What's your favorite brand of corruption?  Which style do you prefer?  Does it have a thin veneer of faux patriotism?  Perhaps having it glossed over with a diluted coat of caring and compassion is more to your liking?  Either way, when you peel back the carefully prepared covering, you see the same thing, massive campaign contributions from billionaires and corporations! 

In this age of "corporations are people", we have to remind ourselves of one of my favorite quotes --"Insanity  is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results"- Albert Einstein.  If we elect someone from one of the two existing parties, we are buying into a corrupt, dysfunctional system that has brought us to where we are today, one where corporations and billionaires make contributions or veiled threats and pull the strings!  That's why I support electing an outsider.

Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats has just mentioned that he would consider running for President in 2016.  Should he run, I will do everything in my power to help get him elected.  He is experienced yet still has his integrity.  Let's encourage this honorable man to seek the Presidency.

Looking at the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and subsequent related decisions (especially the Hobby Lobby decision) from my perspective reveals horrifying implications. Their contention is that corporations have the same Constitutional rights as people.   Furthermore, they contend that money is speech and there should be no limitations on free speech.   To add insult to injury, they seem to think that in some cases, corporations have religious rights that can be violated by godless government bureaucrats who have the nerve to insist that those corporations have the same legal obligations as any other business entity. 

Taken at face value, one would think that the benevolent Supreme Court Injustices are just trying to extend the Constitutional benefits of mere mortals to every possible entity.   Hey, let's give that door and that doorknob the right of free speech or that washing machine the right to impose its religion on everything else.  The more the merrier, right? How about this pack of chewing gum that I'm carrying in my pocket?  It's been silent for far too long and should have the right to buy political ads on every TV network!  For that matter, it should have the right to have a day of rest on its Sabbath.

The way I see it, this new twisted, corrupt interpretation of the Constitution actually means that the U.S. Constitution only grants true free speech to those who have the money to pay for it and extends a super-set of its protections to various corporate entities with either deep pockets or the backing of right-wing organizations with an aggressive agenda!  The more money you have, the more political ads you can buy with no limitations.  If you have no money, you have no free speech.  If your ideology matches the Supreme Court's current conservative slant, you can endow your business with your religious fervor and refuse to pay for certain mandated health benefits that are the obligation of those godless businesses that don't go to church on Sunday and haven't been baptized!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, according to the current crop of Supreme Court Injustices, free speech isn’t free and your business can have a religion of its very own!  So get out your checkbooks and credit cards and send your business to Sunday school!  The founding fathers would be so proud!

If you're a Democrat, you've heard a constant stream of speeches from Democratic electeds decrying income inequality.  Since most Democratic electeds supported and signed and still support and sign "free" trade agreements that help corporations offshore high paying manufacturing jobs, we must assume that all of their income inequality clap trap is just empty rhetoric.  I must also assume that you are not serious about fixing income inequality because you are tickled, gratified and fulfilled by merely getting Democrats in name only reelected!  The reason for my assumption is that way back  in 2012, I circulated a petition demanding that our electeds stop signing job killing "free" trade agreements and rescind the existing ones that people like Bill Clinton foisted on us.  Your response was so poor (62 people who cared) that I closed the petition out in disgust!

Today, a gentleman decided to tweet out my closed petition which gave me hope that at least one person cared enough about his country to bring it to everyone's attention.  All it takes is one person of courage to get things started so I have decided to re-open the petition.  If you don't sign my petition this time around, a petition that will help fix many of America's problems, I don't want to hear any whining about income inequality!

Sign My Petition!

I'm hearing lots of talk lately from high union officials and Democratic electeds of the progressive persuasion complaining about this or that aspect of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and various other "free" trade agreements.  These people who want our loyalty, votes and trust should know better.  They focus on one specific aspect or another of the agreements and want it fixed or removed.  That narrow perspective implies that they find "free" trade agreements to be acceptable with some minor tweaks and that "free" trade agreements in any form are acceptable to the average working American or for that matter, anyone who isn't a one percenter.

NAFTA and other "free" trade agreements were proven job killers that helped greedy corporations ship countless American jobs to foreign countries.  They helped destroy America's manufacturing infrastructure.  They were passed and signed under the Clinton administration. They came with the false promise of creating jobs.  As I've often said, it takes Republicans to lower the economic bar for working people, the middle class and the poor and Democrats to keep it lowered!  I expect corporate owned Republicans to promote and defend "free" trade agreements and corporate leased "compromising" centrist Democrats to do likewise, but I become appalled when progressive Democrats and union officials give those agreements an air of respectability by attempting to change small bits and pieces of them but leave the main parts, the job killing parts intact!

