What? Living wage? Since when? Things the Right Wing pretends never happened and never was.

The Cost of Living Index tracks how prices rise as Corporations and business owners succumb, acquiesce or jump ahead of the pressures that motivate their need, or want, for more money. The Cost of Living Index is that measurement by which government keeps apace of their employees' salaried ability to maintain household, family and personal obligations.

Public Sector unions help keep the government's feet to the fire regarding fair pay. Private sector unions do the same though those unions have been systematically strangled, marginalized and neutralized by statute and judicial action since the Reagan era. Noteworthy is that the nation's average wages have stagnated and not kept pace with cost of living increases since the 1980s -- the Reagan era -- as well.

More plainly stated, corporations have raised their prices without raising their employees' salaries and wages proportionately. Productivity in the United States has increased from 200% to over 350%, dependent on the industry, since the Reagan era. So, corporations and business owners have collected the extra profit from raising their prices without paying their employees in proportion to those increases. Corporations and Businesses have reaped the benefits of improved productivity without their employees' wages and salaries reflecting those increased gains.

The overwhelming majority of contemporary wage earners, especially since the so-called Great Recession, have only one protection regarding the wages they earn: Minimum Wage statutes. The minimum wage no longer reflects the pressures and requirements of a living wage. It hasn't since the Reagan era. A living wage is one which is enough to provide for the needs of an average, two adult, two child, nuclear family. How long has *that* not been the norm?

Time was a family could buy a house, own one or two cars, take a vacation every year or so, and send the kids to collage without going into staggering debt. Even after all that, the family could still save for retirement. That hasn't been the norm since the Reagan era. Not since trickle down economics. Since rampant deregulation. Since systematic "conservative" government warfare on unions. Since Reagan's admonition that government isn't the solution, government is the problem. Since socialism became confused with Communism. Since New Gingrich labelled the term liberal a dirty word. Since corporations and rich people got so many tax cuts that the lie describing the social safety net as not affordable became a self fulfilling prophesy. That led to social programs being undermined with funding cuts as some kind of evil, and undeserved by every American citizen who isn't rich enough to not need them. As if the electorate never chose FDR for his policies or his Presidency never happened.

Had the minimum wage, alone, tracked the cost of living, it would be over $24 per hour today. Similarly, had corporate wages and salaries tracked cost of living increases as corporate charges for goods and services has, people who work in corporate offices or in many of the more highly profitable small to medium businesses, would enjoy take home pay up to three and one-half times more than what their bosses currently claim is fair and competitive.

They're lying to you. They're the same ones who say government is the problem, that liberal is a bad word, that unions are bad, and public protections and the safety net is a 'way too expensive socialist evil while giving ridiculously high and undeserved tax cuts to the minuscule upper most elite who already have more than they could possibly spend in many multiple life times. They'll continue lying to pad their pockets as long as the American public lets them get away with it.

Path to Citizenship Primer (Cut-and-paste)

Here is an authoritative encapsulation of immigration paths to citizenship available for immigrants, both documented and not, to the United States.

This is a cut-and-paste post from Facebook. Thank you to Eric Pavri, Director of Family Immigration Services of the Catholic Charities of Central Colorado.

Eric Pavri

February 12 · Colorado Springs, CO

I'm an immigration lawyer. I know that many of my Facebook friends, who are good and intelligent people, honestly have questions like the following: Why don't all these immigrants just become legal, and do they get all kinds of public benefits?

I hope you'll read what I wrote here in the spirit in which it was intended, which is to cut through the BS (from poorly-informed but loud voices on both the left and right) and simply provide correct information so that people can decide for themselves what is right and best.

I recently wrote the comment below to a Facebook story from a local news channel, about a teacher here in Colorado Springs who has DACA.

********************************************************
To several of the commenters on this thread – first, I want to acknowledge that asking why people don’t just become citizens, or whether people without legal status can get public benefits that U.S citizens cannot, are legitimate questions. If they are asked in good faith, no one should mind you asking them.

Therefore, let me answer your questions. Please know that I am well-informed on these topics, as an immigration lawyer for the past 8 years, the past six of those in Colorado, and currently the Director of Family Immigration Services at Catholic Charities of Central Colorado (most of you know us best as the organization that runs the Marian House soup kitchen). You may verify those statements by entering my bar number (44591) on the Supreme Court of Colorado website (http://www.coloradosupremecourt.com/Search/AttSearch.asp) or viewing our Catholic Charities website (https://www.ccharitiescc.org/).

First, as to why young people who have DACA haven’t just become citizens:

To become a U.S. citizen (other than by birth), one must first become a Lawful Permanent Resident (“green card” holder). Only after five years as a Permanent Resident can you apply to become a citizen. Thus, the obvious next question: how does a person become a Permanent Resident? There are three primary options to do so:

1) Family-based petitions. This means that a U.S. citizen or Permanent Resident parent, spouse, adult child, or sibling files a “petition” for you. Depending on the category that you fall into, the wait will be anywhere from 1 – 22 years (yep) before you can use that petition to take the next step – applying to become a Permanent Resident (background checks, medical exam, more fees, etc.). That works for people living outside the U.S., but for those who have been here, it may not be possible if they entered the U.S. illegally, even if they were minor children when they did so.

2) Employment-based petitions. A U.S. employer can similarly sponsor you, but generally only if you are in a profession requiring an advanced degree or unique skills (doctors, software engineers, world-class athletes to coach professional sports teams, etc.). Even then, the potential employer must generally also prove that they made good-faith efforts to hire a U.S. citizen for the position, but no qualified applicants applied.

3) Diversity visa lottery. Every year, the U.S. government selects 50,000 people worldwide who enter a lottery and pass background checks to come to the U.S. as Permanent Residents. This lottery, however, is only available to people from countries that traditionally send few people to the US – so, for example, people from countries such as Mexico, the Philippines, China, Guatemala, India, El Salvador, and other countries that send larger numbers of immigrants to the U.S. do not have this option.

Extra note: The current Administration has actively sought to eliminate or dramatically limit Options #1 and #3. The new term being used in the attempted re-branding of Option #1, family-based immigration, which has been the basic principle of U.S. immigration law for over a century, is “chain migration”. If those two options are in fact eliminated or curtailed, legal immigration to the U.S. will be significantly reduced.

The KEY POINT to all of the above: If you do not qualify for one of these 3 options, then there is no “line” to get into to legally become a Permanent Resident and eventually a U.S. citizen. So, if you are not fortunate enough to have, say, a U.S. citizen spouse or a graduate degree in computer science, you very likely can never become a citizen of the United States.

Second, one commenter above asked why President Obama, when he established DACA in 2012, did not just create a path to citizenship for these young people at that time. The answer: earlier that year, Congress had for the 11th year in a row failed to pass the Dream Act, which would have done exactly that. The President acting through his authority as head of the Executive Branch cannot create a path to Lawful Permanent Residency (and eventual US citizenship). Only a law, passed by Congress and then signed by the President, can accomplish that. So President Obama on June 15, 2012 created the more limited DACA program through Executive Action – which is why President Trump, as the new President, was able to end the program, also without an act of Congress, last fall.

