeseen, and the captain of a ship that can't fully turn until after they have fully left office.  As a result, each president has to convince us that they can redirect a ship if WE are to grant them one or two terms and not impeach them along the way.  Ultimately, the judgement of presidential performance lies in the hands of historians, not the voters who offer them up to history. Because of two-party politics, we shall always sway back and forth from the two-party tug-o-war we call democracy, or representative republic, or whatever they call that two-party song and dance going on in Washington.


Forget The People, Trust The Process.

As for winning the vote, is it about the people or the process?  Bill Clinton educated interviewer Jake Tapper (CNN interview 6/14/15) that voters only need to feel that things are moving in the right direction for things to be moving in the right direction.  Clinton was primarily addressing the Ferguson style protests all over the land, but his comment has many applications. In American politics, its not about what is real, but how you spin the message.  Bill rightfully recognizes that, when following the prevailing winds, you never lose much altitude.  This ideology makes it easy for Bill Clinton to recuse his own failed policies as a means of helping Hillary do the same.

The prevailing winds are calling for Bernie Sanders style socialism.  What is Sanders socialism?  Proactive populism is what Sanders is selling, a socialist who has grown tired of the excuses we keep making for corporate greed and a shrinking middle class.

 Populism is nothing more than a pseudonym  for proactive socialism, something every nation needs desperately. Proactive socialism removes excuses and breeds the kind of healthy and educated people who rarely see excuses as children, so they rarely use them as adults. Socialism is way too damaging to use it on anything other than social necessities. Capitalism like ours breeds disparity like ours. Together, the capitalism and the socialism we use now are creating more excuses, not taking them away.
I, for one, am tired of them all.

Proactive, preventative socialism, like ObamaCare and Pell Grants for college, are an investment in our own children and families, and promotes the mental and physical health of every individual in America. Bernie and I declare socialist (or populist if that's more palatable) ideas of this sort because we have seen something consistent in every healthy and educated person that we've met on this planet. They seldom make excuses for their status in life.

NO EXCUSES!?!

Imagine an America without excuses.

(necessary dramatic pause so you can digest that thought)


American's seem to universally relate to feeling frustrated with excuses and the disconnect between those who make excuses for their plight in America, and those who excuse America as not being duty bound to repair societal fissures that trap so many. I imagine an excuse free America where all political ideologies join together around a unifying acceptance that WE are only as strong as our weakest link.  This must be the message of the populist movement, and the message of excuse free America as well.

Excuse free America will be one that eliminates wasteful social welfare spending and transforms it into total healthcare and life long access to education for every human seeking to be American. In excuse free America, no undeserving person will ever gain wasted benefits because education or mental/physical health are not benefits, but life necessities. Chain repair, if you will. Excuse free America won't have welfare anymore because that seems like an odd word for repairing the links in America's broken chain. If you are hungry or short of other societal needs, excuse free America will provide them through the only institutions that will continue to offer such services- healthcare and education, since food  and shelter are essential components to health and learning.

 What about the impaired and the elderly? A smarter, healthier, excuse free nation won't quibble over care for the truly needy of society.  I'm fairly confident about that.

Whether an excuse filled nation comes from a nation full of excuse makers, or from a nation that excuses its failures, has been the kind of finger pointing that's frozen our progress. As the greatest nation on earth, the excuses for why WE continue to fail ourselves should exist no more.

Excuse free American's will tell the hungry or the addicted homeless to "go to school and eat, or go to the hospital to get some help". In excuse free America, both of these institutions would be duty bound around the goal of repairing these damaged chain links,  pointing them towards answers and moving them away from an excuse filled life.

WE the people are responsible for our own strength as individuals and as a nation, which demands the proper balance between capitalism and socialism. I haven't interviewed every socialist, but I will go out on a socialist limb and say that 45% is way too much socialism, even for those of us who proclaim socialism.
.

Even Russia is less socialist than America
Russia 20.9  .vs.  USA  44.9 (2009 figures).
Unlike China (also 20% socialism), Russia
has a population half the size of the U.S.

China, a nation over 4 times larger than America's population,  only spends 20%  on socialism.

You might be struggling with your textbook definition of the word socialism, so let me help you with that. Avoid your textbook when defining what socialism means just as you should avoid your textbook when searching for a definitive view on democracy or capitalism.

In reality, the textbook will put the positive picture of America next to capitalism and democracy, and the negative face of  communist Russia or N. Korea to help define socialism, as if America has done a perfect job representing the value and virtue of capitalism and democracy without blemish. Not only are WE more socialist than Russia, WE have yet to realize our own democracy dreams since our representative republic keeps resisting the call to count the vote, something that could eliminate an outdated electoral college system, and a do nothing congress at the same time.

