Showing posts with label billionaires. Show all posts
Showing posts with label billionaires. Show all posts

Friday, June 24, 2022

A Government "Shutdown" of a Different Kind

What a week it has been and not a whole lot to be supercharged about. SCOTUS has said that you can pretty much carry a gun anywhere you want except near their homes and other "sensitive" areas. You realize that justice is not blind, but is being blinded by the Six Stooges that are the majority opinion of the aforementioned case. 

At about the same time that Congress takes action on sensible gun laws, the courts decide to become activists for gun rights. Is this coincidental or a way to allow the Republicans to say "Well, at least I tried--but the SCOTUS knows better, I guess"? This political impotence is dangerous to democracy and having a religiously-bent, free-market-leaning Supreme Court just exacerbated this. 


Add to it the circus of Congressional hearings that will likely not lead to anybody being convicted of anything and at the least, opens the window for profiting from decidedly criminal behavior, particularly if the mid-term elections are the bloodbath that is being "predicted" by the media and pollsters.

Then stir in profiteers who are making money and flaming inflation in their wakes and whose campaign contributions make it difficult to go after for ripping all of us off. Even the Federal Reserve Bank admits that hoisting interest rates won't help us out on gas and groceries, but will likely keep people out of housing that they are already having a hard time affording. So there's that.

So what do we have to look forward to? Essentially a government "shutdown" by being made impotent through greed, power grabs, and flagging belief in it as an institution by a weary public. And this is the tip of the proverbial iceberg as other rights will likely be dissembled by the social architects in judges' robes (the next being Roe V. Wade). In so doing, the patriarchs and oligarchs win and democracy fails unless we stop rewarding the corrupt by throwing the wrong "bums" out. Mid-term elections are not glamorous, but they are important nonetheless. Hold the line while we still have a line to hold.

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Comped to Go Boldly Where Billionaires Have Gone Before...

 

Congratulations of a sort are in order for the nonagenarian and heavily senior-discounted (actually he flew for free) passenger, William Shatner who took an 11-minute joy ride into near space today. Shatner returned to earth without enough time to write in his captain's log, but did call the sky a "comforter of blue that we have around us." Well, if things keep going this way, that comforter may well smother us as the climate keeps warming things up and drying things out. 

"It would be so important for everybody to have that experience through one means or another," Shatner further said. I'm not sure how we would send over 7.6 billion people into space (Priceline, perhaps?), but if it is needed to save our beleaguered planet, perhaps it is worth rewarding Bezos in advance for his interstellar largesse when we all arrive on Mars or "Amazon presents Mars" as it will be known then. 

While not exactly the USS Enterprise, the brief ride was certainly enterprising for founder Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin who expected the goodwill journey would get good press (Beyond the WaPo) and so it has. At the moment, it seems that Blue Origin and billionaire-owned companies will be lining the pockets of their benefactors instead of funds being collected for space agencies to expand their programs. Many would have to agree that properly aiding these agencies would be a better use of those resources than a playdate in space.

 

Don't Let Us Be Sick

 The late songwriter, Warren Zevon was on my mind yesterday, as I dreaded what I expected to be the darkest underbelly of politics on displa...