Finally, as to the question of immigrants receiving public benefits, only a U.S. citizen or a Lawful Permanent Resident (green card holder) can receive almost all types of public benefit – including Medicaid, Medicare, SSI disability, Social Security payments for seniors, TANF, and food stamps. The irony: most undocumented immigrants work under made-up Social Security numbers and so receive a paycheck from which Social Security, federal income taxes, and state income taxes are withheld, and of course they pay the same local sales and property taxes as anyone else through retail purchases, pass-through costs of apartment leases, etc. Same of course goes for the 800,000 current DACA recipients, who are authorized to legally work in the U.S. But none of those employees, despite paying IN to the system, will ever receive those public benefits listed above, that are paid for by the money withheld from their paychecks. So they are propping up our federal and state government entitlement programs because they pay in but won’t ever take out.

The following are the public benefits that undocumented immigrants can receive in United States:

1) Public education for children in grades K-12. This was definitively established by a 1982 Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe. The Supreme Court in its reasoning explicitly stated that it would not serve the overall public good of the U.S. to leave many thousands of children uneducated.

2) Emergency room services, but only to the point where the patient is considered “medically stable”, at which point he/she is released. These services are not free, however, as in my job I meet hundreds of immigrant families who sacrifice over years to slowly pay off high emergency room medical bills.

3) WIC assistance. This is for milk, food, etc, and available only to pregnant mothers. The rationale is that the children in the womb will be U.S. citizens when born, and therefore it is in the long-term economic best interests of the nation to ensure that they receive adequate prenatal nutrition to improve their chances of being productive citizens in the decades to come.

4) Assistance from police if they are the victim of a crime and call for help. To their credit, the vast majority of our Colorado Springs law enforcement officers take their duty to protect all people seriously. Chief Carey of the CSPD and Sheriff Elder of the EPCSO have made clear that their officers can’t do their most important job – keeping us safe by getting dangerous criminals off our streets – if a whole class of people (undocumented immigrants) is afraid to call 911 to report crimes that they witness or are victim to.

5) Assistance from a fire department. Rationale, besides the obvious moral one: If your house was next to that of an undocumented immigrant family, would you want the firefighters to let that house continue to burn, putting yours at risk of catching on fire too?

And that’s it. Those, to the best of my knowledge, are the only public benefits that an undocumented immigrant can receive in just about any part of the United States. As someone who directs a small office that works with hundreds of low-income immigrant families per year, know that when I see the precarious economic situation of many of these families, I'd help them access other benefits if they could. But they simply can't. Now, children of undocumented parents, born in the U.S., are U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment (the one that declares that all human beings born on U.S. soil are citizens – this was passed immediately after the Civil War to forever end the legal argument that African Americans were not U.S. citizens). As such, those children can qualify for the same public benefits as any other U.S. citizen, if they qualify through economic need or disability. But their parents or undocumented siblings cannot.

I hope that this information has been useful to those willing to read through this long (for Facebook anyway) explanation. Please know that even this long summary leaves out a ton of detail -- there are tens of thousands of pages of statutes, regulations, internal federal agency procedures, and court decisions guiding how all of this is interpreted and implemented. But please take my word that I honestly believe that no detail I omitted for conciseness changes the basic points above. And I'd be happy to answer questions if you have them. Like I said, I don’t mind honest questions, and I believe that legitimate questions asked in good faith deserve well-informed, accurate answers. If all of us in the U.S. would be willing to actually listen to each others’ sincere concerns and do our best to answer each others’ questions, instead of just yelling at each other or retreating to our corners of the internet (left OR right) where everyone already agrees with us – well, I think we’d move our nation forward a lot more effectively.

The Real America, The Real Liberal/Progressive Agenda

The American electorate, under objective examination, describes The US as essentially a liberal country. It would benefit the Democratic Party establishment to embrace and aggregate Democratic Socialist voters, and sympathetic Democrats or Independents as awakened by Bernie Sanders, and revel in the country's true character, values, as well as the trends in overall electorate sentiment they represent.

This is the Democratic Agenda. These are definitive, progressive issues and the measure by which the greater proportion of the country supports them:

Same Sex Marriage 61%
(Some state candidates would legislate this back to exclusion)

Undocumented Immigrant Support 59%
support and acknowledgement that undocumented workers are an essential workforce so many industries depend on, and that Dreamers are productive members of society. Dreamers are fully American in every sense except a certificate that officially agrees.

Non-criminal undocumented immigrant path to stay 74%
Why would those who pose no threat yet are productive, often essential members of society be persecuted? Racist elitists kindly Butt TF Out and Shut TF Up.

Build the wall 34% total support.
Why is nonsense still being talked about?

Legalize Marijuana 58%
The War on Drugs was and remains a racist, Republican cudgel to control their opposition. MJ poses less public health concern than alcohol or tobacco and has major medical and therapeutic applications denied millions with medical complaints. MJ significantly reduces the addiction and overdose affects of the opioid crisis. Portugal reversed this nonsense almost a score years ago, saves many millions annually on arrests, prosecution, incarceration, productivity loss due to addiction, applying the savings to treatment, prevention, general healthcare, infrastructure and education. Left Coast and other states with medical and recreational MJ available collect many millions annually in tax revenue. And, it's cutting significantly into foreign drug cartels' grip on American markets.

Obamacare is good or doesn't go far enough 58%
Why don't the Republican talking points used to vilify the ACA identify the portion of voters who oppose the law because it doesn't go far enough, isn't liberal enough, or isn't single payer they claim support their antipathy for this signature legislation championed by that black guy?

Single Payer Healthcare 58%
It's only a matter of time. Embrace it. Revel in its goodness. Run on it.

Equal Pay 84%
Because it's (always and forever been) The Right Thing to do

Free (Tax supported) child care and pre-school 59%
Our investment in the future. Just like the rest of the developed world already does.

Support $12 minimum wage 66%
Support $15 minimum wage 52%
Had the minimum wage tracked productivity and the cost of living since 1980, it would now be $24/hr (or more). Instead, corporate owners, Republican think tanks and the likes of the BBB feign hardship whenever they are called out on their long held free ride and need to get responsible for a change.

Address Climate Change 64%
It's 'way long past time to get real, for crissakes.

Reduce Defence Spending 64% overall; 80% Democrats
The US spends more on defense than the next eighteen country *combined*. There are multiple failed and/or archaic defense development programs that are authorized over and again solely as employment sources for House members' constituents. That money would better be used to create actually productive jobs like retraining the traditionally coal mining population to work in much healthier alternative energy jobs like solar panel, windmill farm or even the infrastructure supply manufacture pipeline.

Abortion always legal or in most cases 56%
It's a guaranteed, Constitutionally protected right. If it's not your uterus, not your personal abortion, it's none of your business. Your invisible, magical, celestial superhero doesn't have any more say than anybody else who isn't involved in that, individual event. Theocratic option and anti-women's rights crusaders kindly Butt TF Out and Shut TF Up.

