Week of 09/28/2020

 

America, Let’s Just Cancel 2020
– by David Matthews 2

Okay, America: I’m just going to say it.

Let’s just cancel 2020.

I mean, pretty much everything since April has been ruined or otherwise diminished thanks to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Think for a moment about all of the things that we’ve lost.  We’ve had schools closed early and re-start late.  We’ve had concerts and conventions and big public events cancelled.  We’ve lost millions and millions of jobs.  Businesses have been shut down.  Restaurants and movie theaters have been closed, some of them forever.  The Gross Domestic Product lost more this year than in American history!  That includes the Great Recession and the Great Depression!

Every month since April, we’ve been looking at the calendar, and we’ve been asking ourselves what calamity we will be hit with next.  Unprecedented numbers of hurricanes, earthquakes in places not normally known for them, tornadoes, wildfires that could be seen from the International Space Station and whose smoke literally crosses the continent!  We’re watching for possible asteroid strikes, volcano eruptions, and folks in Texas just were warned about a brain-eating ameboma in their drinking water!

Even the entertainment we could watch from home has been affected!  This past TV season had to end early for a lot of shows since they couldn’t finish their planned season because of the pandemic.  Those that could had to employ weird uses of computer animation and teleconferencing.  And then the new season of shows won’t even be ready until at least January.  We’re watching repeats from last season and acting like they’re new.

As of this column’s post, it is the last few days of September, and people are already talking about cancelling Halloween and Black Friday.  Or, at the very least, minimizing them.

And this is all on us, America.  All of it.

Yes, the virus came to us from China by way of Europe.  But they didn’t give us the ignorance, the politicized denial of science, the outright sabotage of our medical institutions to properly deal with and report on those infected and those dead, the out-and-out hostile resistance to testing and to taking even measured steps to stop the spread of the virus, such as wearing masks and practicing social distancing.  We can’t blame China or Russia or even Mexico for any of that.  That is all 100% “Made in the U.S. of A”!

And it is because of that fatal mix of ignorance, incompetence, sabotage, and genocide, that America is still in the “first wave” of the pandemic.  We’re not even trying to stop it.  Other nations have barred us from going there because of it.  We are a plague-ridden embarrassment to the rest of the civilized world.  That is not hysteria.  That is a fact.

Why?  Because those other countries took the steps to identify, trace, control, and contain the infection during their first wave.  They didn’t kvetch like a certain orange-skinned narcissist did about “not causing a panic” or lie about available protective gear and testing or whine about profits.  They didn’t call it a “hoax” or claim that it would one day magically go away.  They shut down their businesses and stores and sent their people home and kept them home until it was safe enough for them to venture back out.  And because they did that, they’re just starting things back up.  That’s why the TV shows filmed in Vancouver are just starting up again and why the new season will start in January.

But, no, that’s not how we roll here in ‘Murica.  Not with said orange-skinned narcissist in the White House and his legion of hostile extremists all across the country.  No, we put profits ahead of people.  We put Wall Street ahead of Main Street and our street.  We whine about not getting our hair colored and our nails done and not being allowed to get a drink or eat a meal or get together like we used to.  We flip the bird when it comes to mask mandates and restrictions to how we gather.  We show up at political rallies and holiday events, not giving one care about whether or not any of us get infected, get sick, or even die.

Over seven million Americans have been infected as of this article.  Over two-hundred thousand have died as of this column posting.  A lot of them didn’t have to die.  The rest are getting hospital bills that range from $90,000 to over a million, and there is no guarantee that their insurance will cover any of it.  And those that survive will forever be diminished because of it.  They will have a pre-existing condition for future injuries and illnesses.

We give lip service to masks and social distancing, and we are putting all our hopes on a vaccine that may or may not be ready in the next few months, and may or may not work, and, even if it does, will not be distributed to enough people to make a serious dent to the infection rate for at least another year.  And all so said orange-stained narcissist can win an election.

Well, let’s just go ahead and cancel the rest of 2020’s events with the lone exception of the general election.  Cancel Halloween, cancel Thanksgiving, cancel Christmas, and cancel New Year’s Eve and even New Year’s Day.  Make the holiday shopping spree a cyber-season and teleconference your family reunions.  Got a nice tree?  Put it up on Instagram and crack open some pine-scented air fresheners.  YouTube the caroling, and stream some old football games from ESPN.  The only real travelling for the rest of the year should be done by delivery trucks, and from electronic communication.

But, of course, we won’t do that.  Because let’s get brutally honest here… we’re ‘Muricans.  We expect Jesus to protect us, even as more of us fall victim to the pandemic.

