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What The Fuck, Baltimore?

Here’s some food for thought today.  We can all agree that ISIS is a horrible and violent group because they cut peoples’ heads off, but at least they use a sword and do it quickly.  Imagine just how brutally you would have to beat someone to sever their spine by 80% without the use of a sword.  Imagine the beating it would take to fracture three of his vertebrae and crush his larynx as well.  Imagine taking a week to die from your injuries.  Now imagine that person’s only crime (despite a history of drug dealing) was being afraid of the police.

So why would Freddie Gray run away from the police if he didn’t have any drugs on him?  Maybe, like most people living in the city of Baltimore, he was terrified of them.  Why then would the people of Baltimore be terrified of the police?  Consider this, over the last four years the Baltimore Police Department has had to pay settlements an average of twice a month for brutally beating or even killing people who have no charges against them, and those are just the people who have filed complaints and won settlements.  These aren’t just young men like Freddie Gray either.  They include a 15 year old boy riding his bicycle, a 26 year old pregnant woman (who’s only crime was witnessing the police beating someone else), a 50 year old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65 year old church deacon (who’s only crime was rolling a cigarette), and an 87 year old woman who was only trying to help her injured grandson.  The list goes on and on.  These cops are out there breaking peoples’ arms and legs, jaws and noses, ribs and spines, and even beating and tazing them to death on a near daily basis, and they frequently get away with it.  Since 2011 the city of Baltimore has had to pay out $5.7 million in settlements and an additional $5.8 million in legal fees defending these cops.  Imagine if that $11.5 million were used for the betterment of the community instead.  Imagine all the opportunities it could have provided for the poor and underprivileged.

The misdeeds of the Baltimore Police Department don’t end with them beating and killing the people they’re paid to protect either.  Just a few years ago the FBI caught 51 Baltimore cops in an extortion racket.  The department has also been plagued with off duty street fights, abuse and death threats against their own spouses, and even the murder of a firefighter and his wife followed by a suicide.  In 2014 some Baltimore cops even repeatedly tazed a meningitis patient to death in his hospital bed.  No charges were filed against them.  And for all you animal lovers out there you can add brutal animal abuse against peoples’ pets.  The list goes on and on.  Doing a Google search for cases of police brutality and abuse of power in Baltimore will keep a person busy for days.  It’s downright depressing if not terrifying.  It would seem that the Police Department is the most dangerous and violent gang on the streets of Baltimore.  The citizens desperately need someone to protect them FROM those who are paid to serve and protect.

I don’t condone violence or riots, but I can understand how the people of Baltimore have been pushed to the point of protest and beyond.  I feel for them.  If ISIS were to invade your neighborhood and start beheading your brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, if they were to beat your grandmother within an inch of her life would you not also want to take up arms and fight against them?  Would you not try to defend your community?  What if your cries of protest fell on deaf ears and the abuse continued for years and years?  What if your tax dollars were used to perpetuate this madness?  How much would you take before you flat out lost your mind?  Would it make you angrier than if your favorite sports team lost a game?  Take a minute to think about if from their perspective and then ask yourself what the rest of us can do to stop this kind of abuse from happening, not just in Baltimore, but all over this country.  Who will watch the watchmen if not us?

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I thought we had a possum living under our back deck trying to get in our trash at night, but it ended up just being Guy Fieri. 

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True Patriotism, and the Truth About Taxes

I’m an American and a patriot, a true patriot.  I don’t just wave a flag when it benefits me or when it’s convenient.  I want what’s best for this country and its people, and I feel anger and animosity toward those who would want to destroy it.  I’m not talking about ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or even Boco Haram.  I’m talking about those who would slowly destroy it from the inside like a cancer, whether out of misguided stupidity, or for personal profit.  These people are the real threat to America and the American Dream, and the only way to stop them is to stop voting for them.

To help you understand what I mean, imagine that America is a big beautiful house.  If you love this house, and you want it to remain the most beautiful house on the block, then you have to take care of it.  This house can’t last forever if you don’t maintain it.  Sooner or later you’re going to have to mow the lawn, and clean the gutters.  You’re going to have to fix the roof and paint the walls.  You need to continue to invest in your house for it to maintain its value as an asset.  In return, the house will repay you, not just by keeping you warm and dry and safe from the elements, but by having actual worth.  Every penny spent on your home is returned to you in value.  Your house can be your greatest investment.

On the other hand if you never spend a dime maintaining your house, then eventually it will decay and crumble down around you.  The roof will start to leak, the paint will peal, and the wood will rot away.  Eventually your house will no longer keep you dry or warm or safe from the elements.  You will need to either spend a ton of money fixing it, or you will need to abandon it and buy a new one.  You will find that the money you saved by not maintaining it isn’t nearly enough to repair or replace it, and you can’t sell it because it no longer has any worth.  You will have mismanaged your greatest asset.