Fund Planned Parenthood 58%
Same as above.

Universal Background checks 85%
Mental Illness history restricting gun possession 79%
Federal background check Database 70%
Common Sense ain't anywhere near what it's cracked up to be. Good sense is a much better option. It's 'way long past time to get real. The Russian finance accepting, foreign funds laundering, American Terrorist Organization, armament manufacturers lobby and mouthpiece, the National Rifle Association, doesn't represent even a plurality, much less an actual majority, of Americans. I don't have data on again outlawing assault rifles, which nobody but combat zone military personnel have any business having And that includes domestic municipal and state police.

There are a few issues for which I do not have stats. These are central to the survival of the Middle Class.

• Repeal restrictions on Medicare price negotiations with Big Pharma
  Medicare and the individual states' auxillary medical plans have HUGE negotiating power that is arbitrarily prohibited by laws passed at the behest and benefit of pharmaceutical manufacturers. Enough of their free ride on the backs of the sick and vulnerable.
• Outlaw employer mandated labor dispute arbitration.
  Restore employee class action suits.
  Make arbitration an employee opt-in issue at the time labor action is brought, prohibiting arbitration as an term of employment.
  What oligarchy coddling bullshit. For the last fifty years, employers, the so-called job makers, have usurped the productivity gains and the massive profits generated by labor. leaving behind a legacy of stagnant wages and less-than subsistence remuneration. Repeated and ever increasing tax breaks and subsidies have robbed the middle class of its very existence. Reverse the tide. Make American Labor great again.

These, and other heretofore uncounted issues, are what America is all about. Stand up, declare these values loudly and clearly. With these issues, city, county, state and Federal counsels, boards, agencies, legislatures and administrators can take this country back from the sociopathological Right Wing.

There are a lot of badly informed people posting apologies for the recent zero tolerance policy that has separated over two-thousand children from their parent(s) at the border, whether they were seeking asylum or otherwise. It's merely been yet another exercise of falsely villainizing innocent people for political points.

Separating children from their parents, even those entering lawfully and immediately applying for asylum, is reprehensibly cruel. The trauma visited on these children presauges a life filled with anxiety issues, distrust of ALL authority, substance abuse, coronary disease, high blood pressure, learning difficulties and a further list of life-long disease and dysfunction.

There is no such thing as a just law that separates children from their parents without just cause, even were the infractions at issue felonies. Crossing the border into this country without a visa or identification papers, assuming there are such documents available from the fleeing immigrants' home country, is a misdemeanor. That's a traffic ticket level infraction. Reentering the country without proper documentation after having been previously deported, is where immigration felonies begin.

There's nothing just about stripng any families of their children on a technical, misdemeanor infraction. Stripping statutorily defined asylum seekers of their children under the excuse of smuggling children is an outrage, and just one more lie perpetrated by the Trump administration in their quest of eliminating any kind of empathy or good will extended by this country's government not only to the world at large but to the non-white, non-rich citizens of this country and any of the non-white, non-rich sympathies that exist.

Apologizing for anything this President does that is any kind of a dick move, which is everything the Buffoon-in-chief does, is any among innocently ignorant, willfully ignorant, racist, misogyny, ageist, xenophobic, and ultimately, anti-social to the point of pathology. Shame on anyone who follows right wing propaganda as if it were reflections of reality. Shame on asny who not falsifying the things heard over whichever medium, no matter how good those things make you feel. Shame on everyone who apologizes for this man's obvious antipathy for anything and everybody who isn't he, himself.

Plus, it was Stephen Miller, senior advisor to the President, who previously stated on camera that the President's orders shall only be obeyed, who was the driving force behind this zero tolerance policy which had never been proposed as policy by any previous president. EVER. This particular little episode would never have happened were sociopaths like Wormtongue, I mean, Miller, not at the President's ear.

Keep in mind, as well, that these laws are written by humans with agendas and benefactors other than their constituents to satisfy. None of these immigration laws are any more than arbitrary. Those laws which limit and scapegoat honest workers -- who are crucial and critical for our economy, who pay taxes without any chance of the benefits we citizens derive from paying those membership dues to our society -- are disingenous and are never or in any way, providential. Immigration laws are subject to political whim at the expense of the very people we need for cheap food, safe and clean social venues, and many, many places in which they remain invisible. They have no voice. They are the easy targets of villains and cowards. 

Anti-immigration policy is unamerican, antidemocratic, antidemocracy, and contrary to the most basic fabric of which this country stands and thrives.

Anatomy of (The) Witch Hunt

"President Trump, ramping up his assertions of extraordinary powers, declared in a tweet that he had "the absolute right" to pardon himself for any crime. The claim was the latest in an aggressive series of moves, as Mr Trump and his legal advisoers, have argued that his authority places him above the reach of obstruction statutes."
-New York Times

Whom among Trump voters expected their votes meant elevating their guy above the law? Where are all the Right Wingers apoplectic about their claims Obama was setting himself up to be king?

Where are all the righteous Republicans demanding return to decency after sex in the Oval Office and a history of rampant womanizing before assuming office? Where are the birthers grasping at straws to legitimize not having a real reason to hate that guy, when their guy, right now, is surrounded by conspirators to defraud the government and conspirators of outright treason? Their guy's spokesman is talking in terms of "relative truth" and evolving reality endangering his exposure to examination? And, then, they claim liberals and "independents" apply double standards simply for pointing out the demonstrable and blatantly obvious?

It's blatantly obvious the President of the United States has in the past laundered vast amounts of money through his real estate holdings and has accepted huge amounts of cash to enable further real estate development through Russian Oligarchs' billions. This president is subject to coercion and blackmail over his illegal activities on an international scale. It's obvious this president has offered influence for a fee paid to his previous agent who is currently under investigation with an array of imminent indictments right around the corner.

*Money laundering
*Graft,bribery, pay-to-play influence peddling, through Essential Consutltants, LLC and the Presidential Inauguration Fund
*Emoluments through his Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC and Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
*Obstruction of justice per firing Comey, intimidating Rosenstein, pressuring, intimidating, firing McCabe,
*Abuse of power with pardons of Arpaio, Libby, D'Souza and its implied invulnerability over the law.

And that's just in the past sixteen months. Trump has never been held fully accountable for his fraud, deceptions and discrimination over his entire life.

Seventy-five charges among twenty-two individuals, five guilty pleas and one sentence to date. That's a lot of witches and nobody but Mueller knows how many more are to come. The noose is tightening, and how the President declares himself above the law.

What a sick, twisted, foolish, silly little man.

Reality Check

(1) The truth is that which reflects reality. Reality is that which exists, can be measured and tested to reveal the quantity and quality of its characteristics. Reality is absolute. Any description that deviates from absolute reality ceases being true. Period. No wiggle room.

(2) A significant tell of racist dysfunction is the pathological person's disability to discern the nature of racism and the difference between racist offense and simple rudeness, simple insults or even honest descriptions of reality.

