Category: money

Epstein and the End of Many a Legacy

What puzzles me is that there are so many, mostly republican, people in our government who are willing to aggressively protect those who perpetrated the acts that were clearly perpetrated on children per the Epstein files, including rape, torture and possibly even murder and god help us, cannibalism. These people are committing their own act, the only act, that they will be remembered by and for. Henceforth, that is all they are or will ever be.  

Are they just in too deep to turn around? Is there fear of those in power so strong are their desire to be among them? Is there some other reason they are doing this to themselves and their kids, grandkids… to their name? I just don’t get it. As long as they are remembered, they will be remembered for this.

However

Tucker Carlson has turned around. The dude’s actually saying that he was conned by Trump and recognizes his complicity in Trump’s success. Just like that. He’s saying it out loud. And this might be very, very important. If others in the MAGA cult see this and realize, shit, it’s no big deal to just admit you were wrong, we might be able to come closer together as the 90%. T

he other 10% have been eating our lunch for decades just because they were able to create so much division among us. Trans people? DEI? These are the things that are so important to our lives, that we attack one another in a great show of… what? 

A great show of distraction. While the wealthy continued on with their incredible amassing of all the wealth and power this nation and planet had to offer, they and their media were pushing you and I to focus on the dangers of transvestites, which of course would pit those who do not like or understand transvestites (sex, gender and all of that is complex) and who probably have never met any transvestites, against people who thought very, very rarely of trans people, unless they were close to someone, but suddenly were fired up to scream about protecting the trans people and vilify anyone who might not like or understand trans people. 

It was like a powder keg. An issue that has so very little to do with running our nation became one of a few that we focused on, because the politicians and the media focused on it. I would ask everyone, how has your life been truly affected by the existence of trans people? Or immigrants? Or simply people who are different from you?

It’s embarrassing how much we’ve been duped. And continue to be duped. But look at Tucker Carlson! He just admitted he was wrong and that what he was doing was part of the ruination of the nation. We all have a part in this, some more than others. So, 90 percenters, let’s get back together and focus on the real enemies – the rich and powerful.  If we don’t, they win again and again and again.

Bad Business

“Based on the latest figures from Experian, the average new-car loan interest rate for a buyer with excellent credit was 5.18% for the first quarter of this year. But that average jumps to 15.81% for borrowers with a poor credit history.”

It’s a sad feature of our financial system that those with the least ability to afford something are often forced the pay the most for that very thing. The further up the food chain the less they often pay for food, chains, cars, whatever. They would argue that those with bad credit, with less ability to pay, are more likely to default, which I would assume is true. But let’s say you have an insanely large percentage of defaults – like, 30%, well, then 70% of those same people stuck it out, despite it all, giving you more money than you deserve, maybe? 

Of course, they are not in business to be nice, but to make as much money as they possibly can and unfortunately, that is mostly made off those with less money and little power. Rich people have more power, more choices, more everything, and they cannot possibly purchase – even with their fancy yachts and mansions – enough to rival the giant middle to lower classes. So, they developed a system that makes the most money off the giant middle to lower classes.

That’s also why they charge $30 late fees; can you imagine what it actually cost that lender to get a late payment? It’s almost too small to imagine. Now imagine selling something that happens automatically with no human intervention for $30 – constantly – over and over and over, day after day, seven days a week. The late fees department must have one impressive profitability.

But of course, that is not the only way to run your business. You can make money and be good, too. There are lots of good businesses out there making good money by being good, caring about their customers, never overcharging, yet being paid well for what they do. But none of the giant companies – the huge multinational banks and the like – are good. You have to wonder if a business gets to a certain size does it automatically get kind of sick in the head? Does huge always ultimately lead to heartless? And short-sighted modern-day investors don’t help either. 