I used to laugh when I hear ministers proclaim “Our Gawd is stronger than your virus” and then suddenly end up in the hospital with the virus.  But I don’t laugh about that anymore.  I get pissed.  I get pissed because their arrogance is part of the reason why are a plague-ridden embarrassment to the rest of the civilized world.

It is our collective ignorance and pious self-righteous arrogance, not to mention gross executive incompetence and genocidal negligence, that has prolonged the pandemic in this country.  We could have been spending the end of 2020 like we’ve wanted to.  But that would have depended on widespread testing and tracing and by everyone actually wearing masks and practicing social distancing back in April instead of throwing temper tantrums.  Yeah, let’s wait in line for two hours at the airport while we take off our shoes and have our bodies randomly searched, and let’s have our kids carry backpacks half their size and weight and go through metal detectors and have random shooter drills, but how dare we be told to wear a mask at the Wal-Mart for thirty minutes!

So let’s cancel the rest of the year, but not the election.  We need to keep that; because that is the only way we can vote out the people responsible for us being the global embarrassment that we are.  We need to vote out the ones that tell us this is a “hoax” that will “soon go away”.  The ones that admit to hindering testing and demand we put profits over people.  It’s the only way that we can hold them accountable for this. 

Because they’re really not paying the price for us having to cancel much of 2020.  We are the ones that are paying for it.  That’s on us. 

 

 

Week of 09/21/2020

 America Has Already Lost
– by David Matthews 2

In the 2004 disaster movie “The Day After Tomorrow”, there is a scene where the meteorologist in Scotland talks to our protagonist over the phone and talks about the looming extreme climate shift that will kill most of the people in the northern hemisphere by the end of the movie.  Our protagonist asks his friend in Scotland to evacuate when the worst starts to reach them.

“I’m afraid that time has come and gone, my friend” was the reply.

I hate to say it, but that is us as a nation right now.

On September 18^th, 2020, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away after her prolonged fight with cancer.  It is believed that she held on not only to life but also to her position in the United States Supreme Court for as long as she did on the hope that a different person would be in the White House and that the U.S. Senate would be in better hands soon.

Sadly, she could not live long enough to see that day happen, if it ever could.

Sadder still, her death also dooms this country.

Just days prior to her passing, the orange-skinned fascist, Narcissist President Donald Trump, the man-child who sees himself as a king, announced his short list to replace Justice Ginsburg in anticipation of her death.  I’m sure that his conspiracy-theory Birther/Pizzagate/Q-Anon nutcase followers might even suspect that he could have something to do with her death, with it having happen so soon to releasing his short-list; except for the fact that we are talking about their messiah and the biggest cheerleader of their lunacy.  The world of conspiracy only works for the nutcases, not against them.

Still, Narcissist Trump now has the perverse pleasure of choosing a third Supreme Court justice in just his first term in office, and to shift the court from a marginal 5-4 majority to a dominant 6-3 majority.  The highest court in the country will soon be controlled by conservatives and fascists.

I know some of you are about to say “Hold on, sir, whatever selection the president picks still has to go through the Senate.  They could stop this from happening or at least wait until after the November election.”

Right.  The “delay”.

Because in 2016, after the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Senate Majority Leader and all-around a-hole Mitch “the Bitch” McConnell declared that no Supreme Court vacancy would be filled on an election year.  He claimed it was a “tradition”.  A “tradition” that he manufactured for the sole purpose of denying President Barack Obama his third justice. 

Bitch McConnell abused his power to make sure that Obama’s nominee never could be heard, never mind deliberated.  Bitch McConnell even said that, depending on the outcome of the 2016 Fraud, that the vacancy could stay empty indefinitely, keeping the highest court in the country deadlocked at 4-4.

But, of course, the election did turn out in Bitch’s favor, and he not only confirmed Narcissist Trump’s first pick in the form of Neil Gorsuch without delay, but then ramrodded Narcissist Trump’s second nominee – Brett Kavanaugh – through confirmation like a fraternity on a drunk girl.  Both done in a naked abuse of partisan power.

And now, Bitch McConnell gets the opportunity to do it at least one more time.

Do you really think that Bitch McConnell will actually heed a “tradition” that he manufactured in 2016 and wait?  This is the same person and the same political faction that rigged the Impeachment Trial this past January so their messiah would never be convicted for his abuses of power.  The same person and the same political faction that has been spending every moment in session filling the judiciary of Narcissist Trump’s nominees in record time instead of worrying about a global pandemic or the collapsing American economy.  The same person and the same political faction, I will add, that spent the previous eight years openly denying and otherwise blocking all judicial and executive nominees.  You know, when the White House was being occupied by a certain dark-skinned man named Obama. 