Calling someone out for racist behavior is not equal to being racist. Similarly false is mischaracterizing calling out a traitor's behavior as if it were equal to committing actual treason. Calling out the President for racism, and pointing out his campaign's intercourse with agents of the Russian oligarchy and Russia's kleptocracy -- not to mention his gratuitous condemnation, persecution and discrimination against hispanics, Muslims, women, Black people, Jewish people, non-white people. or any manner of lying about these marginalized, legally suspect groups, even lying to these same folks to their faces -- is not the same as the President's, his family's and his circle of supporters, advisors, Cabinet and minions' anti-social, anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional, anti-democracy goals and behaviors.

Describing despicable people as despicable people is neither being a despicable person nor behaving in a despicable manner.

Democratic Agenda and 2018 Election Platform For All

The American electorate, under objective examination, reflects how The US is essentially a liberal country. It would benefit the Democratic Party establishment to embrace and aggregate Democratic Socialist voters, and sympathetic Democrats or Independents as awakened by Bernie Sanders, and revel in the country's true character, values, as well as the trends in overall electorate sentiment they represent.

This is the Democratic Agenda. These are definitive, progressive issues and the measure by which the greater proportion of the country supports them:

Same Sex Marriage 61%
(Some state candidates would legislate this back to exclusion)

Undocumented Immigrant Support 59%
support and acknowledgement that undocumented workers are an essential workforce so many industries depend on, and that Dreamers are productive members of society. Dreamers are fully American in every sense except a certificate that officially agrees.

Non-criminal undocumented immigrant path to stay 74%
Why would those who pose no threat yet are productive, often essential members of society be persecuted? Racist elitists kindly Butt TF Out and Shut TF Up.

Build the wall 34% total support.
Why is nonsense still being talked about?

Legalize Marijuana 58%
The War on Drugs was and remains a racist, Republican cudgel to control their opposition. MJ poses less public health concern than alcohol or tobacco and has major medical and therapeutic applications denied millions with medical complaints. MJ significantly reduces the addiction and overdose affects of the opioid crisis. Portugal reversed this nonsense almost a score years ago, saves many millions annually on arrests, prosecution, incarceration, productivity loss due to addiction, applying the savings to treatment, prevention, general healthcare, infrastructure and education. Left Coast and other states with medical and recreational MJ available collect many millions annually in tax revenue. And, it's cutting significantly into foreign drug cartels' grip on American markets.

Obamacare is good or doesn't go far enough 58%
Why don't the Republican talking points used to vilify the ACA identify the portion of voters who oppose the law because it doesn't go far enough, isn't liberal enough, or isn't single payer they claim support their antipathy for this signature legislation championed by that black guy?

Single Payer Healthcare 58%
It's only a matter of time. Embrace it. Revel in its goodness. Run on it.

Equal Pay 84%
Because it's (always and forever been) The Right Thing to do

Free (Tax supported) child care and pre-school 59%
Our investment in the future. Just like the rest of the developed world already does.

Support $12 minimum wage 66%

Support $15 minimum wage 52%
Had the minimum wage tracked productivity and the cost of living since 1980, it would now be $24/hr (or more). Instead, corporate owners, Republican think tanks and the likes of the BBB feign hardship whenever they are called out on their long held free ride and need to get responsible for a change.

Address Climate Change 64%
It's 'way long past time to get real, for crissakes.

Reduce Defence Spending 64% overall; 80% Democrats
The US spends more on defense than the next eighteen country *combined*. There are multiple failed and/or archaic defense development programs that are authorized over and again solely as employment sources for House members' constituents. That money would better be used to create actually productive jobs like retraining the traditionally coal mining population to work in much healthier alternative energy jobs like solar panel, windmill farm or even the infrastructure supply manufacture pipeline.

Abortion always legal or in most cases 56%
It's a guaranteed, Constitutionally protected right. If it's not your uterus, not your personal abortion, it's none of your business. Your invisible, magical, celestial superhero doesn't have any more say than anybody else who isn't involved in that, individual event. Theocratic option and anti-women's rights crusaders kindly Butt TF Out and Shut TF Up.

Fund Planned Parenthood 58%
Same as above.

Universal Background checks 85%
Mental Illness history restricting gun possession 79%
Federal background check Database 70%
Common Sense ain't anywhere near what it's cracked up to be. Good sense is a much better option. It's 'way long past time to get real. The Russian finance accepting, foreign funds laundering, American Terrorist Organization, armament manufacturers lobby and mouthpiece, the National Rifle Association, doesn't represent even a plurality, much less an actual majority, of Americans. I don't have data on again outlawing assault rifles, which nobody but combat zone military personnel have any business having And that includes domestic municipal and state police.

Here are a few issues for which I do not have stats. These are central to the survival of the Middle Class.

Repeal restrictions on Medicare price negotiations with Big Pharma
Medicare and the individual states' auxillary medical plans have HUGE negotiating powere that is arbitrarily prohibited by laws passed at the behest and benefit of pharmicutical manufacturers. Enough of their free ride on the backs of the sick and vulnerable.
Outlaw employer mandated labor dispute arbitration. Restore employee class action suits. Make arbitration an employee opt-in issue at the time labor action is brought, prohibiting arbitration as an term of employment.

What oligarchy coddling bullshit. For the last fifty years, employers, the so-called job makers, have usurped the productivity gains and the massive profits generated by labor. leaving behind a legacy of stagnant wages and less-than subsistance renumeration. Repeated and ever increasing tax breaks and subsidies have robbed the middle class of its very existence. Reverse the tide. Make American Labor great again.

Back in the 60s and 70s, there were PSAs from the President's Council on Fitness, The Peace Corps and, especially, Stay In School and Go To College for America's future announcements. What happened to those? Every other developed country pays for their citizens' higher educations. Some even pay students a stipend to attend college. Why are Americans saddled with life-long student loan debt that profits banks? Free college for all. Or, at least offer students government funded, interest free loans like the Fed essentially gave to too-big-to-fail banks and individual billionaires after the financial failure of 2008.

These, and other heretofore uncounted issues, are what America is all about. Stand up, declare these values loudly and clearly. With these issues, city, county, state and Federal counsels, boards, agencies, legislatures and administrators can take this country back from the Right Wing.

If only we can get all the people represented here out to vote on each election day. One's failure to vote doesn't hurt only that non-voter, but it hurts me and every person, whether citizen or not, on American soil you'll never even meet.

Deep Thoughts in Moments of Repose or Despair

Repurposed from Facebook
1Q 2018

1. It's occured to me that President Swamp may have stumbled into being a traitor. He really is dumb enough to not be aware that blind faith and unquestioning loyalty can still get you in trouble. Truth is, he surrounds himself with equally limited incompetents, in over their heads, making it up as they go along. He and his are ever unaware there are cause and effect consequences to every move -- thought, word, deed -- in world class initiatives. This is what comes from engaging in that about which one knows nothing, and in not caring to forearm to meet unexpected results to one's deeds. His ignorance may be bliss -- as it may be for his supporters/voters/apologist -- but it's coming to bite us all in the ass.

