Rase the Minimum Wage for Everybody

Isn't it time we got real about wages.  The low minimum wage is nothing but a subsidy to the business community.   My view is, and it may be harsh, but if you can't pay at least $15 an hour for a worker, there is something wrong with your business plan.  Get out of business.  You're not really making money, you're stealing or getting a free ride from the rest of us.  It's not fair that we, the real taxpayers, have to pick up the slack.  We have to pay for medicaid and Food Stamps.   Raise wages and lots of those people could pay their own way.  I'm all for that.  If the family values people really cared about families and children, they would be for it also.  Unfortunately the buck stops in their pocket and their pocket only.   They purposely over extend and thereby undermine social programs in order to eventually eliminate them.  They don't want workers, they want slaves.  Anything like the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare that loosens the choke hold they've got on the American worker is a threat and must be stopped.  Have we had enough of these people.  If so, get out and vote this November.

Ronald Reagan was wrong about Trickle Down

Hey, we've had thirty years of this nonsense.  Let's just face the fact that it doesn't work.  The pendulum has swung too far, it is time for a change.  For forty years before Ronald Reagan we had percolate up as opposed to trickle down.  With percolate up we had slow but steady growth with fewer and shallower recessions.  Lately we have had deregulation and big spikes in wealth creation for the few, but long an deep recessions that hurt the many.   We need a commitment to turning things around.  If more people have money in their pocket they will spend more than just a few people with money in their pockets.  No matter how rich you are, you can only wear one pair of jeans at a time  More people can wear more jeans.  It worked for a generation and it can work again.  We just need to think differently about things and realize that RR was wrong about so many things.

Ronald Reagan was wrong about Energy Policy

After the 1970's oil embargo, Jimmy Carter put in place new energy policies that were on track to make us energy independent.  Instead Ronald Reagan came into office scrapped those programs and put the money into the military budget so we could defend our gas stations at dangerous locations.  I'd rather be energy independent.  Now thirty years later we are scrambling once again with the same problems and threats.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  I certainly don't want to compete with China for oil.  Competition isn't always a good thing.  Let's forget all the tree hugging stuff, even though I think that is very important and let's just look at our budgets and alternative energy..  How much more money could we have for other stuff if we just solve this problem.  I probably won't be able to afford my home in the Northeast because of rising fuel costs.  I would love to reduce that bill, but I don't want it to come at the price of clean water which is what the frackers want to do everywhere to get the gas.  We need to look at this from a cost effective perspective that gets us sustainable energy without killing life everywhere.  I want solar panels on my roof and need to move to Florida in the future.

Gordon Gekko for President

REALLY?  Are we really prepared to hand ourselves over to the same people who got us into this mess?  I'm sure Mitt Romney is a nice man, but I suspect he is way out of touch with the reality that most people face.  He never really had to work for a living.  He is not self made.  His daddy paid his college, so what can he really say to kids squashed under crushing college debt about the future.  He thinks capitalism is perfect and flawless.  This is not a view I share.  Capitalism may be good for many things but I don't want it in my medicine, my water and lately I don't even want it in my food.  I'm afraid Mitt and his crew will want to privatize everything from social security to roads and bridges.   Everything will cost more and be a whole lot worse.  There are no savings for anyone to be found when things get privatized.   Just look at the war in Iraq.  We ended up spending a lot more money on Blackwater and their ilk with lousy results.  We should send the corporate money men home.  They are not wealth creators, they are wealth appropriators.  They take.  They don't make or create any wealth except for themselves. People like Steve Jobs make and build.  Hedge fund managers like Romney are just sharks who take apart the wealth created by real creatives and workers, for their profit.  They are destroyers,  not creators.

Ronald Reagan was wrong about Unions

Unions may not be perfect, but the fact of the matter is that we are much better off with them than without them.  The must be a counterbalance to corporate upper management.  Had we kept the unions, real wages would not be going down as adjusted for inflation.  Instead we railed against the unions.  The PATCO strike was the nail in the coffin of the unions.  Now they're coming back but it's slow going.  A lot of it has to do with some of the rules the Labor Relations Board is forced to follow.  Big business has made it almost impossible for workers to organize and employers are so short sighted that they don't raise wages even though it will mean more spending power.  Henry Ford had it right.  Pay your workers well enough so they can buy your product.  Now employers pay their workers so little that they qualify for public assistance.  Their is something wrong with the idea that a full time worker can't afford to buy food.  We need unions.  Alone we are weak and expendable.  United we are stronger.

Industrialized Food and Your Health

Mac Donald's is making us sick.  Even if you never eat a Big Mac, Mac Donald's is killing you.  It's no accident that obesity has skyrocketed since fast food became popular. The industry has gone a long way to changing the nature of our food.  In order to make food faster and cheaper we now force feed cows corn which they were never meant to eat and causes them to harbor dangerous bacteria.  Becoming a vegetarian is not the answer either.  Tomatoes are picked green and forced to ripen as they travel cross country.  Chickens fall over and suffocate because they have been engineered to have breasts so big that they cannot walk.  High Fructose corn syrup is in everything from bread to ketchup adding calories but no real nutrition.  At the same time the medical profession is hell bent on treating symptoms with the latest lab work from Big Pharma.  If we straightened out the food industry, our medicare problem will probably go away as people would be healthier later in their lives. Right now doctors treat only symptoms.  They can actually cure very few things.  For the most part, I stay away from doctors and try to stay healthy with good nutrition which is not available to many people.  There are many places without supermarkets close by.  My aunt who ended up getting sick lives in the Bronx in a food desert.  Living in a food desert is bad for your health.  But that's capitalism, which is not a very efficient system despite what the Republicans want to make you believe.  Capitalism leaves dangerous gaps.

Ronald Reagan was wrong about Deregulation

Ronald Reagan was wrong about a lot of things but he was definitively wrong about deregulation.  Regulations are a cause not an effect.  They are implemented after the fact.  Nothing comes from nothing.  If mortgage brokers and Wall Street had honest dealings with clients leading up to the financial meltdown, there would be no political will to create a consumer financial protection bureau.  The CFPB came into being because some bad people did bad things and cheated people out of their money.  The financial industry has no one but themselves to blame for the creation of a consumer watchdog.  It's a shame that all the deregulation done away with in the 1970's and 1980's was not brought back.  The laws against usury should also be put back on the books.  It may have made sense when there was 12% inflation to allow interest rates on credit card to go sky high, but with interest rates at historic lows it makes no sense for interest rates on credit cards to be 25%+.  Sometimes crooks should just go to jail and lose their money.  Right now the crooks are being allowed to holler cop.  After bringing the American economy and the World Economy to the brink of collapse, the financial industry and their Republican running dogs are crying foul over the creation and implementation of the CFPB.  If you don't do the wrong thing, the regulations won't affect you.  Don't run a red light and a cop won't stop you.  It may not be easy,  but it is simple.