Interesting times...a more literal middle-class massacre.

In the 1990s it had been popular to quote a supposedly ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."  Well, here we are.  I have all but abandoned this blog, but with all of the strange goings-on, I thought it might be good to share my take on what is happening with this current pandemic situation.

Again, it is really hard for a working-class person to keep up a blog like this.  Too many times life gets in the way.  And unlike many unfortunate others, I still have my job, which is good because it looks like Google has stripped my ability to collect ad revenue.  This doesn't matter because I wasn't collecting any anyway. 

In future posts, I hopefully share with you my speculation as to what lead us to this tragedy and what the powers-that-be are doing to make sure that working-class people's lives remain miserable. 

The Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court decision is another nail in the American middle class coffin.

The recent Supreme Court ruling on Janus VS. AFSCME has put another nail in the coffin for middle class America as it makes union dues optional for employers with unionized workers. Unions will lose money and can no longer lobby for workers' rights with the employers themselves as well as local and federal governments.  This overturns the Abood decision made back in the 1970's that made it legal to charge dues.

It is odd for the Supreme Court to overturn a long standing decision, which only highlights the calculated planning of the rich to throw us back into the middle-ages.

I still don't understand how charging mandatory union dues limits free speech.  A company does not represent the whole country, and with only 7% of American workers unionized there are plenty of places to work that do not have unions.  If you don't like working where there is a union shop there are plenty of places to work that do not have them, your freedom of speech is left perfectly intact.  This whole thing has been a farce to further hobble the American middle class and to turn us all into paupers.

Was Donald Trump a possible shill for the Republican Party all along?

It really did surprise me when Donald Trump won the Presidential election.  And I was so certain that he was actually a shill for Hillary Clinton, but I couldn't have been more wrong.  Now, that I think about it, he was probably a shill for the Republican Party all along.  President-elect Trump was actually a false outsider.  Now that Trump has been elected, we are witnessing him appointing a cabinet that sounds like some very traditional right-wing insiders that will care way more about Wall Street than Main Street.

You see the Republican Party knew if they couldn't win the 2012 Presidential election with a mainstream guy such as Mit Romney, there was no way they were going to win the Presidential election 2016.  Unless. they got a pretend outsider such as Donald Trump.  

Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California? There were Republican's actually saying that we should amend the Constitutional clause that says that the American President must be an American citizen by birth.  They liked Schwarzenegger's mass appeal in the Golden State, and they thought he could hoodwink the whole country in the same way he did the left coast.  Luckily that plan didn't get very far, but ironically Schwarzenegger is now taking over Donald Trump's hosting duties on "The Celebrity Apprentice."  Coincidence? I wonder.

Trump was the perfect outsider.  He would say all sorts of outrageous stuff to rally the disenfranchised uneducated voter, and at the same time get mainstream leaders, like Paul Ryan, upset with him.  Ryan would flip-flop between shunning Trump and making amends with him, probably to see which would potentially attract more voters, or to further confuse voters.  Is Trump accepted by the mainstream or not?

The other scary thing is the alleged involvement of the former Soviet Union in the 2016 election.  I have heard speculation that this was to help lift the trade embargo with the former Soviet Union so that Exxon Mobil could get access to a vast supply of oil that the Soviets have.

Since Trump has been elected, accusations have been flying back and forth mostly between Trump and the main stream media.  It is like that ancient Chinese curse that gets quoted all the time in the media, "May you live in interesting times."  It looks like "interesting times" are happening now.  I hope the next four years are a lot calmer than the last four weeks.

    

    

I hope women show up en masse to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton has a chance to make history as the first woman to be elected to the office of the United States President.  It would be poetic justice for her to defeat her opponent, Donald Trump, who has in the past boasted about his womanizing.  Women all across the country should of course make the effort to get out and vote not only to vote for Clinton, but to come out in force to show the influence and power that they really wield in America.

Yet, there are some diehard Republican women who think that a notoriously narcissistic, less than reputable businessman is still the only clear choice in this election.  They think that Trump's portrayal of Clinton as part of a broken political system that only an outsider like Trump can repair, is an accurate description of our current situation.   I think that electing a woman president is a better option for helping to change politics in America, although it does look like overall Clinton will pretty much maintain the political status quo.  While I think change may be good, the kind of changes that Trump has proposed will spell nothing but trouble for the United States.  I also do not think that Trump has the political wherewithal to make all the the changes he claims he wants to make.