2. The breathtaking nature of what has been vaguely veiled blasting into the open through a whisper in open Federal court is astounding. The revelation of Sean Hannity as Michael Cohen's secret client lays bare the bias, duplicity and bald faced hypocrisy of that which is misnamed Fox News. In the very screed in which Hannity decried the death of attorney/client privilege over Cohen's office, home, hotel and safe deposit raid, he declared that he shall forever be truthful, and his channel fair and balanced. Hannity's hyperbole is never truthful, and has certainly not been fair nor in any manner balanced. The whole affair is not only cringe worthy, ridicule worthy, but is an embarrassment as part of the American tableu's fabric.

3. The only way groups like the NRA and the Tea Parties have persevered is because they never shut up and they never back down. The astounding inclusiveness and overarching diversity of the ReGenerartion's March for Our Lives and #NeverAgain movement stand to break the stranglehold of division politics, conservative racism (not all conservatives are racists, but all racists are conservative) and the toxic, angry old white male patriarchy embraced by Republican politics.

4. The RNC justifies Conor Lamb's success over Republican candidate Rick Saccone "because he's cute." Dear myopic RNC: The kind of ugly candidate Rick Saccone exhibits -- exactly as with the president with whom he aligned himself and emulates -- hasn't anything to do with his looks.

But, yeah, Conor Lamb is a right looker. Politics is show business for ugly people.

5. 

Just as he did for Swiftboating and birtherism, profligate contributor to the likes of WorldNutzDaily Jerome Corsi is manufacturing the argument that an absurd, non-existent, secret "deep state" was created specifically to unthrone Trump in defense of Meuller's impending charges, impeachment, removal and criminal indictment.

6. Facebook charged the Trump campaign 1/100th the fee for the more outrageous, click-bait mongering ads than they charged the Clinton campaign's comparatively boring ads. Facebook claims it's the algorithm's psychometric analysis and not an individual or group of actual humans who made the calls. Humans would have been acting illegally. But, says Facebook, you can't blame a mindless computer program.

Bullshit.

Somebody designed the algorithm. Somebody approved the use and application of the algorithm. Somebody programmed it, tested it and debugged it. A whole lot of people monitored its use and effect every hour of every day as it hummed along.

The Trump campaign paid Brad Parscale’s company ~$93M for the online and social media portions of the 2016 campaign. Minus commissions, that's about $70M in ads which would have cost the Clinton campaign $7 Billion dollars for equal efficacy. Facebook's profligate, impetuous avarice for profit did more damage to the American electoral process and the security of American democracy than Russia's Internet Research Agency's $10K divisive campaign. This didn't happen by accident nor did it happen unnoticed as it progressed any more than ads paid for in rubles did. Nothing, simply, was done about these circumstances. For profit.

7. Three hundred and six billion dollars in damage in 2017 caused by climate change disasters in the United States. Never mind world wide. How many billions of profit was had by the petrochemical companies who knew about the dangers and effects of climate change for the last fifty years, denied the existence of Global Warming, and lied about any reference to Climate Change to protect their bottom lines. These are the untold subsidies we among the public remain to pay for corporate America to plunder the strengths and resources of our country and the world.

8. Douglas High School Students of Parkland, Florida are exactly why the Republican party has been trying to eliminate public education in America since Nixon, through Reagan and the two Bushes and into Trump Administration's toady DeVos. The students don't limit their voices to politically correct rhetoric or feign respect to undeserving political so-called leaders. They call BS where BS lives.

What It Means To Be American And How That Affects The American Dream

Polls are open today in the primary election of candidates for the Senate seat vacated by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III's investiture to Attorney General of the United States and the temporary replacement by former Alabama Attorney General and current incumbent, Senator Luther Strange. Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, twice removed from that office for cause of refusal to honor Supreme Court of the United States rulings is projected front runner in that race. Every Republican candidate promises to out-Trump the others in their support of the President. Every one among them have extensive records of prejudice, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, pro-oligarchy, anti-middle class, anti-impoverished American citizen sentiments and policies.

The Constitution of the United States unequivocally, as the supreme law of the land, defines the nation and the parameters of what America is and what America is all about. While the Declaration of Independence advanced the motivation behind the formation of the independent government and the society which it ultimately espoused, it is the Constitution which is actual law and is both definitive and dispositive of whom, what, and how the country exists. Nowhere in the document is there anything about a deity or a supreme, superior or preeminent group over any others. In stark contrast, The Constitution of the United States specifically cites universal equality and equal protection under the law among a host of other guarantees for not only each and every citizen, but each and every person who sets foot on American soil and falls under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States. The United States is about the equality among all participants in the melting pot of immigrants, new arrivals, the indigenous, aboriginal and all others who gather within its bounds. Any diversion, deviation, exclusion among the Constitution's designations of what America is about is simply anti-constitutional, unpatriotic and unAmerican by actual definition.

Bigotry of any type is not patriotism. Bigotry is antisocial dysfunction and the opposite of patriotic. Period.

20-20 Hindsight

The big flaw in this election's results is that the disaffected, almost-half of the electorate who is sending Trump in the Oval Office also returned the very same Congress that has worked to thwart, counter, prevent and reject every single progressive initiative of the past six years that have exactly precisely and with surgical precision addressed every single -- without exception -- issue which has turned the disaffected almost-half electorate against the establishment. The problem is not an unresponsive government. The problem is a recalcitrant, divided, internecine-warring Republican party, half of which is batshit crazy, government-is-the-problem delusional. The other half is merely racist-against-the-black-Kenyan-post-colonial-Marxist-Communist-socialist-weak,-fascist-tyrannical President, neo-liberal oligarchs. The message, instead of how bad Trump is, would better have been: "This is what the Republican Leadership has stood in the way of accomplishment -- and list every single intervention they staged -- So, give us a Congress we can work with. Vote Democratic." And, that remains the only solution to the problem we face. Only then can we address return of the Fairness Doctrine, Glass-Steagall, Equal pay, women;s health, corporate personhood, corporate welfare, corporate subsidy, corporate loopholes, lobbying, campaign finance, Citizens United, Voting Rights, gerrymandering, etc, etc, etc.

Let me put it another way: Out of the frying pan...

The Republican Party Is Not Your Friend

The (dis)loyal opposition party has been over since George W dispensed with plausible deniability with his overt overreach in applying all their eco and poli policies at full bore without any wiggle room, cover or fallback. Without any place to hide, they resorted to The Tea Party as the latest rebranding of the Fringe Faction among their numbers. You know, their base. The former Know Nothings and direct descendents, both ideologically and genetically, of the John Birch Society.

They first gave us Voodoo Economics which they combined with rampant, pro-oligarchy deregulation which only blew up the world economy.  In response, they really thought The Tea Party was a good idea. And, then, they gave us Donald Trump. Out of the frying pan. And, everybody out of the pool!