Yes, the do nothing congress is a miserable representation of the ''so-called" democracy that we keep portraying on television, hoping to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into carbon copies of US.  Can you imagine an American style congressional debate in our fixed up version of Iraq- complete with newly elected officials from the Sunni, Shiite and Christian Kurd party's?

 Gentlemen, please check your weapons at the door.  Please?

One day soon, we won't demonize the word socialism just because of its bad examples just as we don't denounce every aspect of our representative republic each time there's another U.S. government shutdown pending. Nations who pattern themselves after US might someday have less than 30% of their population as participating voters just like WE do too.  Every social system can chronicle success and failure, and every nation needs some level of socialism. Socialism, aka.,Taxation and redistribution, can hurt an economy when you collect and redistribute too much, or devastate it when you collect and redistribute too little.   For certain, every nation is a balance of capitalism and socialism with the freedom to describe their own ideology, regardless of what the scales truly say.

HOW MUCH SOCIALISM IS ENOUGH?

 As a matter of socialized spending, several self proclaimed socialist nations spend less money (per capita) on socialism than WE do, China and Russia the most noteworthy. Be it welfare, ACA, Pell Grants, Food Stamps, Section 8 or big bank bailouts during recessions caused by the same big banks. America is much more socialized than nations who wear this label proudly. But how much is too much?  And is American socialism reactionary and much more costly as a result?

Chris Bowers :: Just How Socialist? A Survey of Major Countries

With the exception of the United States and the United Kingdom, where better data is available (see here for the US and here for the UK), the following data comes from the CIA World Factbook. It measures the percentage of socialism in major world economies by dividing real government spending by nominal GDP for selected countries (numbers for all countries except the UK and USA are from 2008): Levels of socialism in G-20 nations, plus selected other economies Cuba: 81.4%* France: 61.1% Sweden: 58.1%* Italy: 55.3% Netherlands: 54.7% Libya: 53.0%* Germany: 48.8% Canada: 48.2% Spain: 47.3% Angola: 44.8%* United States: 44.7% (2009) United Kingdom: 42.1% (2009) Australia: 43.6% Venezuela: 41.1%* Saudi Arabia: 40.4% Turkey: 39.1% United States: 35.5% (2007) South Africa: 33.9%* Indonesia: 33.2% Japan: 30.9% South Korea: 29.3% Mexico: 26.7% China: 22.0%* Russia: 20.9% India: 20.4% Argentina: 19.1% Brazil: 17.3% * = officially, or at least famed for being, communist or socialist

If China- the most famed socialist nation- can spend 22% on socialism, what makes the US more democratic, or capitalist, or better at 45%? With the 55% remaining portions of American capitalism hijacked by the wealthy and the crafty, "how free are we really"?  Most American's recognize the fundamental flaw in the design of the building, yet struggle to figure out how to dismantle and rebuild a structure that is currently in use.  Our challenge is not finding good ideas-  its the sacrifice of change when the status quo is yielding so much for some (1%), and leaving so little for the rest (99%) to fight over, or fight back with.

"Mexico is not our friend" and
"I'm really rich".

The status quo spends millions on maintaining their status while telling US that conservative policies need more time to produce the trickle down prosperity that they've been promising every since Ronald Reagan. Under Obama, Donald Trump has become a multi billionaire and is a walking billboard for the success of the 1% under Obama.  From Reagan to Bush and Bush to Clinton, back to a Bush and then Obama, three score and 6 years more of  the presidency have involved conservative friendly presidents and policies, yet all that WE have to show for it is a widening gap between Donald Trump and everybody else.

" I can beat China.  I do it all time"

Obama's TPP might appear to be doing more of the same, assuming you didn't notice that the Asian trade is a ship that has already sailed, or is already sailing each day with goods earmarked for US shores emblazoned with the words "Made In Asia Somewhere".   Fat cats who make millions in the Asian markets don't really need America's penchant for thwarting cost cutters and wage slashers, to muck up their revenue streams anyway. The abject failure of NAFTA to deliver on its promise has rendered the words "trade agreement" very taboo in America in the same way that the failed Iraq and Afghanistan wars are making us gun-shy towards ISIS, an actual worthy reason to have troops in the middle east.

When ISIS Disrupts Capitalism Like Bin Laden Did, We'll Finally Get Serious With ISIS.