America is like this house, and we need to maintain it.  We need to not only invest in our roads and bridges, but in our people too.  We need to spend money on infrastructure and education to keep America great, and this money all comes from taxes.  Taxes are the lifeblood of America, and investing this money in America by paying taxes helps to preserve America’s greatness.

Not everyone is aware of this, and appealing to people’s greed is pretty easy to do.  That’s why the modern Republican Party has vilified taxes to gain support.  Who wouldn’t like to keep more of their income?  Who really likes paying taxes?  It’s easy enough to get people to vote for you by telling them you’re going to lower their taxes, but how can you do this and still maintain a great country?  The simple answer is that you can’t.  Like that big beautiful house, this country needs to be maintained and invested in, and taxes are the only way to do it.  If you love American, then you have to be willing to pay your fair share to keep her great.

There are many in the modern Republican Party who would like to continue to slash taxes.  In fact, there are even some idiots who want to get rid of the IRS and the Federal Income Tax all together.  Oddly enough, these same people want to invest more and more in our military, but where do they think that money comes from?  The military is funded entirely by Federal taxes.  Not only that, but it’s one thing to love our military, and it’s a completely different thing to love the men and women who serve in it.  While the Republicans want to spend more and more money on weapons for our military, they have also voted repeatedly against spending more money supporting our veterans once they return.  In fact, the Republicans have squashed 8 separate bills recently aimed at helping our returning veterans, claiming that they were too expensive, including additional funding for VA hospitals.

The Republicans want you to think that you can live in this big beautiful house and it will stay beautiful forever.  None of us will ever have to pay a penny to maintain it.  They want to cut taxes by slashing funding for Education, and social safety net programs like Welfare, SNAP, Medicare, and Medicaid.  The irony is that without proper educational funding, more and more people will need to rely on things like Welfare and food stamps.  Investing MORE money in educating our citizens will result in LESS money spent keeping them alive later.  You can’t just slash funding to both and hope for the best.  An uneducated population will have a hard time supporting themselves.  If they can’t afford to eat then either we will have to feed them, or they will resort to crime.  Nobody will willingly starve to death so that other people don’t have to pay as much in taxes.  This will result in a police state that is still funded by taxes anyway.  Taxes are inescapable.  The secret to maintaining a great country is utilizing those taxes for the right purposes.

I said that I’m a true patriot and I meant it.  I pay my taxes without complaint because I want America to continue to be a great country.  I don’t have children, but I’m happy to invest in education because I want America to stay great, even after I’m gone.  You can’t claim to love America and starve it at the same time, just as you can’t claim to love your children and not feed them.  I know that you can’t get something for nothing, and being an American means paying my fair share.

I’m smart enough to know a line of bullshit when I hear it, so when Republicans try to tell me that cutting taxes for the rich will help them create jobs I know that it’s a lie.  Cutting taxes for the rich will help them send their kids to Europe for a year to “find themselves” after they graduate private school.  Cutting taxes for the rich will help them buy their Paris Hilton-like children Bugattis to crash, and coke to snort, and $10,000 Hermes handbags  to hold their credit cards when they go out clubbing.  Cutting taxes for the rich will not create jobs.  Only restoring the consumer class will do that, and restoring the consumer class means investing in the 99%, not the 1%.  If you’re like me and you actually love America, then show it by voting these cancerous people out of office and investing in our future and the future of our country.

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Today’s Passage From The Republican Bible

Deuteronomy 15:11 “For there will never cease to be poor freeloading off the rich in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall NOT open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land, for they are a hideous blight on society with their reliance on entitlement programs like food stamps and Welfare. ’”

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Minimum Wage And The Truth About The Soldier vs The Burger Flipper

There has been a lot of push back from conservatives and Republicans regarding the minimum wage.  They are dead set against raising it because they think it would hurt the bottom line of hugely profitable corporations like Walmart and McDonalds.  In fact, some Republicans are in favor of getting rid of the minimum wage all together.  They claim that doing so would eradicate unemployment, never mind the fact that it would broaden the wealth gap, cause massive poverty, and dramatically increase the number of people who rely on programs like Welfare and food stamps just to survive.  The latest argument is one that I find particularly egregious, but it seems to appeal  to some of the more narrow minded “patriots” who seem to be so easily seduced by right wing propaganda.  That argument, which has found its way from Fox News to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, is that some of our soldiers make less than minimum wage and they risk their lives to protect our freedom, why should some pimply faced kid get $15 an hour to slap a burger on a bun?