Eight years of Congressional obstruction posing as forward looking opposition policy is indicative of the terminal nature their grasping at straws actually is. Just how long did they think things could possibly last applying the quarterly report method to chronic, real world, life-and-death issues?

Email. Yeah, that's the ticket!

End Of An Eon

I'm a retired, fat, long haired, Mexican, socialist, atheist faggot living in poverty. Considering all the heartache and actual prejudice to outright persecution I have personally experienced, not to mention the countless millions subject to the cruelty promoted by the avarice, subterfuge and fraud from that party's operations, agents, supporters and constituents for decades, I can't actually associate my euphoria at the apparent breakdown of that house built on foundations of sand with schadenfreude. It's too well deserved to be unfortunate for any reason, on any level, from any point of view. They've been so awful, intentionally and horribly mean and cruel fo so very long, it's almost too good to hope that the wicked witch may actually be dead.

This is a comment I posted to a pundit roundup in The Daily Kos.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/5/1566651/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up-Campaign-shifting-to-post-Labor-Day-and-the-deplorables#read-more

Reality neither knows nor exhibits any kind of bias. [What we see in contemporary Main Stream Media roportage] is [the result of] almost forty years of Republican smear campaigns labelling “liberal” as pejorative that has likewise falsely painted reality as having a liberal bias. There is no such thing as a liberal media by virtue of the fact that ALL main stream media is corporate owned. And, those corporate overlords have a vested interest in controlling the narrative. That’s why we always served a (pathetic) horse race electoral competition even when one of the candidates is an unworthy, sociopathic fraud without even a scant clue about creating policy. It has rendered factually reporting Republican avarice and subterfuge as somehow flawed and (absurdly) unbalanced. (attn: fact and fiction do not carry the same weight. Creating an argument by pitting reality and make believe against each other does not render any kind of balance whatsoever nor reveal any manner of truth. Nor does it have a chance of solving anything.) It’s the well funded (vast, right-wing conspiracy) propaganda machine working as intended.  The lily-livered fourth estate dutifully folds to the pressure due to being owned by the very oligarchs who cannot be reported accurately — read: not allowed to be reported upon without actual bias.

What It Means To Be Mean

Whence Evil: Normalizing Hatred
(Originally published on The Progressive Playbook website, Sept. 16, 2013

The path toward becoming either a Progressive/Liberal person or a Regressive/Conservative person winds through a measurable combination of environmental factors and intrinsic brain function. Recent studies of brain function and psychological makeup have revealed that varying degrees of political outlook are rooted in organic, biological brain function as well as variable exposure to ambient social attitudes throughout life. That is, it’s a combination of nature and nurture. The studies suggest some people may not be able to control their attitude and outlook. Other people go with the flow and may ultimately choose, or not, to think differently from their parents, peers and surrounding society.

Let’s first examine the effects of either mindset. According to Moral Foundations Theory, promoted by a collaboration among psychology professionals and social scientists specializing in morality and politics, morality is widely variable among cultures yet repeats itself thematically in universally similar ways. Each culture exhibits a discreet, array of instinctive ethical conventions which informs and confines its members’ behavior. These rules are the scaffold around which that society builds a series of social boundaries that define the hierarchy among its members, attributing color and flavor that delineates the unique shape and timbre of that society’s culture.

According to Moral Foundations Theory, every culture exhibits a combination among these ethical categories:

1)      Care/harm – This classification describes how well we relate with others in terms of intuiting others’ pain or suffering. It is attached to kindness, tenderness and how effectively we cherish or care for others. This is one side of empathy.

2)      Fairness/cheating – Altruism is thought to be an evolutionary adaptation promoting survival of the tribe, group or family. Justice, individual rights and autonomy altruistically delivered to others applies. It’s another side of empathy.

3)      Liberty/oppression – Domination from without creates tension eliciting umbrage and corrective reactions in opposition to, most often, defined authority. Images of peaceful demonstrators being bullied and injured by uniformed authority swelling the ranks of subsequent protest actions is a good example.

4)      Loyalty/betrayal – Social animals, including humans, form coalitions of mutual support and common cause. Patriotism, self sacrifice for the common good

5)      Authority/subversion – This order and hierarchical configuration expresses social interactions in terms of leadership, how one follows, qualification of legitimate authority and tradition-defined behaviour.

6)      Sanctity/degradation – Underlying, but not limited to, religious concepts of raising existence above the sensually indulgent, animal, lustful, fleshly, worldly or basely human, into an elevated, spiritual sphere. Sanctity and degradation treat the notion that the body is a fragile shrine easily desecrated by immoral acts or toxic contaminants.

Societies combine these ideas in variable proportion as a matter of self definition. Rebellious population segments may act to further refine proportions of Moral Foundation Theory aspects within the society to elicit change or eventually die out. Conflicting priorities that arise among an evolving culture make for a divided society. Conservatives rely on all six of the ethical departments, and the culture wars of the last thirty years rage over the Right’s greater reliance upon Authority, Loyalty. Additionally,   perhaps especially, the application of Sanctity and conflict over legitimacy of its pseudo- or fundamentally religious authority weighs heavily. Conversely, Liberals and Progressives bestow greater proportional weight upon Care/harm criteria with heavy support from the areas of Fairness/cheating and Liberty/oppression.

What are the pressures that bring some in society to revere the group or its leaders so highly that individuals are less valuable or even expendable? How do individuals come to regard those who are not members of their group, however it may be defined, as not deserving of the advantages of their core members?

Simon Cohen-Baron, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology in the Departments of Psychiatry andPsychology at theUniversity of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. has been studying empathy for three decades. His work is wide ranging and comprehensive. He has led in the development of what he calls the Empathy Quotient to quantify individuals’ empathy. With multiple combinations of colleagues, Professor Cohen-Baron has examined the effects of testosterone on Empathy, taken hundreds of brain scans pinpointing Empathy Center activity in the brain and how those functions reflect in  behavior. Amniotic fluid and adult blood samples measured isolated protein compounds’ effects on gestational development. Subsequent examination of amniotic fluid compounds’ effects on brain Empathy Center acuity have yielded much evidence on how differently fully developed brains function. These examinations, combined with analysis utilizing an extensive range of investigative sciences, reveal whether the application of empathy results from a systemic empathy function compared to some degree of social or other biological determinants The analysis from such a wide array of disciplines, such as social neuroscience, genetics, tomography techniques, psychosis quantification -- among many others, pinpoints why some people are capable of and even prone to cruelty while others are not..

In Professor Baron-Cohen’s book, The Science of Evil, he redefines the mystical, emotionally laden term evil toward empathy, or the lack of empathy, establishing a quantifiable emotion upon which to base and test his theory. Among many factors, it turns out there’s an effect from testosterone levels during gestation and after puberty. But, that’s just the beginning. The greater population of “empathy normal” individuals exhibit a range of observable brain “empathy center” function. Among the individuals who exhibit reduced or diminished empathy center activity are categorized in three types, Borderline, Narcissist and Psychopathic. Measurable trends indicate a range of genetic predisposition from reduced empathy to a status of no measurable empathy at all: “Empathy Zero, Negative.” There is significantly less empathy center activity in the brains of individuals who measure in the Empathy Zero, Negative population. Gestational and environmental aspects are also indicated representing all three factors – Borderline, Narcissist and Psychopathic - in the nature v. nurture realm of personality traits.