By the way, I’m not saying that the slack-jawed pale-skinned bitch from Kentucky is racially bigoted, of course.  Just politically bigoted.

And, unlike 2016, Bitch McConnell is up for re-election this year.  He may not have a chance to abuse his power after January, even if his messiah cheats and wins.  The same with all the other senators who have supposedly promised to keep Narcissist Trump “in check”.  A promise they have all failed to keep before and a promise that they will undoubtedly fail to keep now.  They’re all up for re-election.  They’re sure as hell are not going to adhere to a “tradition” that only existed to deny Obama a third SCOTUS seat.

I’ve even heard some people whine on Twitter about Justice Ginsburg supposedly not stepping down years before the 2016 Fraud.  I’m sorry, but that kind of complaining is not only disrespectful of the woman, but also unrealistic.  Did you not forget the Scalia vacancy?  The only thing that would result in Ginsburg stepping down in 2016 instead of 2020 is that Bitch McConnell would then have two vacancies to hold up for Narcissist Trump to fill and a third to follow two years later.

So let’s get brutally honest here… we can pretty much count on Narcissist Trump to rush through a replacement for the late Justice Ginsburg.  We can also count on Bitch McConnell and the rest of the Trump Party loyalists to break political speed records on getting that nominee confirmed and seated.  They want that 6-3 majority in place before the November elections.  They *need* that 6-3 majority so they can try to rig the elections in their favor regardless of the outcome.

Yes, I’m sure that the progressives and liberals and the other non-Trump people can “fight”.  They must fight.  They need to get out there.  They need to march.  They need to peacefully protest.  *Peacefully!*  Jam the phone lines, overload the email servers, make life absolutely miserable for anyone with an “R” (which should be a “T”) next to their names.  Again, *peacefully*!

And absolutely vote!  Even if you’ve never voted before in your miserable mediocre apathetic lives, if you don’t like what you see, then you have an obligation to yourselves and to your country to register to vote and then actually vote in the November election!  Registration is never enough.  Votes count.  Nothing else does.

But none of that will actually change what will happen with the loss of Justice Ginsburg.  The judiciary branch of government is now lost to the rest of America, just like the White House and the U.S. Senate.  We can fix the last two in November, or we can try to.  But the judiciary – with their lifetime appointments – is pretty much lost, and that kind of loss will potentially take generations to fix.

This commentator commends the late justice for her strength and determination for fighting until the bitter end and regrets that it was not enough to hold back the scourge to come.

 

Week of 09/14/2020

The Fifteen-Dollar Fallacy
– by David Matthews 2

In 2018, the Pew Research Center looked at real wages in America and came up with something disturbing.  According to their research, when adjusted for inflation, the real wages for most Americans have been pretty much stagnant for a long time.  And by a “long time” we’re talking since 1973.

Yes, the numerical value of wages have gone up since that time.  But so has inflation and the cost of living.  In fact, the cost of living has risen faster than wages for roughly the same amount of time.  No matter how much your paycheck has risen over the years, the spending value of that paycheck hasn’t increased.  In fact, you’re lucky if you’re just keeping up.  That’s why hard-working Americans need two incomes to keep the bills paid when one used to be more than enough.

And this is not hypothetical.  This is empirical.  This commentator personally observed this himself and with others almost two decades ago.  When the cost of living goes up 7% and you only get a 4% raise for your work, you’re not keeping up.  You’re falling behind.  And when that happens to you year after year, then it becomes a problem.

Today, there are many of us that are lucky to get even a 2% raise for the same work they put in year after year.  And that is not counting the various economic troubles we endure.  For every recession or depression, when layoffs are abound and having a job is considered a blessing, most people that end up having to switch jobs don’t get to keep the same amount of money as before.  In fact, their income from the new job goes down.  So you’re even further in the hole than before.

Of course, not everyone in America suffers.  Only the ones middle-class or lower.  The ones not getting six-figure salaries.  Certainly not the cushy elites in Corporate America who always seem to prosper even when the rest of the country is hurting.

So inevitably the discussion goes to helping those who are at the bottom of the corporate pyramid.  “Raise the minimum wage” is the battle cry.  Followed, of course, by the howls of anger from the corporate elites and the brainwashed members of the middle-class, who wail about how fast-food workers shouldn’t get paid more than firefighters or police officers or school teachers. 

