Quiet quitters of Congress

 Dear Representative;

On three occasions this September, President Trump authorized the sinking of Venezuelan boats. No evidence of drug smuggling was provided. There were no survivors.  In years past we've arrested and prosecuted smugglers, not sunk their boats. Guilt is established in law courts, not by lynch mobs or presidents. Our government has never before behaved like this. America can't be great again by doing what it's never done before. Killing untried alleged foreign criminals is not justice. — It's an act of warfare. Only Congress has the authority to declare war, yet Trump has silently declared war just as you have remained silent instead of confronting him. An unauthorized act of war is essentially murder. By not restraining President Trump, Congress becomes accomplices to murder.

You've also authorized spending and then allowed Trump to withhold it. Only Congress can declare war. Only Congress controls the purse strings. Although you've taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, you've sat by idly when it was violated. Failing to uphold your oath demonstrates an absence of patriotism and a surfeit of self-serving greed. Don't allow your president to bend laws. Either step up or step down.   

The “radical left” left

When Charlie Kirk was killed in Utah, Donald Trump blamed it on the “radical left”. He blames the radical left for other things too.

During the week Kirk was killed I heard an episode of “Today Explained.” In this Episode, “Trump’s chief culture warrior”, Noel King interviewed Christopher Rufo author of the book, “America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.”

Everything conquered, Wow! So just who is the radical left? In his interview, Rufo talked about the Smithsonian and other institutions. They have been, “totally captured by left winged ideologies.”

Trans-genderism is an ideology according to Rufo – I consider it more of an identity, but Rufo insists. Historically, native American groups acknowledged three to five sexual identities or roles. Rufo insists there are only two sexes. However, different cultures have different views of such things.

Rufo also insists that that there are agreed upon aesthetic standards and that polemical art fails to meet those standards. Todays museums are “curators of anti-cultural nihilism” instead of acceptable art. While some say art can be political or have subjective appeal, Rufo claims this is not the case. Adolf Hitler had personal standards for acceptable art and imposed them on his fellow Germans. Perhaps Rufo would also like to do this.

 In his book, Rufo claims that Herbert Marcuse promoted a plan for covertly indoctrinating the masses in socialist ideology. I was still in high school when Marcuse did this. That was more than five decades ago. I asked some lefties I know. Two had heard of Marcuse – none knew anything about him or his ideas. None had ever heard a college professor mention his name. However, the right leaning Cato institute mentions him in several of its articles. Apparently Cato considers his ideas a threat, or perhaps they’re enamored with his covert indoctrination plan.

I have a different theory. The radical left was a fringe movement during the 1960s and 1970s. They are no longer even that. No Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson has promoted policies to the left of his. In fact, Americans have been shifting to the right for half a century now. The radical left has left. They’ve marched off into a black hole. They’re so rare now that they can be considered cyrtids like Big Foot or Nessie. Some report seeing them, but there’s little proof that they actually exist.

Except in the minds of right-winged thinkers including Christopher Rufo and the Cato Institute.

 Most Americans support Social Security and Medicare, yet both have been linked to socialism. Neither Social Security or Medicare meet actual definitions of socialism yet that hasn’t stopped some from so maligning those programs. Similarly, not all on the left can be considered radical. Few, in fact, can be. Yet that doesn’t stop some voices from demonizing imaginary enemies. This does great harm because it stifles the free expression of different views and useful dialogues. When all must think the same and blame imaginary enemies, social progress ceases. Dirty tricks beget soiled and spoiled societies.

As long as we do politics by blaming instead of cooperating we progress toward an Orwellian society.

  

Dear Representative:

If I told you to jump off a cliff you wouldn't do it — so why are you willing to jump off a (fiscal) cliff when Donald Trump tells you to? The dollar's value has dropped this year to an extent not seen in over 50 years. This will greatly increase the cost and difficulty of servicing our enormous national debt. And yet Congress is considering a Bad Bullshit Bill that will increase the deficit by 3.3 trillion dollars. There's no hiding this no matter how much magical math is used.