What would that look like? A VISA or Chase Manhattan or USBank that ran a much tighter ship, like their grandpa would have? Make good money, but god dammit, be good! Could that exist in the jungle of the financial sector? When I was young, credit card rates were often 5.99%, 7.99%; I remember when I saw 9.99% for the first time and thought it was the apocalypse. And it does beg the question, why have the average credit card rates gone up across the board so much? To what do they attribute that? Have we all gotten so bad that we must be charged more? And even during COVID when they were borrowing at zero percent, their rates never came down. It should be noted that they borrow at like one or two percent now. And now the only people who could get a rate like those these days are, again, those who don’t need it. 

That’s the system. And most people are perfectly fine with it. The wealthy are, of course, and those with less are too busy getting by to think much about it. 

Manufacturing in America

If we believe in America and want to bring manufacturing back to the United States, we need to recognize and embrace two things: 

  1. It will take a lot of time. Factories need to be planned and built along with the corporations who will own and run them. Then there is training for new employees, mostly robots, but some people, too. If you look at the Biden Administration’s work (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction act, CHIPS and Science Act) they helped create over 700,000 new manufacturing jobs with over $910 billion in private investment. And, yes, manufacturing soared during the administration, but it took some time (and a lot of people who know what they’re doing working very hard). Now, just imagine with President Trump will achieve with his tariffs. I’m excited to see how many jobs he creates and how much money businesses invest in this new America he is creating right before our eyes! Those factories should be popping up all around us and right soon!
  2. It will cost a lot more. Buying a pair of pants (or a hammer or computer) made in America, the richest nation in the world, in a state-of-the-art factory, even with robots, will cost a lot more than one made in a Vietnamese factory, where the average worker makes $4,623 per year. But we are proud and patriotic Americans! We can suck up the cost and sacrifice other things we want, and in fact can start right now by purchasing everything we possibly can made in America and from smaller local shops. We must understand that this will require real changes for each of us. Rarely, if ever, setting foot into any Walmart or Target (what’s made in America in those places?) will be quite a change for those of us who darken their doors all too often. But if we love America, we must, right? 

And while I’m not sure if firing all the people who know what they’re doing and work very hard will help, nor whether tariffs put on every other country on the planet will do any good, but I’m a patriot and I’m going to pay the price by purchasing everything I can made in America! Who’s with me?

One more thing, anyone know a good American smartphone company who manufactures here in the good old USA? I need a new phone. 

Another letter never published

I like to write letters to the editor and here’s one (of many) they ignored.

The column inches dedicated to the cost of eggs over the last year has been absolutely ludicrous. Eggs are expensive because there is a shortage of eggs because we humans had to kill millions and millions of egg-laying chickens due to the bird flu. A shortage of something leads to an increase in price. Even our dear leader* can’t do anything about it, short of firing all the people tasked with killing the chickens or possibly adding bleach to their feeding tubes to treat the flu. 

But I Play One on TV

I’m not a vegetarian but I mostly act like one. I just don’t eat much meat at all. I replace it with more veggies, beans, tofu, mock duck and those new fake meats you can buy at the store. Why? Because I feel much better physically. I’m leaner and lighter, yet stronger and more confident. That’s a good enough reason for me. 

But there’s an op-ed in the Minnesota Star Tribune today by a guy named Ron Way. He’s a former assistant director of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. He’s reviewing a book by Sonja Trom Ayres who grew up on a family farm in Dodge County in southern Minnesota. The book is titled: “Dodge County Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America” 

Way, and more thoroughly in Trom Ayres’  book, which I have not read, spell out the effects of corporate farming on the animals and on the communities that were once filled with family farms. Instead, as Way writes, our “farmland has been transformed, mostly out of sight and little noticed, with look-alike, elongated buildings where tens of millions of hogs, cattle and poultry live short lives in crowded crud, guzzling feed for fattening in prep for a one-way trip to slaughter.”

I’ve noticed all those buildings and just sort of assumed they were chickens and turkeys. I did not realize that hogs and cattle were locked up there as well, and that is probably why I see so fewer cows out in pastures than I used to. If you’ve been around hogs and cows, you know that they are not, well, chickens. They’re intelligent, emotional, and have rich inner lives. It’s possible chickens are similar and you can tell me if that is so, I do know that they live the short, brutish lives of all of these animals, but I’m guessing they’re not dolphin, octopus or my dog smart. 