But... who says that they should?  And who says that only the people making minimum wage should get a pay increase?  We all need one.  All of us who aren’t bringing in six-or-seven-or-even-eight-figure incomes are long overdue for a positive adjustment instead of the continual negative one.

And here’s the catch: firefighters, police officers, school teachers, these are all usually local government employees and their pay comes from tax revenue that the rest of us pay.  The reason why they’re not getting paid more is because we aren’t getting paid more, and also because a certain political party currently being led by an orange-skinned narcissist has been obscenely fixated on cutting taxes at all levels on the very entities that have been keeping our wages low and raking in obscene profits.

It is at this point that a certain guy is put in front of us.  Usually it’s a seasoned media personality with a perfectly-coiffed mustache representing a special interest group that pretends to be impartial and unbiased.  He’ll mansplain to us in a soft-but-condescending tone about how clueless we all are on this subject.

And then we’ll hear what I refer to as the fifteen-dollar fallacy.

The push of late is to raise the minimum wage nationwide to at least $15-an-hour.  The common focus of the wage gap is on the workers at fast food places, who work long hours and get paid minimum wages.  Obviously they can’t really make a living on that much money, unlike their corporate CEO who gets paid thousands of times more, and all the while the corporation brings in record profits year after year.

Now our mansplaining mustache guy will explain to us that the reason why the fast food workers are paid so low is because the business needs to afford to offer you those $1 cheeseburgers that you like to buy.  He starts talking about supply-and-demand and says that if the business has to raise their minimum wages to $15-an-hour, then they have to raise the price of those $1 cheeseburgers to compensate.  Often it would be dollar-for-dollar what the minimum wage would be.  So, according to the mustache guy, if said fast food place has to start paying employees $15-an-hour, then they have to raise the price of that same cheeseburger to $15.

So you can either keep employees paid low and enjoy that $1 cheeseburger, or you can pay $15 for that same cheeseburger and let the employees get paid $15-an-hour.

That’s the argument.

And it’s a load of pure cow crap.

First of all, the price of that cheeseburger has little if anything to do with wages.  Wages have to do with overhead costs.  The price of that little cheeseburger has to do more with what the customer is willing to pay for it.  Fast-food corporations like McDonald’s can charge $1 for that cheeseburger because they know we will pay that much for it.  It doesn’t have to do with wages.  It has to do with the consumer.

So if that $1 cheeseburger becomes $15, guess what happens?  If we decide it’s too much, then we just don’t buy it.  That simple.  We’ll take our business to some other fast food place, or we look for something more affordable.  Maybe we go to Wendy’s or Burger King or Hardees.  Or we won’t get a burger.  Maybe tacos.  Maybe fish.  Maybe fish tacos.

But, more realistically, what McDonald’s would to is just discontinue that $1 cheeseburger and focus on their specialty food that clearly cost more than $1.  It’s not the only item on their menu, after all.  The only reason why they even bother selling it to us for that much is because there is just enough of a demand to allow it.

Oh, and something else needs to be pointed out.  Back when minimum wage was $4.25-an-hour and people were pushing for $5, that happened to be the same number the feared price hike for that $1 cheeseburger would be.  Then when it was a push for $8-an-hour, we were threatened with $8 cheeseburgers.  Today the national minimum wage is $7.25.  That cheeseburger is still just $1.

Again, the price of that cheeseburger has nothing to do with wages.

Let’s get brutally honest here... the real reason why Big Corporate has been fighting hard and screaming bloody murder over raising the minimum wage, and for all wages for that matter, has to do with one thing: profit.  Damnable profit.

Keeping wages low, keeping employees underpaid, keeps overhead costs low, which translate into more profit.  And that is all that matters for Big Corporate.  It’s not about keeping cheeseburgers and other food products cheap.  It’s not about frozen-versus-fresh beef patties.  It’s not about whether or not the fat content sends people to the hospital or whether or not the calorie count per item is “healthy” or “unhealthy”.  It’s all about profit.

And it’s far cheaper for them to hire that supposedly “non-partisan” and “unbiased” think-tank and that mansplaining guy with the perfectly-trimmed mustache to claim that wage hikes would translate into dollar-for-dollar price hikes for that $1 cheeseburger than it would to actually pay their employees more and dare to threaten their precious profit margins.

We keep hearing that wages are dependent on whatever “the marketplace will bear”.  The truth is that wages in America are dependent on whatever the corporate profits will bear.  It has nothing to do with the marketplace.  It has to do with profits and whether or not Corporate America would be brave enough to pare down their greed to make life for their employees – and thus the rest of the country – that much better, so we could then buy more of those $1 cheeseburgers.