It's a Cookbook!

Rich people are odd ducks. Money means everything to them, yet it also means nothing. They pay big money to congress to save on taxes, mostly I think because they can, and they like the pride of ownership that they get with congresspersons in their pockets. I recall hearing that in 1860 before the Civil War began there were more millionaires in Vicksburg, Mississippi than in New York City. This, of course, was because payroll was non-existent in their ledgers because they owned the people that were making them wealthy. It has always seemed to me that, instead of frequent tax cuts for the wealthy, really good accountants would be cheaper than congresspersons. But I'm poor, and that may be why. I worked at a restaurant/bar in Chicago's South Loop where 4 or 5 guys were partners in the venture. None of them had restaurant backgrounds. One, Curtis, was a big-time tax attorney. Closing out my register one night, my till was 1 penny short.  Curtis looked at me and said, "Well..." He wanted me to cover that deficit with a penny from my pocket. I had worked for Greeks, and they never did me like that! This doofus wanted a penny and not for my thoughts! Those thoughts would have been priceless.

Donald J. Trump became a billionaire for the first time in his 80-year life, in this his second term as POTUS. He has pretended to be a billionaire for several decades, but you can't tell me that after 6 bankruptcies (at least one of which was a casino!) and a laundry list of failed businesses, that he was ever a billionaire. What actual billionaire would put his name on bottled water, steaks and a pretend university and hawk them to the public? I'm sure he was a multi-millionaire at several points in his life and that is pretty impressive, but it takes many hundreds of millions to make one billion. I think ten hundred millions is about right. My math skills are rather iffy. Another reason why I'm poor. I suspect.

Since Citizen's United and Mitt Romney declared that corporations are people too, an obscene amount of money has flowed into political races from the presidency down to school board elections all over the country. It's ridiculous. It's worse than the Los Angeles Dodger's buying all the best players they can and everyone giving them the World Series in spring training. Except that in politics they don't buy the best players. They buy whoever will play ball with them and flood the zone with money figuring that will suffice. For example, a Pennsylvania billionaire you or I have never heard of, gave $13 million to Byron Donalds effort to become governor of Florida. All politics isn't so much local anymore it seems. Israel- who can't afford their own bombs to demolish Gaza to make way for luxury condos, can afford to buy US politicians. Do the math on that!

Altruistic bonehead that I am, I would think a good way to bribe voters might be to use that money to better the lives of said voters in competition amongst candidates. You know- roads, hospitals and affordable housing for people. That'd be nice. But the billionaires are not altruistic boneheads like me. That's why they are rich and I am not. You have to spend money to make money (I think that's a law) and they would rather spend money destroying things -like public schools- to create a *need* for far more profitable private schools. Look at television. The days of turning on the TV and watching the networks are pretty much over. I'm out of the Chicago area but I can pick up their stations for free with an antenna, but if I really want to enjoy the game with an unfrazzled screen, I should subscribe to a streaming service. You thought cable TV was bad. They have Balkanized television so much that it makes a guy like me want to read a fucking book instead of watching Da Bears. 

Well, let's not go down that rabbit-eared hole. Suffice to say, the idea is to privatize EVERYTHING under the sun.  If it's not making a profit and is government funded, it is communism. Schools. Roads. Hospitals. All the things we used to pay taxes for, are to be privatized for fun and profit. This current regime is sofa king transparently privatized. No one talks about eliminating taxes though. That's because we the people have been privatized as well. We are no longer consumers; we are the product.