From Facebook:
Photoshopped landscape of the Standing Rock Sioux March on Washington
They wanted a businessman for President.
“He’ll run the company like a business.”
“He’s a billionaire; he must have a good head on his shoulders.”
Friday night, my wife and I watched an excellent performance by actors in the David Douglas High School theater program: the play called “These Shining Lives”. The story tells of four women who were hired in the 1920s to paint the radium numbers on clocks and watches; to create dials that glow in the dark. The play parallels other true stories that take place in different parts of the country. The women die, a dozen or so years later, from radium poisoning. Before death, they contract various forms of cancer. The Corporations who create the clocks and watches deny responsibility for the radium poisoning, even after the truth becomes known to the companies’ management. Company doctors diagnose the health problems as ‘nerves’. The women lose their jobs when their performance degrades. Fortunately, there are doctors who are willing to stand up to these Corporations, and lawsuits are filed, and eventually won, after years of trials and appeals. Workplace safety laws come about. But these shining lives are ended. They all die.
They wanted a businessman to run the country.
I was a businessman, but I really wasn’t a very good businessman. I failed as a businessman. I was a good craftsman, but a poor businessman.
Nobody who wanted the Businessman to run the country seemed very concerned about the Businessman’s business history. They ignored the multiple bankruptcies and the lawsuits; they refused to demand that the Businessman’s tax records be produced. They accepted his self-definition of being a ‘Billionaire’, but never checked it out. In the late 90s, the Businessman lost nearly a billion dollars in a business deal. A UK publication, The Independent, published information that a new study suggests that the Businessman’s businesses owe $1.8 billion to more than 150 different institutions; in a variety of countries. The current Forbes 400 has the Businessman pegged at $3.7 billion.
The primary goal of Corporations is profit.
The Businessman has filled his cabinet with Businessmen from Wall Street, whose main goals are to get rid of all of the pesky rules that increase the cost of doing business in America. All those Environmental Protection rules that drive up the cost of doing business. Eliminate the regulations, profit goes up.
To hell with Climate Change, to hell with Science, to hell with the Arts. Profit. Drive up fossil fuel production and destroy the environment; the goal is profit. To hell with the communities who no longer have safe drinking water.
To hell with the First People. Our country has written Treaties with First Peoples for over two centuries; breaking those treaties before the ink had dried. What’s one more Treaty? The pipeline going under the Missouri River is too dangerous to be located near the State Capitol; it’s just fine near the Standing Rock Sioux tribal lands. There aren’t any Whites to worry about on the Res.
The Majority party in both the House and the Senate seem to be quite content with all of the destruction; their concerns are the those of the Corporations who fund their campaigns, and line their pockets with business deals. The .01%.
To hell with Conflicts of Interest; they are given no place in our government. The goal is profit.
What does it profit a country to gain wealth and power, but lose its soul?
My new heroine; The Fearless Girl standing before the Wall Street Bull
Of course, the Fearless Girl will be flattened if the Bull charges. The dream is that the Bull will be intimidated by the Fearless Girl’s Resistance.
There are George Carlin videos running around the Internet where he talks about ‘the owners of America,’ and they aren’t us. The profanity turns off many White Americans of my age range; they probably don’t listen. The information is probably correct. Portions of an article on salon.com:
The .1 percent are the true villains: What Americans don’t understand about income inequality
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/14/the_1_percent_are_the_real_villains_what_americans_dont_understand_about_income_inequality_partner/
By 2015, the wealthiest 20 people owned more wealth than half the American population… the ranks of the very top are no longer filled by mainly by entrepreneurs or even financiers who are self-made. Increasingly, they are populated by people who, thanks to several decades of regressive tax policy, have inherited their wealth; names like Walton and Koch have become common at the apex of wealth. This is the new hereditary aristocracy of means and power.
Figuring out exactly how the very richest spend politically is hard, but it’s obvious that big contributions from the 0.1 percent are sharply rising in importance. It used to be that these gazillionaires would make their donations and then simply pick up the phone and tell Congress what they wanted done—as Jamie Dimon did when he and other bankers wanted a key part of Dodd-Frank to be rolled back in 2014. They tend to get what they want (Dimon did), and above all, what they want is not to pay taxes or have their activities regulated. That’s why you will continue to hear politicians insist that the paltry amount you can expect in Social Security is too much and that “we can’t afford” to send kids to college without plunging them into debt peonage.
Inequality of income and wealth has fed back into the political process in dramatic fashion this political season. Tycoons like Donald Trump are abandoning their behind-the-scenes positions and stepping right onto the political stage. We may be entering a new phase of American politics where the 0.1 percent more regularly takes on the mantle of public servant to run the show directly, highlighting the brokenness of our system of democratic representation. Bernie Sanders, who has made political revolution focused on wresting control from billionaires as a central theme, is clearly focused on the power of the 0.1 percent. The revolution he calls for will not likely happen unless the 99 percent and the lower-uppers can appreciate their common ground and common threat.
Our common threat: living in a country that is run by a handful of people of enormous wealth, who don’t want their activities regulated.
The problem is that we are already there.
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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 