They are not referred to as farms either, but “feedlots”, which sounds about as depressing as it could. Way goes on, “more than 23,000 feedlots now dot the Minnesota’s farm country,” and adds, “annually producing 49 million tons of manure – a waste-equivalent 17 times the state’s entire population.”

That’s a whole lot of shit to get rid of and they talk about how that works and doesn’t work, the immigrants who work the feedlots, the dying small towns, and much more. It’s one big-ass shit sandwich. 

So, there’s another reason I act like a vegetarian. I can’t get behind that sick system. They torture the animals, destroy the towns and livelihoods of the people who live there, remove the money from the communities and up to corporate “big ag”. It’s just so horribly wrong in so many ways. Anyone for a mock duck salad?

Stop the money. Save the nation.

I do this every once in a while where I write something after some immersion in the bad news of the day. Note that the current bad news is worse than it’s ever been in my lifetime. But I start pontificating on the evil, greed, hate and blah, blah, blah. This time I’m quite a bit more freaked out but when I got done and reread it, I was struck by how silly it all is. Bestowing upon the world my opinions on whatever. Here’s what we need to do! Whatever. But it’s cathartic and so ultimately it’s worth it, right? And I kind of like this one. Here goes:

Everybody right now open an account on Bluesky. Good Americans can talk there. 

Completely shut down all of your other social media accounts –  X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc. All of them. We’ll do this fast and we’ll do this right and you can get your accounts back. Grab your data, or start fresh. Do it now. 

Do not buy anything from any of those companies – purchase nothing on Amazon, close those accounts also, do not buy a Tesla, if you have one, enjoy it and drive it into the ground. Do not use Elon Musk’s satellite connections, nor any of his other companies, and those of you who do the science as astronomers and engineers and the like working for him, you’re smart! Get the fuck out of there! Anybody working for any of those companies, walk now.

Disrupt the activity of everything related to those same businesses. This of course includes Trump companies.  Whatever you can do. Good hackers, this especially means you. Blow our minds.

Yes, this will create hardship, but if we do this fast and we do this right, we’ll get through it easily and the old-fashioned way, taking care of one another, looking after our neighbors. We’re the good Americans, remember? We can take a little hardship. In fact, we can take a lot of hardship to save the nation – and ourselves, our families, our loved ones, our friends and coworkers and neighbors.

If we do this fast and we do this right, we can avoid violence of any kind. That being said, everyone be prepared to the best of your abilities. 

The only two things they understand are money and power, and they will stop at nothing to use their power to bring us to our knees and take all the money for themselves. They are doing it right now. Right in front of our eyes. We must immediately stop the flow of any money into their businesses.

Please pass this on to everyone you know. 

Yesterday and Today

[Yesterday]

I’m sick. And I’m sad. And I think I’m losing my mind. Nothing’s falling into place like it tends to. In fact, things seem to be falling upward and out of my control. But I’m sick – sore throat, fever, sleepy as hell, so the falling upward is a good description to my feverish mind. It truly feels like life is being sucked up around me into some slo-mo tornado so I can reach up to try to, but grab nothing. It’s out of reach. It’s out of control. It’s nightmarish. 

It’s the emotions
that swirl like air
whirling the debris
of life 
of which
I’ve lost control.

***

[Today: So my therapist tells me to journal when I’m at a point like I was yesterday and I got this far in my writing when my phone rang and it was a good friend who just called to see how I was doing. I was able to articulate my frustrations and fears about life, love, work, money and the state of the nation. He talked me back from the ledge and we were soon laughing. He was just doing what friends do and didn’t have any idea how incredibly well-timed, important and helpful it was to me. Keep your friends close. And don’t be afraid to reach out to them before you get to this point – something I need to get much better at.] 

