Ever wonder why elected "officials" from both parties are really interested in U.S. borders?
It's obviously not about refugees or the reasons desperate people are trying to get into the U.S. Certainly its never been about humanitarian issues. There is no money in that.
However, there is a great deal of money available to the "border industrial complex" of corporations to militarize our southern border.
Here's the story:
The Truth About the U.S. Border | Robert Reich, 15 June 2021
For just a moment or two, please join me as we travel way
back in time to 29 Nov 2016, when we last visited the Swamp topic: Ah... about Draining That Swamp...
Yes, we were younger back then… but not dumber.
When Mr. Trump crowed about draining the D.C. swamp, most of
us knew he was just spewing more B.S. to keep his followers' minds occupied
with delusions of: "He's doing things no one else, especially Democrats,
would think of doing, getting rid of the nasty people who steal my tax money and
give it to the black/brown/illegal alien/do-nothings-on-welfare scum.”
So, what has transpired?
Here’s former Labor Sec. Dr. Robert Reich to bring us up-to-date about that swamp
and its creepy occupants, who are now working for Mr. Trump and screwing you
over. “You” means 99.9% of the U.S. population - even those who voted for Mr.
Trump and still support him to this minute.
5 Ways Trump Has NOT Drained the Swamp with Robert Reich
"So long as the oligarchy divides Americans – split off people of color from working-class whites, stoke racial resentments, describe human beings as illegal aliens, launch wars on crime and immigrants, stoke fears of communists and socialists – it doesn’t have to worry that a majority will stop them from looting the nation."
"Divide-and-conquer allows the oligarchy free rein. It makes the rest of us puppets, fighting each other on a made-up stage." "Trump is the puppet master." - Robert Reich
Personally, I prefer no strings attached. Thank you very much.
I keep hearing that the Democratic party has moved “left” and that some Democratic candidates may be “too far left”.
But in this era of unprecedented concentration of wealth and political power at the top, I can’t help wondering what it means to be “left”.
A half-century ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, those on the “left” sought stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads and research. Those on the “right” sought greater reliance on the free market.
But as wealth and power have concentrated at the top, everyone else – whether on the old right or the old left – has become disempowered and less secure.
Safety nets have unraveled, public investments have waned and the free market has been taken over by crony capitalism and corporate welfare cheats. Washington and state capitals are overwhelmed by money coming from the super-rich, Wall Street and big corporations.
So why do we continue to hear and use the same old “right” and “left” labels?
I suspect it’s because the emerging oligarchy feels safer if Americans are split along the old political battle lines. That way, Americans won’t notice they’re being shafted.
In reality, the biggest divide in America today runs between oligarchy and democracy. When oligarchs fill the coffers of political candidates, they neuter democracy.
The oligarchs know politicians won’t bite the hands that feed them. So as long as they control the money, they can be confident there will be no meaningful response to stagnant pay, climate change, military bloat or the soaring costs of health insurance, pharmaceuticals, college and housing.
There will be no substantial tax increases on the wealthy. There will be no antitrust enforcement to puncture the power of giant corporations. No meaningful regulation of Wall Street’s addiction to gambling with other peoples’ money. No end to corporate subsides. CEO pay will continue to skyrocket. Wall Street hedge fund and private equity managers will continue to make off like bandits.
So long as the oligarchy divides Americans – split off people of color from working-class whites, stoke racial resentments, describe human beings as illegal aliens, launch wars on crime and immigrants, stoke fears of communists and socialists – it doesn’t have to worry that a majority will stop them from looting the nation.
Divide-and-conquer allows the oligarchy free rein. It makes the rest of us puppets, fighting each other on a made-up stage.
Trump is the puppet master.
He has been at it for years, long before he ran for president. He knows how to pit native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, whites against blacks and Latinos.
He is well-versed in getting evangelicals and secularists steamed up about abortion, equal marriage rights, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, transgender bathrooms.
He knows how to stir up fears of brown-skinned people from “shitholes” streaming across the border to murder and rape, and stoke anger about black athletes who don’t stand for the national anthem.
He’s a master at fueling anxieties about so-called communists, socialists and the left taking over America.
He can make the white working class believe they’ve been losing good jobs and wages because of a cabal of Democrats, “deep state” bureaucrats and Hillary Clinton.