At first look it’s a compelling argument.  Why should someone making minimum wage make more than our troops?  Well, for starters they don’t.  The Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.  Assuming a person making minimum wage works 40 hours a week and takes two weeks of unpaid leave a year, they would gross $14,500.  According to the Army’s website, a Private with less than two years’ experience  grosses  $18,194.

If we were to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour then someone working full time for minimum wage would make $30,000 a year.  That’s $11,806 more than an Army Private makes.  That doesn’t seem right, does it?  Well, that’s not the whole story.   Take into consideration that an Army Private doesn’t have to pay rent.  They don’t have to pay for utilities like electricity, gas, phone, or internet.  They don’t have to pay for food.  They don’t have to pay for medical costs.  They don’t have to pay for clothes.  They don’t have to pay for a vehicle, vehicle insurance, or gas.  When they shop at the commissary they don’t even have to pay sales tax.  Add to that the fact that they receive benefits, have a pension plan, valuable career training, and are also entitled to a huge amount of money for college, then suddenly it doesn’t seem like that bad a deal.  Being in the military also looks great on a resume.

All that aside, our military is entirely voluntary.  Nobody is forcing anyone to join.  People know the risks and the benefits when they sign up.  On the other hand, people don’t typically work minimum wage jobs by choice.  They do it because that is all that is available to them.  Learning skills to get higher paying jobs isn’t always an option for people, especially if they are raised in an environment of extreme poverty.  People who live in affluent areas like to say that minimum wage jobs are supposed to be for high school kids.  You aren’t supposed to try to make a living working a minimum wage job.  The unfortunate reality is that in some places those are the only jobs people can get.  It is foolish to assume that someone scraping to survive can just decide to learn a valuable skill and find a high paying job.  There is also the matter of intelligence and mental acuity.  Not everyone is cut out for a job at NASA.  Does that mean that they should starve to death even if they are willing to work full time?  It’s important to remember that many people are doing the best with what they have.  

Taking all that into consideration, our soldiers get to keep much more of their income than civilians do.  Imagine how much more you would have if you had no overhead costs.  Some Republicans argue that rather than raising the minimum wage we should pay our soldiers more.  That’s a great idea, except that we already have the highest military budget out of any country in the world.  In fact, our military budget is greater than the next 20 countries combined, and most of them are our allies!  What would happen if we paid our military more?  First of all the Republicans would vote it down.  Sure they like to say that we should raise our soldiers’ pay, but when Bernie Sanders presented a bill to increase veteran health care and education all but two Republicans voted against it.  Secondly, it would make our already bloated military budget utterly unmanageable.

On the other hand, what would happen if we raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour?  Well, for starters a lot fewer people would qualify for Welfare and food stamps.  Not only that, but these people would start paying income tax instead of getting refunds.  That means less government spending on entitlements, and more tax revenue.  What would it do for the economy?  Well, considering that most people making minimum wage have to spend everything they earn just to get by, virtually all of that money would go straight back into the economy.  That would mean more business, more revenue, and more jobs.  It would reduce the deficit while boosting the economy.  In fact it would do all the things that Republicans claim to want.

Some people like to argue that it would lead to massive increase in the cost of goods.  That is preposterous!  The children of Sam Walton who now own Walmart are the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th wealthiest people in America.  They could give every one of their employees a raise and still be make massive profits while maintaining their status as multi-billionaires.  What about McDonalds?  Some people say that raising the minimum wage to $15 would lead to $10 hamburgers.  This is also utterly false!  By McDonalds’ own admission, labor costs account for less than 25% of what you pay for their product, and that includes all of their labor costs, from burger flippers to supervisors, to district managers, to the CEO himself.  What McDonalds won’t tell us is what percentage of their labor costs are minimum wage workers.  One researcher estimated that if McDonalds were to double the wages of ALL their workers it would raise the cost of a Big Mac only 68 cents for corporate stores, and $1.28 for franchise stores which have a slightly higher labor cost to income ratio.  At the very worst case scenario a Big Mac would cost $5.27.  In fact, there already are fast food companies that pay their employees $15 an hour, like Moo Cluck Moo, and they still manage to be quite profitable.

So does it make sense to compare minimum wage earner to our military personnel?   No, not really.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love our men and women in the military, and  I love our veterans even more, although I wish there were less of them.  The simple truth though is that if we were to raise the minimum wage to $15 then with the increased tax revenue coupled with the decreased entitlement expenses we might actually be able to pay our military more money.  That is if the Republicans would vote for it, which as history would indicate, is highly unlikely.