Remember Science?

When I was a young man, science was the one place all Americans could agree on, even if they didn’t understand the science itself. That is because they understood the scientific method that simply states that we don’t know something until we can prove something, a terrible paraphrase. So, in the case of climate change, it is understood that CO2 traps heat. That is proven and so everyone should get behind that, but what that would mean in our day to day lives, we weren’t sure about and so could be discussed without stepping on the scientific method. Turns out, by the way, they underestimated how serious it would be. But no one in those days was against science. It would be like being against curiosity or the desire to learn more or understand something better.

That has changed. Over the years, the Republican Party has embraced an anti-science agenda, which is beyond weird until you consider the source. Despite what any republican voter thinks, that party is in place for the ultra-wealthy and keeping them that way. They don’t care about the border or trans people or any of the other issues they throw at their voters to get them riled up. Republicans had the White House, senate and house during Trump’s first presidency and they did absolutely nothing about the border. These types of issues are golden for republicans for the very reason stated above, they need them to rile up the base and get them to vote based on these issues, while paying no attention to what really matters. And it works. I can’t tell you how many Minnesotan republicans I’ve seen interviewed who brought up the borders. Minnesota. Only Alaska is farther away from the southern border, I think. Oh, and Hawaii. They’re riled up as they eat fruit picked by immigrants, go to restaurants with kitchen staffs filled with immigrants, have repairs done on their homes by immigrants and so on. And just how many Minnesotans have had a bad experience with a trans person? None?

The new Trump White House just abruptly cancelled all scientific meetings without any rescheduling. This included gatherings and panels and the like. But why? Because if we followed the science, we’d have to invest in policies that will help the whole nation, and the entire world, in the case of climate change. We’d get behind renewable energies, which are scientifically proven to be better in our fight against climate change. The new issue is that those renewable energies are costing less and less and less due to science-based upgrades to the technology and the costs of manufacturing. So, you’d think that republicans, who famously hate paying for anything and particularly taxes, would embrace renewable energies. Nope.

But that gets to another point about republicans. Yes, they would save the nation money now, bring down he cost of energy for all of America, and help the nation and world slow climate change. However, those at the top of the republican pile, the men and women Trump brought on stage at the inauguration, don’t care about saving that kind of money. Whereas, we read constantly stories of homeowners who opted for solar and now not only don’t pay for their electricity but even get money back for it. That’s huge for the average American, republican or democrat, but chump change for those folks. It’s not even on their radar. But what is on their radar? The wealthy fossil fuel industry who would rather watch the world burn than lose their oversized piece of the American pie.

Elon Musk, who sat on stage with Trump and offered up a Nazi salute(?) and gave a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump for his reelection, among other things makes electric cars and solar panels. Does Elon Musk care about climate change? Ten years ago I would have said, yes, absolutely! But now, not at all. He saw profits, money and power, and he got them all in spades. He spent 250 million dollars on a man who hates electric cars and solar and wind and so on. But Musk knows that electric cars are our future, as are solar panels, so he plays both games.

I’m certain we need better science and civics education in high school – and throughout high school. Civics should not be a one-off class as it was for me. The science doesn’t need to go particularly deep, but create a good understanding with students about its importance, the scientific method, and how it is absolutely ignorant to somehow turn against it as Republicans have. As for civics, our voters are woefully ignorant of this and without an understanding of our governments, what they do and our role in making them work, we’re screwed.

When you think about it the earth is our only actual god that we can be sure of and the earth gives us everything and every opportunity to live and thrive as long as we’re nice to it

Like Holy Shit

It comes from the earth
natural processes like
the earth working
on the earth
or a still
cooking dead life
to a new drug
(num num)
petroleum

A junkie surrounded
detritus floating
an oily flotilla
ridiculous ludicrous
malleable colorful
in and out of focus
a pendulum
travesty/convenience
but there
always there everywhere
plastic/petroleum
petroleum/plastic
micro
plastics
everywhere
like holy shit