Phone, email or write your elected officials and union officials and let them know in no uncertain terms that you have had it up to here with all "free" trade agreements!  Tell them that you will vote anyone who supports them out of office! PERIOD!

Looking at the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and subsequent related decisions from my perspective reveals horrifying implications.  Their contention is that corporations have the same Constitutional rights as people.  Furthermore, they contend that money is speech and there should be no limitations on free speech. 

 Taken at face value, one would think that the benevolent Supreme Court Injustices are just trying to extend the Constitutional benefits of free speech to every possible entity.  Hey, let's give that door and that doorknob the right of free speech.  The more the merrier, right?  How about this pack of chewing gum that I'm carrying in my pocket?  It's been silent for far too long and should have the right to buy political ads on every TV network!

The way I see it, this new twisted corrupt interpretation of the Constitution actually means that the U.S. Constitution only grants free speech to those who have the money to pay for it!  The more money you have, the more political ads you can buy with no limitations.  If you have no money, you have no free speech.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, according to the current crop of Supreme Court Injustices, free speech isn’t free, so get out you checkbooks and credit cards!   The founding fathers would be so proud!

If you are politically active, you have probably been receiving a constant deluge of emails, snail mail and telemarketing calls asking for campaign contributions.  At first blush after getting annoyed at the intrusion on your life, you are probably saying that “the other party” gets big donations from big corporations and billionaires so “my party” needs to solicit me to offset their money.  But after drilling down on the concept of getting your space invaded by endless emails, phone calls, etc., you begin to see a pattern developing.  After checking the voting record of the person that you helped elect into office you notice that on fiscal issues that affect giant corporate interests, he or she while saying the things you want to hear, voted in their favor and against your interests.  Congratulations, you have just seen that regardless of your party, you mean little to the person that you voted into office after you cast that ballot.

Why should your party's candidates care about your one measly vote when a single corporate or billionaire contribution will buy TV ads that get them millions of votes?  Those TV ads are the heroin of politics.  Your electeds and their parties are addicted to them because they need the ads and the money that buys them to win their campaigns.  Corporations and billionaires will gladly provide the funds for those ads either directly or through surreptitious “public interest” organizations buying attack ads.  Despite what the conservative supreme court Injustices say, money does not equal free speech, it pays the exorbitant toll that the mega-media corps charge for that not so free speech.  In our rigged “two” party system the only way that a politician can get elected is to accept billionaire and corporate money.

Corporations and billionaires have a different reason for making contributions than we do, they want favors in return and want to own the politician.  We want to support someone that we believe in and pray that we get the “Change that we can believe in.”  In other words, we contribute and vote to get the guy we like elected, they pay to get their agenda accomplished.  They will back candidates from both parties if necessary because they consider their “contributions” to be payments for services that must be rendered.

All of this has brought me to the point where I feel that if my candidate from my party won't do my bidding in exchange for my vote and support, why should I contribute a nickle or for that matter, vote him or her into office?  Before you waste your money or vote on someone who talks a good game then works against your interests, ask yourself if there are any alternatives to our current corrupt political duopoly.  If not, let's create some sound alternatives and get our country back.

As always, I welcome your comments and ideas on this and any other article or show.  Time is running out on democracy in our country and only you can get it back!

I'll bet that you've often wondered how the GOP holds on to its middle class voters when it clearly works against the best interests of constituents that are not well-heeled? In the past, I've said that the GOP playbook uses the big three; fear, uncertainty and doubt to keep middle class constituents under control and in line.  The purpose of this article is to drill down on those principles of propaganda and uncover the specific mechanisms that they use to generate that fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Here are some of the powerful tools that seem to be in the GOP propaganda toolkit:

Scarcity:

There isn't enough Social Security reserve money to go around.  If the baby boomers don't make cuts now, there won't be enough left in the fund for 1000 years from now.  What are future young people going to do?  They will be paying into the system for nothing.  Why are those baby boomers so selfish?  Let's make those cuts and do it for the children!

That GOP false argument has the added effect of pitting young against old and puts the Republicans closer to their dream of eliminating Social Security by helping it to die a  death by a thousand cuts.  If you liked that, you're going to love the next one.

Obamacare is going to destroy Medicare by siphoning away money from it.

What could seriously hurt Medicare and every other form of health care is the ever spiraling cost of drugs, hospital fees and every other aspect of health care, especially insurance.  Part of the Affordable Care Act attempts to get some of it under control.  That's a good thing because left, unchecked, rising healthcare costs could reach the point where even with insurance, few people would be able to pay for it.