From the start, Trump’s deal with the oligarchy has been simple: he’ll stoke tribalism so most Americans won’t see CEOs getting exorbitant pay while they’re slicing the pay of average workers, won’t pay attention to Wall Street demanding short-term results over long-term jobs, and won’t notice a boardroom culture that tolerates financial conflicts of interest, insider trading and the outright bribery of public officials through unlimited campaign “donations”.
The only way to overcome the oligarchy and Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back.
That means creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans who will fight for democracy and oppose oligarchy.
White, black and Latino; union and non-union; evangelical and secular; immigrant and native-born – all focused on ending big money in politics, stopping corporate welfare and crony capitalism, busting up monopolies and stopping voter suppression.
This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything else America must do.
I'm hazarding a guess that most of the people in the U.S., that is the 99.9%, would agree that our system is broken. It's out of balance so to speak, with the .01% holding the winning hand, politically and economically, too.
How has this come about? Dr. Robert Reich has a good explanation.
"...go back to the first three decades after World War II – a period that coupled the greatest economic expansion the world has ever seen with the creation of the largest middle class the world has ever witnessed. The great economic thinker John Kenneth Galbraith asked at the time: Why is capitalism working so well for so many?"
"His answer was as surprising as it was obvious: American capitalism contained hidden pools of what he called 'countervailing power' that offset the power of large corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy: labor unions, state and local banks, farm cooperatives, and small retail chains, for example. All of these sources of countervailing power had been fostered by the New Deal. They balanced the American economic system."
"But since the late 1970's, these sources of countervailing power have been decimated, leading to an unbalanced system and producing widening economic inequality and stagnating wages. The result has become a vicious cycle in which big money–emanating from big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy – determine the rules of the economic game, and those rules generate more money at the top."
This morning I woke thinking about a cartoon scene from the past. Maybe it was the snow falling around the lake and trees outside the bedroom window. Or, Carli’s reassuring snoring. (Carli, our beloved K-9 gift from above.) I’m not exactly sure why — but it was lingering in my mind nonetheless. It went like this:
“I think I can! I think I can!”, the little engine that could kept saying. On it puffed and pulled. On and on, until it climbed all the mountains, crossed all the rivers, and pulled the little train to its destination. “I knew I could! I knew I could!”, the little engine that could finally said. (Please see below.)
That scene kept replaying in my mind.
Why? Is there some esoteric reason for my subconscious to pull up the child’s story?
“Well, yes… maybe,” I thought. The day before I stumbled upon a Robert Reich video about war economy spending and his thoughts about a better use of Mr. Trump’s $200 billion increase in military spending. He explained that some 67% of discretionary spending already goes to military related spending. That’s more than $700 billion. So, couldn't we chose to use that money for more life-affirming uses?
Better use for Mr. Trump's $200 billion in additional War Economy spending.
Oh, by the way, Dr. Reich also pointed out that over the next few years, military cost overruns are projected to reach about $484 billion and the Pentagon itself says by reducing operational overhead some $125 billion could be saved.
It’s a good time, don’t you agree, for the Pentagon people to adopt a “little engine that could” determination and get control of the operational overhead and cost overruns. After all, it’s no longer chump change. We’re talkin’ a few big bucks now. We can do it, too. We can demand that Congress actually do it's job and actually gain accountability by overseeing the Pentagon operations.
I think we can! I think we can!
Robert Reich: The Military-Industrial Drain
Nothing Can Stop Us Now - The Little Engine That Could - 1991
Throughout my career as a marketing and media relations consultant, I have had the good fortune to help many people achieve their dreams. All were smart and dedicated. None, to my knowledge, purposely tried to hurt or take advantage of anyone. They worked hard to bring new ideas, services and products to their customers. They hired many people and paid them fairly. Today, several rank among our nation’s millionaires.
I’m proud of my small role in helping them succeed because I know they deserve their successes.
Still, despite all their wealth, not one is a member of the .001%, the oligarchs now disassembling our nation, the United States.
Perhaps, someday, the oligarchs’ “useful idiots”, the Republican Party and the American voters who put Trump into office, may realize their mistake, as they try to exercise their former Constitutionally guaranteed rights. But it will be to no avail.