In other words, some people are just born that way, though there do appear to be some avenues of therapy that can help ameliorate the final outcome of some who exhibit Zero, Negative personality characteristics. That’s not to say that everybody who descends from a family sprinkled with Empathy Zero, Negative ancestors will become Zero Negative, or even exhibit reduced empathy. That is because there is a large number of environmental factors in the stew that effect the individual’s personality as well. That is to say, just as one may be genetically predisposed to exhibiting reduced or Zero Negative empathy, one who has neither familial history nor genetic markers of zero-negative orientations may also be affected by multiple environmental factors, such as childhood neglect or abuse, as well as the general public zeitgeist on issues of empathy, to swing an individual disposition one way or the other.

In recent decades, there have been well organized private, public and government sponsored policy shifts institutionalizing gravitation away from an empathetic society to one of evermore reduced empathy. America is currently verging on operating as a zero-negative personality would toward those who are vulnerable or who cannot fend for themselves due to political and socio-economic factors. It began with Ronald Reagan’s exhortation that government is not the solution, but that government is the problem. Reagan failed to define, however, to whom government is the problem. His and his followers’ implication is that governmental influence is a universal threat to its citizenry. At the same time, religion arose as a political issue, blurring the Constitutionally drawn line separating Church and State, which introduced a host of cultural issues with a revived mantle of supernatural authority only suggested previously, and heretofore easily relegated its Constitutionally appropriate place.

Enter the so-called Culture War. The Culture War is based on largely theocracy justified policies(see: Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity-degradation above) coupled with corporate elite pressure toward dispensation from civic responsibility. The resulting philosophy created a systemic rejection of empathy in secular policy and law. The Right leaning political forces had strength in numbers among Religionists and the financial strength of corporate interests that include, among other characteristics, diverting monies previously used to maintain society to further finance the erosion of governmenalt protections for the poor and needy as well as protection of the general population against corporate greed and abuse.

Removal of the Fairness Doctrine by President Clinton under Republican pressure removed any semblance of public media balance offered to the public by televangelists, news outlets, and paved the way for the likes of Fox News. Under the mantle of corporate personhood, special interest themes designed to overshadow reasonable discourse, fortified as speech protected by the First Amendment, continues to systematically deceive the public toward control of public opinion without consequence. Reaching the logical conclusion of corporate personhood, the Republican nominated Supreme Court majority has handed Corporations carte blanche to overwhelm the airwaves with opinion posing as self evident truth and conviction substituting for facts.

A series of systematic exemptions for specific classes of financial market transactions seeded the ground for widespread fraud creating an illusory bubble of prosperity, the collapse of which nearly ruined the world economy. Corporate influence over government has let the perpetrators escape significant penalty; avoid restitution, compensation, or even consolation for losses engineered on vast numbers of the unwary public. That same influence over government and control of broadcast content has continued to advance the very same policies that caused the barely averted global depression as if it were the solution to fix their effects.

These are but a few in a cascade of events that could arguably be described as rational within the context of the market bubbles inhabited by the debacle’s perpetrators. Each, however, lacks any consideration of fairness and consequence, relying on reflexive authority, loyalty to caste, and a distorted sense of government oppression. And greed, without any consideration to the harm inflicted. That’s Empathy Zero, Negative type psychopathic behaviour. Recurrent. Systemic. Endemic. Chronic. Zero empathy.

As a society, we’re left with a significant number of people who are attracted to authority. Once authority is acquired, they wield their power ostensibly for their group, family or tribe but ultimately for themselves. They notably embrace the indisputable authority of money and types of assumed authority such as that conferred ipso facto to tradition or a deity. Authoritarians, by nature, use whatever authority they can muster to bludgeon and minimize dissent and resistance. They especially focus their disdain on the vulnerable. In various displays of empathy rejection, we’re treated with themes like Newt Gingrich extolling "why the African-American community should demand pay checks and not be satisfied with food stamps," and how Hispanic immigrants “should learn English and not use the ‘language of the ghetto.’ ” An Arizona sheriff, while running for Congress as a Republican, and having appeared with then presidential candidate John McCain in an anti-immigration political ad, “Build the dang fence,” was revealed by his purported undocumented ex-boyfriend of being threatened into silence with deportation. Revelations included explicit photos of the boyfriend posted on a gay dating site, and demands for non-disclosure about their relationship. Mitt Romney extolled, “I’m not concerned with the very poor” and “I like being able to fire people who offer me services.” According to Dr. Ron Paul and others, only women who have been victim of an ‘honest’ rape would qualify for a post-assault estrogen injection, because, well, that’ll have to do.

Other firebrands of the Right, such as Rick Santorum, cite culture war friction as a spiritual war, and would limit others’ behaviour and liberties on sole authority of their preferred brand of faith. His arc of hyperbole includes assertions such as the President’s support of universal education is merely a ploy to get kids into college to indoctrinate them into left wing ideology. All that work during preadolescence in Sunday School, all those confirmation courses, and countless Sunday sermons during young adulthood would be laid waste. And, reality-based news reportage has a liberal bias. This is a man who admonished a voter on the campaign trail that government must not support her gay son’s “unhealthy lifestyle” such as marrying and raising a family. He also claimed that rape victims should be denied any chance of an abortion and instead should make the best out of a bad situation. Fairness and harmful consequences don’t figure at all.

Marginalization of the vulnerable has taken many turns. School boards institutionalize isolation and vulnerability among gay teens by regulating out of existence the acknowledgement of gay bashing and bullying among  students, teachers and administrators under threat of dismissal. State legislators propose statutes that would protect gay bullying and physical gay bashing as long as it’s motivated by religious sentiment. When called out on abuse and abdication of civic duty, these blame-the-victim authoritarians claim persecution to deflect criticism and avoid responsibility. An apropos illustration is a celebrated case of Illionois’s Catholic Charities that claimed they were discriminated against by being denied their claimed right to discriminate against same sex couples to whom they’d deny adoption services, all the while insisting on still receiving state tax payer subsidies to fund those services. Authority, Loyalty, Sanctity, Oppression, with little or no observation of Care/harm or Fairness/Cheating.

The effect on individuals has been variable, but in many cases it’s been catastrophic. Women’s choice is regulated by statute out of existence and by withheld funding for all services, not just birth control for which government funds of any kind are already prohibited. House Oversight Committee Chairman Daryll Issa (R-CA) convened a hearing about controlling contraception while actively barring women’s testimony. Republican controlled state legislatures are effectively restricting abortion rights to the point of making illegal not only contraception itself, but some fertility techniques. Further, some forms of natural miscarriage could be charged as manslaughter unless the woman involved could prove it not to have been artificially induced. Workers’ collective bargaining, a thorn in the side of big business and a huge target for elimination by Corporate America, is being assaulted in states controlled by Republican legislatures and governors. Authority, Loyalty to clique, Liberty to control others indiscriminately,  Sanctity of their cause. But, where’s the Fairness and care for consequences?

