General Discussion

are in the process of making the mistake the twentieth century robber barons made 100 years ago - they are stealing everything in sight and sucking money directly out of the treasury.

Years of irresponsible 'supply-side' trickle-down tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy have caused the government to have to cut programs that help Americans so these modern tech-bro billionaire robber barons can line their pockets, build their bunkers, and impose massive data centers that use millions of gallons of water a day, suck enough power off the grid to energize whole cities. This is a visible metaphor that shows in no uncertain terms the diseased lust of these people at our expense.

If Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the institutionalists come back after Trump thinking it can just be business as usual, they will be making a big mistake. People across this country are furious at a government that seems in the pocket of thieves and grifters and literally cannot get anything done.

While institutional Democratic donors may be happy I am most definitely NOT happy with much of anything. Trump is demonstrably a Russian agent who does the bidding of Putin, whose goal has been to win the cold war. And so he has because it will take decades to undo the damage of these white supremacists who are now in power.

In the meantime, I see YouTube vids of young kids buried in student debt who are having meltdowns because they work their asses off and cannot even pay the bills. I am beginning to see 1789 tropes and the word 'guillotine' is repeatedly coming up.

If the Democrats want to rebuild our republic, they will likely need to gut the whole thing, and pull the teeth of Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and the political industrial complex (We want to do the right thing! We will FIGHT for you! Rush a donation!).

What they will have to do:
1. Get rid of the electoral college and hackable voting machines.
2. Reinstitute the Voting Rights Act and give it teeth.
3. Change the rules of corporate governance from shareholder primacy, which holds profits over people and the environment, encourages and rewards sociopathic behavior, to a stakeholder approach that a) holds the interests of workers, consumers and the environment EQUAL to profits, and includes a clause requiring truth and balance in news reporting - essentially a twenty-first century fairness doctrine.
4. Impeach all of McConnell's picks they ramrodded through AFTER refusing to honor Obama's. Get rid of them all and repeople the Supreme Court and federal courts with justices and judges who do not legislate white supremacy from the bench.
5. Reverse Citizens United.
6. Raise taxes on corporations so they go back to paying in around 35% of the government's income tax revenue, and reduce the load for individuals from the current 50.4% down to its 1970 ratio of 45%.
7. Impose a wealth tax that literally taxes billionaires out of existance.
8. Ensure the SACRED TRUSTS of Social Security and Medicare are upheld.
9. Ignore the fucking lobbies and pass universal healthcare expanding the existing Medicaid infrastructure to cover all Americans. Allow the government to negotiate prices for drugs and medical billing.
10. Develop and pass a sane immigration policy that ensures availability of seasonal farm labor and brings in skilled immigrants.
11. Reverse Dobbs.
12. Completely revise campaign finance laws to REMOVE corporate corruption.
13. Impose block-chain systems on government departments, YES even the 'war' department, so transparency in spending is guaranteed and corporate corruption chased out of our national governement.
14. Dramatic cuts in military spending while AT THE SAME TIME creating jobs through renewables, agritech and employee-owned corporations that help communities work together to meet their needs. We can take a real page from Mamdani on that.
15. Related to the last point, we need a sane environmental policy that phases out coal, oil and gas while bringing in nuclear fusion, solar, wind, hydroelectric and see if we can figure out what Tesla said he discovered - that the earth's electromagnetic energy could power the whole grid. Gee, I wonder where the giant trunks of Tesla's notes went to after William Trump (Donald's uncle) reviewed them and then they mysteriously disappeared.
16. Release of entire unredacted Epstein files, investigations, trials and accountability for these immoral billionaire child rapists and murderers.
17. Investigations of the massive corruption of the Trump administration, and members of Congress who have profited from insider trading, market manipulations and just plain stolen billions in public monies. I mean, why is the government paying 2X or 3X listing price for these warehouses they want to make into concentration camps? Where is that excess money going? All kinds of shit like that. Across the board. GET RID OF CORPORATE CORRUPTION.

In short, the Democrats like AOC, Mamdani and other progressives, WHO ARE NOT ULTRA-LEFT RADICALS, will have to build a whole new republic from the ashes of the old corrupt system. We still have a chance, but we need people who have some guts. Gavin Newsom is doing some good stuff, BUT himself is an institutionalist, as evidenced by him coming out again the wealth tax that is on CA's ballot this november because he does not want to preside over the flight of the billionaires.

Fuck the billionaires. They are nothing but thieves. They do not create jobs, and these data centers are NOT for AI. We already have enough AI. They are to impose a surveillance state to ensure the oligarchs can stay in power and keep stealing wealth from everyone else. That is the sad truth.

It is all about greed and lust for power. We have to find ways to get rid of the corruption that has caused since the robber barons first tried a coup on FDR way back in 1935 AND WERE NOT HELD ACCOUNTABLE. They have been fighting the long fight, Wall Street has, and now it is right out in the open.

Our choice what we build from the ashes of the now-defunct Pax-Americana. The downfall of the empire, if you will.

WE NEED TO GET BACK TO A REPUBLIC OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE.

It has been too long since that has been the truth, if it ever has. Now is the time to begin really getting off our asses and perfecting the republic.

Or not. Again, always our choice.