If we haven't learned a thing from 9-11, we should know by now that capitalism is bigger than America, and too complex to look inward in a highly competitive global economy.  International trade will always be necessary, but should never come at the sacrifice of the American collective.  Since the American farm is now the farm to the world, socialism is necessary to maintain the stability of American farms for the sake of worldwide human consumption of bland green vegetables and overall human health.


Call it populism, socialism, collectivism or whatever trick helps you to digest bland green vegetables and this aspect of our Cold War defeat. The SquareBiz is that there is almost nothing that  proactive socialism and kale or wheatgrass won't fix.  But we must first develop a taste for the word socialism.

Better yet, learn to eat your green vegetables first.  Socialism will exist whether we like the taste or not.

Socialism Always Fixes Capitalism's Mess. I'm Just Sayin'

Did you happen to notice how those proud republican capitalist pizza shop owners declared their free market right to refuse their pizza to a gay wedding (does that mean they didn't already serve a single slice to a gay each day?)- but the voice of the free market has forced them to be saved by a virtual "Will Work For Food" sign, the most desperately socialist measure known to man?








   -Just Sayin'

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WHAT THE HELL IS A REAGAN REPUBLICAN ANYWAY? I hate labels...all of them.

Cuba Searching For Greener Grass. For America Its Just Business

The problem with living in the shadows is having a view of the sun.

The problem with living in the sun is skin cancer.

Fidel Castro in front of a Havana statue of Cuban
 national hero José Martí in 2003. (wikipedia)

The decision to place trade embargo's against the nation of Cuba was made over a half century ago and it was made in support of the people of Cuba who asked the nation of free flowing sunshine to force the shadowy Castro regime out of power.  In essence, their belief was that squeezing the life out of Cuba would harm so many people that Fidel Castro (and now Raul, his brother) would be compelled by love of country to do the right thing.

It didn't work.

Not only has the embargo not worked, it has only hurt the people it was intended to liberate. If the embargo was intended to expand the entrepreneurial spirit of the people of Cuba who have taken their desolate situation and turned it into an opportunity to display the vibrant shine of Cuba and its people, then it did work. Cubans have survived the "mutually belligerent" policies (as Alan Gross called it) of Cuba and America, and America should not only embrace the vast entrepreneurial wave within Cuba, we should invest in it because Cubans and Americans have never been at odds even if our mutually belligerent policies are.

In fact, every nation in the world, except the US, does business in Cuba, and even WE fly directly their from Florida to accommodate particular interests that congress had to deem "acceptable", since congress is the only institution in America with the power to lift the embargo.  What congress does not have the power to do is stop the conversation that has started towards normalization.  Cubanos throughout the nation of Cuba stand resolute in their belief that it is time to normalize relations, so the primary reason that we continue to take our stand against the shadow is because we have determined ourselves to be the sun.

The greatest impact of the embargo has been all of the Cuban dissidents/exiles and their children that enriched our nation and our brain chest of ideas.  Marco Rubio stands as a significant example, but he grew up believing that Castro deserves punishment for what he caused to happen to families like the Rubio's.  For the Castro regime to receive three of theirs in exchange for one of ours represents having accomplished "everything he was asking for" according to Rubio.

While it is questionable if these three comprades are everything the Castro's wanted from America, it is not questionable that the embargo that they would prefer to address is still fully within the control of Rubio and his cohorts in congress.  In addition, this embargo reflected the will of a people that have changed their minds.  Those who chose to relinquish their Cuban citizenship in protest of Castro also relinquished their voice in the decisions of future inhabitants.  The future is now and the voices are calling for a change.  If Rubio would rather listen to Cuban-American opinion over Cuban-Cuban decisions, than he is showing an allegiance to exiled families, to the past and to his understanding of an issue that has changed since his father and countless others got away from it all.

The Cold War civilization of 1959 has evolved into Americans who somewhat correctly call their own president a communist, and China being the nation we borrow from the most. Lines between capitalism (called democracy) and socialism (called evil) is one more big American welfare program or Hong Kong student protest away from blurring completely across the globe. Socialism shouldn't even draw such comparisons to capitalism in that one is a system of governance and the other is suppose to be an economic system; however, those who honestly embrace capitalism or desperately temper it with socialism know better.  As Rubio and the anti-Castro regime clamor for a more democratic Cuba, they also quietly approve back-alley expansions in campaign financing that makes it easier for rich people to dictate democracy in America.

If Cuba is stuck with the Castro's and should be a victim of their governance, it will be for another 30 years or less, America will be dictated by rich men infinitum.