In 1960, A.J. Liebling tossed off one of his most memorable lines. In his May 14 column, in the New Yorker, Liebling wrote: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Even back then, in the face of corporate takeovers of newspapers and layoffs of hundreds of journalists, he worried that the power of the press was being concentrated in too few hands. Today it is estimated that about seven hundred billionaires control the information flow to three-hundred and thirty-million people in the United States.

As I was capping off 2021, with a brief bout of Omicron, I had time to think about the phrasing our press uses with respect to that variant, and what they habitually call “break through infections.” Thanks to my three doses of an mRNA vaccine, my natural immunity was augmented and informed on precisely how to recognize and combat the COVID-19 virus.

Because the press is so imprecise about what it means when one gets infected despite being vaccinated, people think that the vaccines don’t work and that is probably a reasonable inference. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Unless an infection is present, there is really nothing for the immune system to do. It can only mitigate damages from such an infection once the infection is detected. Vaccinated or not, if you inhale the infection, you are infected. Sooo, use of the term “breakthrough” is actively promoting the erroneous idea that a vaccine is a barrier. That’s simply not how it works. An mRNA vaccine informs the immune system by means of it’s messaging.

Intellectually undisciplined and integrity challenged bloviators have also exploited the misconception many people have about bacterial infections, as opposed to viral infections. Accordingly, they confuse the role of antibiotics and vaccines. They lead the incurious to equate the two and engage in hearsay based upon the bloviator’s erroneous or intentionally misleading conclusions. 

Now you may ask yourself what might motivate an excessively prominent influencer to mislead their followers. And it is, perhaps, not comforting when one realizes that he or she is being played for a fool. Consider how those, the most entitled at the commanding heights of the world’s power dynamics, think of what they view as the “great unwashed.” Is it beyond the realm of possibility that they actually want someone, that’s foolish enough to take Ivermectin for COVID, to self-sterilize?

Now you may be inclined to dismiss this as one of many wild conspiracy theories that are currently in vogue. Still, at this juncture, I am inclined to believe that at least some of the following quotes, by well known individuals, will surprise you.

Theodore Roosevelt said “society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.” And, Herbert Hoover said “There shall be no child in America that had not the complete birthright of a sound mind in a sound body.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, the justice who wrote the Supreme Court’s 1927 Buck v. Bell decision, also wrote “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. … Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” 

Adolf Hitler took note of these American sentiments when he said “There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the American Union.” Winston Churchill had advocated for sterilization and compulsory labor camps for mental defectives in 1911. In that vein he said “The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes … constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate.” 

Other influencers such as George Bernard Shaw supported this line of reasoning when he said “We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. . . . A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.” Even the words of Helen Keller will surprise many for she said “Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and to the world.” 

Margaret Sanger aligned her fight for contraception with that of the eugenics movement. She stated that “birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit [and] of preventing the birth of defectives.” W. E. B. Du Bois, the African-American activist and writer, promoted marriage and reproduction of the most desirable group while breeding out the least.

The most boisterous of the know-it-alls, through their abysmal ignorance, are self-selecting to breed out the least fit voluntarily. By taking their Ivermectin and trans-femme cocktails, they are sterilizing themselves. And that is precisely what the Tucker Carlson types want them to do.

And then it dawned on them, the Epiphany would be sullied by the one year anniversary of the racist riot that occurred in Washington on January the 6^th in 2021. Like the poo flinging monkeys that breached the nation’s capital on that day, defecating on the floor and smearing feces on the walls in Statuary Hall, members of the Sedition Caucus would continue to soil themselves in a high profile way. Theirs is not a profile in courage, far from it. History will correctly characterize them as vacillating jellyfish. Today, they are simply seen as Benedict Donald’s bootlickers.

They have desecrated the memory of all who courageously sacrificed, some dying face down in the mud, to preserve our constitutionally grounded democratic republic. Many of the country’s major corporations that took a stand, pledging to withhold campaign donations in the aftermath of the failed coup, have since demonstrated their own contempt for government of, by, and for the people. Their early declarations about not supporting seditionist politicians proved insincere. As the New York Times would opine: “The donations also reflect the fact that, over time, lawmakers are a more influential constituency for companies than consumers.”

What the old corporate guard has failed to comprehend is that workers and consumers have become more intentional as they decide who they’re willing to work for, and as they vote with scarce dollars. Unlike the featherbedded corporate CEOs, that enjoyed pay raises of over 940% over a period of 40 years, compensation for the average worker had increased by only 12%, not even keeping pace with inflation. Even so, due to the generosity of taxpayers, members of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate were also benefitting from generous vacation schedules and automatic pay raises. And yet, the minimum wage in the United States had increased by only two dollars and ten cents, from $5.15 in 1997 to $7.25 at the close of 2021.