Envy:

Those union guys make more than I do.  Why should they make more than I do when I do the same job?

You get the picture here? Instead of the brainwashed GOP voter asking “Why am I making so little?” the fool actually asks, “Why is he or she making so much?”  Losers who try to bring other people down, instead of raising themselves up are what's destroying our country.  Sadly, the GOP seems to be the home of pathetic flunkies like that.

Greed:

Someday I'll become a billionaire, so I have to protect their freedom to earn lots of money.

Yes, and someday the skies will open up and diamonds will rain down on all of us.  In the meantime, the middle class of poor GOP voter and his or her family will probably barely make ends meet on a meager big box store and or fast food joint paycheck with GOP electeds fighting minimum wage increases tooth and nail.

Patriotism:

We are the official party of patriotism and the founding fathers!

Our founding fathers would be appalled at the betrayal of our country caused by “free” market principles.  The GOP stooges who wrap themselves in the American flag vehemently support a corporation's right to offshore American jobs, thus weakening our economy, destroying our manufacturing infrastructure and building up the Chinese economy.   As a byproduct, when U.S. corporations manufacture in China, the Chinese get their trade secrets, building up Chinese technology.  Gee whiz, when I last looked, China was a Communist country!   Yes, I know that the Democrats also support “free” trade but not as vehemently.

In my humble opinion, with their unconditional love of corporations and billionaires, the Republican party is not the official party of the founding fathers.  Here's a quote from one of the founding fathers that confirms that.  " I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Thomas Jefferson

Religion:

We are the official party of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

If Jesus walked the earth today, I'm sure that he would strongly dispute that.  The GOP seems to glorify selfishness and a lust for money, especially if it's at the expense of the poor!   The GOP always seems to latch on to the parts of religion that divide us and uses them as red meat issues to keep their base engaged and under control.

The Big Lie Theory:

Obamacare is evil because it has death panels!

How many time have we heard that baloney?  That's the entire principal of The Big Lie theory.  If you repeat an outrageous lie enough times, it becomes the truth in the minds of the public.  That's why we were subjected to a barrage of deceptive ads and soundbites from the GOP and various shill organizations.  The Big Lie Theory worked well for Joseph Goebbels and still does for the GOP and their wealthy backers.

The next time you discuss politics with Republican voters, don't get angry with them, feel sorry for them because they are truly enslaved by their blind trust of an entity that is using them to benefit their real constituency, billionaires and corps.

In my last show, I referred to the term “job creator” as being one of the words that deceive.  That phrase is toxic to the well being and future of America's workers and their families because it makes corporate acts of greed and treachery look heroic.  The phrase was invented by a GOP consultant who specializes in finding words which are euphemisms that put policies that I feel would otherwise be tough for the the average American to swallow in a good light.  I think that you will agree that anyone who is not a billionaire or mega corp. who buys into the job creator concept is working against his or her best interests.

Deceptive words pave the way for the corporate control of our country because powerful words on their part usually lead to powerful reactions on our part.  The best way that we can take our country back from the iron grip of corporations and the super rich is to counteract propaganda with facts, to counter their buzzwords with our buzzwords, their memes with our memes!  Their words always seem to be created by a big bucks consultant, our words come from our hearts and minds.  Their words get widespread coverage from the mainstream media corporate propaganda ministry, our words rely on social media and independent media to get out.

Let's erase “job creators” from the hearts and minds of the mainstream media viewing, listening and reading public by using my more accurate replacements for it.  Since a number of corporate “job creators” mainly “create” jobs in China, pay little or no taxes and pay U.S. workers wages that are so low that they need food stamps, let's call them what they really are - Freeloaders or Not Job Creators.   Since by working, earning a living, actually paying our taxes and buying American products, we are the real job creators, let's pat our fellow American workers on the back for their tireless efforts, by using the #RealJobCreator hashtag.

Together, we will counteract words that deceive with words that enlighten. #Freeloaders, #NotJobCreators and #RealJobCreator are powerful verbal weapons in the ongoing fight for the truth, use them everywhere!

You can start by using these buttons to tweet out your message with those hashtags:

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Either you define your world or someone will gladly come along and define it for you. - Jack Wade

A favorite ploy of corporate owned electeds in Congress, The Senate and your friendly neighborhood Statehouse is to give legislation that they write and issues that they support titles or names that make things that are harmful to your average voter look good.  You will be more equipped to know when your elected is trying to put one over on you by visiting my Listen Here! page.