If Clinton is not elected president, the United States will not have have the opportunity to make history, but it will become history.  Women really need to show their support by getting out to vote for Clinton and show the world how much American women really matter.

Republican Party's acceptance of Donald Trump and why this is a bad thing.

I can't believe all the changes that have taken place in past month since I have posted here. Donald Trump managed to get the votes necessary to win the Republican nomination for President. Now, the Republican party looks like it has a truce with Trump.

This should be a warning sign to voters that Trump has no intention of keeping any of his campaign promises, and he will likely fall into to the mode of  the regular right-wing conservative once elected. There will be no wall between the United States and Mexico and there will be renegotiated deals with mainland China.   He has already stated that he has no plans to raise taxes on the rich, he is going to drop taxes on everybody and then gradually raise them on the rich, but they will be paying much less taxes than they currently pay.

It looks like it will be Republican business as usual if Trump is elected.  I think Trump has figured that it is OK to lie to the American people, because most politicians lie anyway.

There is still an outside chance that Trump is shill for Hilary Clinton and when it comes time for the Presidential campaigning he will try to completely alienate himself from voters.  There will be an audio recording of him leaked out saying how he really plans to totally screw over the American worker and help out his new wealthy cronies of the Republican far right.  Or some other purposely leaked information to make sure that Clinton wins the race for President.  This of course, is probably just wishful thinking on my part.

Whatever happens, it has been a wild ride so far.  Jimmy Kimmel live had a sketch featuring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick doing a parody of their Broadway show, "The Producers." They play their characters as campaign managers looking to make Trump a false candidate so he can loose the nomination and they can keep all the campaign money.  Of course their plan backfires like in the play and they loose everything.  This just like how the American people will loose everything if Trump is elected.  

The Controversy over the $15 minimum wage, what rich people are really afraid of.

California and New York now both have $15 an hour minimum wage bills signed into law.  This is great, but I think in most of the urban areas of those states you need at $25 dollars an hour just to get by, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Already there are company CEOs, such as Andy Puzder, of Carl Jr. Burger, saying that he now wants to eliminate jobs with automation as a counter against the minimum wage.

The real thing that the wealthy do not like about the minimum wage, other than taking money out of their own personal profits, is the impact it will have on inflation.  For many business, especially, I would imagine, fast food, the biggest expense is labor cost.  Labor cost increases mean that businesses would have to charge more for goods and services in order to see the same level of profit. Also workers will have more money to spend making more of a demand for other goods and services and their prices will go up. This will start a rise in inflation, and if you like to gamble on the stock market like many wealthy people do, you will have a harder time borrowing money because inflation will ultimately make interest payments go up.  The stock market won't get the infusion cash it needs and stock prices will ultimately go down, making it very hard to make easy money with stock investments.  This why stock markets tend to drop in value when investors hear that the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates.

Andy Puzder is a long way off from Henry Ford, who wanted to make sure his employees made a fair wage in order for them to afford the cars that they were building in his factory.  A well paid employee is actually good for business and good for making the economy grow.  Poor and middle income people who have money are more likely to spend the money they earn because in many cases they have no other choice, while wealthy people can horde their money in offshore banks that will do no good to anyone other than the bank and themselves.  Henry Ford understood Keynesian economics, and I think the wealthy business owners understand Keynes as well they just choose to ignore him for an economic policy that says that they get to keep all of the money.

I just cannot believe how callous wealthy people can be to the common man.  The minimum wage increase helps make their lives more comfortable, but this is unacceptable to the wealthy just so they can make greater profits and fatten their own wallets.

The media's negative spin on Bernie Sanders.

The mainstream media is really downplaying Bernie Sanders's state primary and caucus wins and greatly touting Hillary Clinton's victories.  Could it be that corporate controlled media is afraid of a Sanders presidential candidate nomination?  Clinton is really the Republican-light candidate and would fit in with business-as-usual politics, therefore I am not surprised that the media is spinning a certain Clinton victory.  But I am thinking that things are not so certain.

The Republican party is so hell-bent on getting rid of Trump, but I think that Trump will disappear if Sanders gets the nomination.  This is because I still believe that Trump is a shill for Hillary.   I think if Republican party wants Trump to go away they should make sure that Sanders wins in all of the remaining states and gets the presidential nomination.

I do hope that Sanders gets the nomination because I do believe he is the only hope for saving the American middle class.