Republicans in Congress are pushing for privatization of social programs to eventually divert substantial proportions of funds that now buy beneficiaries’ food, clothing, heat in Winter, medicine, general to specialized doctors’ care, and utility bills to instead line the pockets of private investors fortunate enough to have the resources to “buy” into the attendant agencies – often as a reward of whatever political connection they have or political contribution they’ve made, including any manner of elite resources they enjoy at the expense of the general public.

States adjacent to those exhibiting the worst Zero Empathy, Negative behavior, have simultaneously passed marriage equality bills, some signed into law while another was stonewalled with a veto accompanied by a provision directing the legislature to put government acknowledgement of citizens’ rights before the public for a vote.

It’s not just the government under controlling pressure from Corporate America, aided and abetted by the Religious Right’s force of numbers, that’s at issue. Corporations and Religionists have created a formidable phalanx of entities, mostly tax exempt religion-inspired foundations and political action committees, to create new beach heads of assault on the rights and freedoms of those who act according to Fairness, Consequences and Liberty while all but dismissing Authority and Loyalty. Evidence has arisen that LDS and Knights of Columbus allegedly colluded to fund and pass anti-equality referenda and state constitutional amendments in California and elsewhere claiming that marriage equality threatens their concept of marriage and the existence of marriage equality threatens their Freedom of Religion. Regarding provision of women’s healthcare, Catholic bishops push against businesses founded by religious orders having to play by the same rules as any other business in the public marketplace. The Family Research Center, certified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, headed by Tony Perkins, claims the Left is trying to create a Theocracy and marriage equality is tyranny that promotes incest, bestiality, and polygamy. At the National Organization for Marriage, another SPLC-certified hate group, former leader Maggie Gallagher labelled  homosexuality an “unfortunate thing,” and “at least, a sexual dysfunction similar to impotence or infertility,” as well as “a sexual disability preventing certain individuals from participating in the normal reproductive patterns of the human species.” She also claimed that gays “can always control their behavior,” and even admonished the incumbent President to give more funding to scientifically rejected “ex-gay” research. Gallagher even denied on MSNBC “Up with Chris Hayes” that she’s never done any of those things. Bryan Fischer, Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association and host of the American Family Radio program, “Focal Point,” rails preposterously on a daily basis with themes such as 98% of gays are drug users, have up to 1,000 sex partners (In a lifetime? Annually? Weekly? We just don’t know!), the HIV link to AIDS is a scam, people living with AIDS reap what they sow.

These are but a few among an extensive roster of gay bashers, and but a scant taste of their pejorative litany levelled at gay people. Others, such as Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, Matt Barber, Victoria Jackson, Liz Trotta, Kelly Yanta, Rev. Kenneth Hutcherson, John Eastman, and Allen West to name only a few, cast their unsupportable aspersions with tedious alacrity. They make stuff up, never have to prove anything and never bother about the suffering they inflict directly, or inspire the weak and gullible to inflict. Any calls for responsibility, restitution, accountability, compensation or even consolation are met with cries of intolerance, First Amendment injuries and any other manner of glib rejection of  accountability one can imagine. It’s all about Authority, real or imagined, Loyalty to their authority and the family or tribe that agrees with it, Sanctity of the message and group cause, their Liberty to express it without regard to others’ rights to be free of that message

Ideologues are infiltrating and influencing otherwise politically neutral organizations, too. A failed, former candidate for governor who had run on a platform of reversing abortion rights succeeded in denying private charitable funds to Planned Parenthood shortly after being hired as an administrator at the funding institution. When news of the changes hit the media, the charity claimed that current funding, which had not been affected by the administrator’s change, was subsequently restored when it was actually only future funding that is to be denied. The tactic has successfully mislead critics and diverted criticism as if some permanent correction in policy had been made. Planned Parenthood still loses future funding which effects all its programs without any concern on the overall damage inflicted on the truly needy by an ideologue in a position of power in a private charity.

There are so many more readily available examples of how people in positions of power exhibit diminished to nonexistent empathy, spread inane projections on innocent citizens. Many instances of religious harassment and political aggression had been, until very recently, subsumed into a vaneer of civility, kept in check by more universal public morals and ethics. But, since the 1980s’ symbiosis between regressive politics and politically empowered conservative evangelicals, – and more recently the black-is-white rhetoric enabling John-Bircher-cum-Tea Partiers –  the lid has been lifted off the simmering antipathy among elder, European descendant, mostly male voters (and their apologists). Seeming as from nowhere, anachronistic, ostensibly long settled political issues have been newly foisted into the foreground, forcing already overburdened Americans, straining under the immense pressures of an economic breakdown borne of prolonged stress under regressive political policies, to shoulder “culture war” issues for the second and sometimes third time in our lives.

One has to wonder to what end. What sense is there to the subterfuge, the mendacity that enables it, and the sheer lunacy of the fit – or lack of it – in it all? Perhaps that’s the large and the small of it: there is no point. It’s just more chaos, a cyclical crescendo of background noise foreshadowing  or forewarning for the more aware, astute or merely attentive, what’s in store if we don’t snap to and get our act together.

The bigger question focuses on what a reasonable person -- be they moderate-to-liberal, or moderate faithful, or secular (sceptic/skeptic, humanist, atheist, agnostic, non-faithful, etc.) or the electorally crucial, independently minded individual who can only sit back in dumbstruck awe – may do in reaction to what passes for conservatism these days in American politics. What’s to do about this fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into? Of course, we must make our voice heard on election day. We must also make our voice heard – loudly, clearly and in a sustained manner – in our capitols and in Washington through letters, email, phone calls, rallies, protests and in response to regressive, empathy bereft positions in water cooler conversations, Thanksgiving dinner-like exchanges and in response to online articles at every opportunity. Lobbyist and SuperPAC influence hits their targets daily. That influence must be countered similarly by an overwhelming voice of individuals in every venue possible. Only our mass resistance to radical regressive backtracking will counter the onslaught we endure.

Republicans all over the South are denouncing and leaving the GOP, citing not only Donald Trump's elevation to de facto leader and presumptive Presidential Candidate of the Republican party, but also things like local state Legislatures' obsession with discrimination and persecution of LGBT citizens. They are removing their membership from the strength in numbers count their former organization uses to perpetuate calls to popularity justifications for their anti-social policies.

Likewise, any religionist or faithful believer who disagrees with religious "leaders'" pronouncements would best remove their membership from rolls of any institution who vilifies innocents and promotes attitudes, beliefs and policies that discriminate against LGBT people, women, minorities of any kind, "opposition" faiths and belief systems lest such member be complicit to leadership atrocities by virtue of omission rather than commission. Christians of every denomination, society and gathering: Just say no, and vote with your feet.