Tagged evergreen

Someone needs to buy a Grassroots USA tour package for the members of Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, so they can at least visit the real world once in their lives.

It’s “Cyber Monday” – get out there and buy stuff! But you don’t actually have to go anywhere, for this gimmicky shop-shop-shop day lures us to consume without leaving home, or even getting out of bed.

Thanksgiving – let’s eat! America's most food-focused holiday traces its roots back to the abundant feast that Pilgrims and Indians enjoyed together in the fall of 1621.

In June, our immigrant-bashing president ordered an end to his own warped policy of forcibly tearing terrified migrant children from the arms of their asylum-seeking parents.

Shame is that queasy feeling you get when you realize you've done something improper, ridiculous... or just flat-out contemptible. But it's socially invaluable, for feeling ashamed is a built-in jerk alarm, keeping most of us from doing the same embarrassing thing again.

The US postal system has 30,000 outlets serving every part of America it employs 630,000 people in good middle-class jobs, and it proudly delivers letters and packages clear across the country for a pittance. It’s a jewel of public service excellence.

Donald Trump bragged in 2016 that, "I know words – I have the best words."

Many Americans can’t believe that political coups are part of our country’s history – but consider from the Wall Street Putsch of 1933.

The Koch brothers extremist political agenda of empowering multinational corporation’s to reign as sovereigns over the majority will of the people has always been inextricably entwined with the profiteering agenda of their wholly-owned, $100-billion-a-year, industrial conglomerate.

Generals plan wars, but battlefield commanders do the bloody work. So, meet HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, a quiet but bloodstained commandante in General Trump’s relentless war against poverty-stricken Americans.

Generalissimo Trump (whose nom de guerre is “El Donaldo,” the mucho macho presidente of the USA) is personally directing the hostilities in this assault on – surprise! – the USA.

Multibillionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, want to supplant America's core democratic principle of majority rule...

The Koch Brothers believe that their great wealth entitles them to rule over the many – so, for decades, they've been running a surreptitious assault on the rules that protect the majority of us from their abuse.

Workplace exploitation is at least as old as the industrial revolution. But rather than using whips to make the assembly lines move ever-faster, today's corporate exploiters use technology, devious work schedules, and lobbyists to extract more work from employees – for less pay.

Question: What do you get when you combine ignorance, imperiousness, and incompetence? Answer: Betsy DeVos.

“Greed is good,” proclaimed Gordon Gekko, lead character in a 1987 film lampooning the low ethics of the high finance barons of Wall Street.

Governors and mayors insist that giving our tax dollars to corporations to lure them to move to our cities is good public policy, because the corporations create jobs, those workers pay taxes and – Voila – the corporate giveaway pays for itself! Really?

In September, the giant retail monopolist, Amazon, announced its intention to build a second corporate headquarters in Someplace, North America. Where’s that? Aha, that’s the trick in a corporate game called “Fleece the Taxpayer.”

Language matters. For example, the words that corporate and government officials use to report on the health of America’s economy can either make clear to us commoners what’s going on – or hide and even lie about the reality we face.

Have you noticed that Donald Trump constantly prefaces his outlandish lies with such phrases as: "To be honest with you," "To tell the truth," and "Believe me"?

In the 1980s, when I was Texas Ag commissioner, my staff and I proposed a comprehensive set of state rules to protect farmworkers, public health, our water supplies, and farmers themselves from the life-threatening consequences of toxic pesticides.

Want good quality, lower-cost health care for your family – and (what the hell, let's think big here) for every man, woman, and (especially) every child in our society?

Rather than a health care system, our country's leaders have kept us shackled to a "corporate care" system, allowing insurance giants, drug company gougers, hospital chains, and other profiteers to ration our care based on whether a family can pay whatever outrageous price the corporations demands to maintain their exorbitant profits.

Every decade or so, America's mass media are surprised to discover that migrant farmworkers are still being miserably paid and despicably treated by the industry that profits from their labor.

With corporations socking away massive profits, and with the labor market fairly tight, why are worker’s wages still stuck at miserly and even poverty levels? Check out the full commentary here.... Read more...