By then, I expect I’ll be long gone or in my mind-sapping dotage, parked in my wheelchair, staring at a fish tank, in some God forsaken “nursing home”, just like so many of the people I see today “living out” their final days on this Earth under our “healthcare” system.
As I see it, the Republican tax plan is just another nail in our collective coffin.
All this is clearly in the stars for us. Unless we, the 99.9%, have some sort of a mass epiphany and together see “the light” to begin to restore our “Constitutional Federal Republic” experiment, The United States of America.
I agree with Dr. Robert Reich's* perspective about this Republican Tax. Here is what he has to say:
The Republican tax plan to be voted on this week is likely to pass.
“The American people have waited 31 long years to see our broken tax code overhauled,” the leaders of the Koch’s political network insisted in a letter to members of Congress, urging swift approval, adding that the time had come to put “more money in the pockets of American families.”
Please. The Koch network doesn’t care a fig about the pockets of American families. It cares about the pockets of the Koch network.
It has poured money into almost every state in an effort to convince Americans that the tax cut will be good for them. Yet most Americans don’t believe it.
Polls shows only about a third of Americans favor the tax plan. The vast majority feel it’s heavily skewed to the rich and big businesses – which it is.
In counties that Trump won but Obama carried in 2012, only 17 percent say they expect to pay less in taxes, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Another 25 percent say they expected their family would actually pay higher taxes.
Most Americans know that the tax plan is payback for major Republican donors. Gary Cohn, Trump’s lead economic advisor, even conceded in an interview that “the most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.”
Republican Rep. Chris Collins admitted “my donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’” Senator Lindsey Graham warned that if Republicans failed to pass the tax plan, “the financial contributions will stop.”
By passing it, Republican donors will save billions – paying a lower top tax rate, doubling the amount their heirs can receive tax-free, and treating themselves as “pass-through” businesses able to deduct 20 percent of their income (effectively allowing Trump to cut his tax rate in half, if and when he pays taxes).
They’ll make billions more as their stock portfolios soar because corporate taxes are slashed.
The biggest winners by far will be American oligarchs such as the Koch brothers; Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor; Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate; Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets football team and heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune; and Carl Icahn, the activist investor.
The oligarchs are the richest of the richest 1 percent. They’ve poured hundreds of millions into the GOP and Trump. About 40 percent of all contributions for the entire federal election came from the richest 0.01 percent of the American population.
The giant tax cut has been their core demand from the start. They also want to slash regulations, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and cut everything else government does except for defense – including Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
In return, they have agreed to finance Trump and the GOP, and mount expensive public relations campaigns that magnify their lies.
Trump has fulfilled his end of the bargain. He’s blinded much of his white working-class base to the reality of what’s happening by means of his racist, xenophobic rants and policies.
The American oligarchs couldn’t care less about what all this will cost America.
Within their gated estates and private jets, they’re well insulated from the hatefulness and divisiveness,
They don’t worry about whether Social Security or Medicare will be there for them in their retirement because they’ve put away huge fortunes.
Climate change doesn’t concern them because their estates are fully insured against hurricanes, floods, and wildfires.
They don’t care about public schools because their families don’t attend them. They don’t care about public transportation because they don’t use it. They don’t care about the poor because they don’t see them.
They don’t worry about the rising budget deficit because they borrow directly from global capital markets.
Truth to tell, they don’t even care that much about America because their personal and financial interests are global.
They are living in their own separate society, and they want Congress and the President to represent them, not the rest of us.
The Republican Party is their vehicle. Fox News is their voice. Trump is their champion. The new tax plan is their triumph.
But if polls showing most Americans against the tax cut are any guide, that triumph may be short lived. Americans are catching on.
The recent electoral results in Virginia and Alabama offer further evidence.
A tidal wave of public loathing is growing across the land – toward Trump, the GOP, and the oligarchs they serve; and to the deception, the wealth, and the power that underlies them.
That wave could crash in the midterm elections of 2018. If so, the current triumph of the oligarchs will be the start of their undoing.
* ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR ALL. Bruce Springsteen - We Take Care of Our Own
These past few days have been frightening. The Republicans seem to have galloped off into total insanity. And I fear the Democrats, while adopting a Progressive leaning platform, will continue the same-old-same-old oligarchy and march the nation into Fascism. In this video report, Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Clinton, and Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, capture my concerns. What are your thoughts?