And speaking of magic — you argued on three prior occasions that tax breaks for the wealthy get pissed down the social ladder to rain abundance on average Joes. It didn't happen then. It won't happen now. Maybe you should stick with facts and logic instead of misinformation when you argue your points. We've known this was a lie for 40 years. If you pass this bill your voters will know as well. And then you'll get voted out of office — perhaps even ridden out of town on a rail. Good luck with all that.

Sincerely,

Voters with open eyes.

If you don’t like how things are going, contact your Congress person and Senator.

Robin Hood and the King

Reverse Robin Hood
According to legend, Robin Hood robbed the wealthy and distributed booty to the poor. Robin Hood in reverse (RHR) works differently. This method is favored by kleptocrats and oligarchs and seeks to enhance the holdings of the wealthiest at the expense of the most impoverished. Let’s talk about the tax bill now approaching the Senate. Read to the end where I unveil its poison pill.

Like the tax bill of 2017, this one also holds out the promise that money will trickle down to those who can use it more. And also like that bill, it puts more money in the hands of those who don’t really need it.

The big difference this time around is that the national debt has ballooned since 2017. This time lawmakers are looking at offsets. They’re considering cuts in programs for people who need them to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy.

For years Republicans have complained about taxes while the government spent. Somebody needs to pay to run the government but magical thinkers believe that tax cuts pay for themselves by invoking some vague and implausible principal. It never happens.

Meanwhile the government continues to borrow as the cost of doing so is becoming unwieldy. Moody’s recently downgraded the country’s credit worthiness. This hurts our nations’s reputation and increases our borrowing costs.

During Eisenhower’s days the highest marginal tax rate was 91 percent. It’s much less now. If the wealthy could tolerate high taxes back then, why can’t they help lower the deficit now? Our current lawmakers will never willingly ask the wealthy to pay their fair share.

The King
The tax bill contains a clause which reads: “No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued.”

This is intended to prevent federal courts from from imposing consequences for contempt of court on top government officials. It would give Donald Trump king-like immunity for violating the Constitution. Though perhaps it's unreasonable to suggest that a twice impeached convicted felon would ever think about violating the Constitution.

If you don’t like how things are going contact your Congress person and Senator.

Two quick reads

Merge and Disciple: Two Short Novels (From Crosstown to Oblivion) Kindle Edition
Walter Mosley
Fiction 243 pages
Tor Books, 2012

Like Jumpnauts, these two short novels are concerned with what might occur if humans encountered an awarness greater than their own. In all three works the consequences are planet changing but the stories themselves are very different.

Walter Mosley is best known for his crime and detective fiction. His heroes, Easy Rawlins, King Oliver, and others walk the thin edge that separates morality from immorality. Mosley heroes are driven by moral considerations and behavior, and that’s just as true for the protagonists in Merge and Disciple. These two works, are science fiction in the best sense, but they also waft a bit of eau de detective noir. Mosley’s characters passage between mundane and enhanced consciousness is tempered with violence, pain and uncertainty. Fair warning: graphic sexual scenes may be disturbing to those more used to traditional vanilla science fiction.

Mosley writes in contemporary style, but  with sufficient lyricality to lift his prose above the commonplace. In his book, This Year You Write Your Novel, he stresses that those wanting to write prose fiction should first become familiar with poetry. “Of all writing, the discipline in poetry is the most demanding. You have to learn how to distill what you mean into the most economic and at the same time the most elegant and accurate language.” Mosley has the skills to use words with economy, fitness and purpose.

From Merge: “You killed me,” I said with no emotion, vibration, or intention. “That’s like a table complaining about being dusted,” she said, “a sheet worrying about being hung out to dry.”

From Disciple: Nothing is as it seems, friend Hogarth. Nothing in the world that human beings believe in is really what exists. There was no primal atom, no Big Bang. There is no space as such. Life is not unique. There is no Not God.