As the nation struggled to recover from the COVID pandemic, price gouging was used to create inflationary political pressures. At the same time, the Hosea 4:12 contingent became even more boisterous. Though considered a minor prophet, Hosea had described this type of excessively prominent evangels of mammon perfectly, In about 750 BC, he wrote: “. . . for the spirit of whoredoms has caused them to err, and they have gone a-whoring from under their God.”

Ever since Plato wrote his philosophical dialogue, dealing with the composition and structure of the ideal state, a republic has been defined as a body of persons that comprise a commonwealth. It was not a nation in which the government is ruled by a hereditary head of state or monarch. It’s a state in which the supreme power is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by the body of citizens entitled to vote.

And there’s the rub. “The body of citizens entitled to vote” was an acceptable concept as long as the body was white. And, to guarantee it remained that way, the three-fifths compromise was used to insure a black man or woman would never amount to more that three-fifths of a person. When the Civil Rights Act of 1960 authorized court-appointed referees to help African Americans register and vote, those Democrats that were sympathetic to Neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and other white supremacist groups were enraged, and they changed parties.

The Republican Party of today is decidedly unrepresentative of all but the tiniest – whiniest of minorities. They purge voter rolls, gerrymander, intimidate voters, suppress votes, and subvert elections to sustain the last gasp of the three-fifths compromise. The only way they can win elections with their abhorrent set of values is to lie, cheat, and steal while, in the Goebbelian tradition, accusing others of that which they are guilty. There are many who would argue that the Insurrection of January 6^th in 2021 was just the beginning. But, the fact is, racist riots are nothing new. The “Final Solution” in Nazi Germany was nothing new. The Tulsa Race Massacre was nothing new. The Trail of Tears in North America was nothing new just as the Armenian Genocide was nothing new.

For a significant number of citizens in the United States, democracy is ok, as long as it’s the white-bread variety. A representative republic is ok, as long as it too is representing the interests of whites only. Bigots are terrified by the notion of a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-racial democracy. They are running from it, without looking to where they are running. And they are working, feverishly, to convert the United States Senate, and the House of Representatives, into Vladimir Putin’s brothels, where all the members are goin’ a-whoring.

When those religiously agnostic look at the unmitigated selfishness of Ted Cruz, they think to themselves; “If that’s the face of Christianity, I want no part of it!” In addition to diminishing the value of a Harvard education, Cruz has consistently been an embarrassment to the Christian faith. Although, trading one’s witness for a masquerade seems to be very much in vogue for so-called Christian politicians.

Imperfect as they were, the authors of the United States Constitution got it exactly right with phrasing that defined our democracy. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, , ,” epitomizes the spirit of constitutional law. Without an understanding of precisely what is meant by these words, and the cardinal precepts that follow, one cannot competently approach the letter of the law. Two thousand years before, Jesus accused the courts of his day saying they were “straining at gnats while swallowing camels.” He was referring to each whited sepulcher’s habit of setting aside the best interests of the people, in order to instead serve a club of self-righteous exclusivity comprised of a self-interested few.

Wholehearted and intelligent conformity to the kind of benevolence, that Jesus revealed as the Divine will, is the only way to build the kind of nation that is truly of, by, and for the people. The true consent of the governed is only achieved by insuring such consent is fully informed. The authenticity of any representative government will always be determined by the character and caliber of those who compose it. It depends upon the installation of true to their oath representatives, that are not inclined to hide anything; together with active engagement by an intelligent electorate. It is conditioned upon the practice of electing to public offices only those individuals who are intellectually and technically competent. They must be morally fit and possess a character that is loyal to society as a whole. This is the only way that government of the people, by the people, and for the people can be achieved and preserved.

Our strife-torn planet is replete with forms of liberty that are unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled. Any exercise of freedom that works to the detriment of others is not serving the long term best interests of any civilization. In fact, it is far more likely to result in abject bondage for someone. Reality based freedom and liberty is always mindful of the fact that every person on earth has a right to be the true arbiter of his or her own destiny.

We must recognize that imbalances within the global economy deprive some people of the right to be free. We also need to acknowledge that excessively burdensome access to food, housing, and healthcare are significant problems imposed as a result of systemic inequities. Such an imposition is typically brought about through the unmitigated selfishness of those at the commanding heights of the world’s economy. The idea of a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-racial democracy terrifies them. They pay mere lip service to the values of those who are fervent advocates for the right of each person on earth to determine their future and that of their posterity. At the same time, they surreptitiously plot to undermine all that is true, beautiful, and good.

The potentate model of corporate and national governance is an awkward and outmoded relic of the past. It may hang on in a pathetic attempt to remain relevant. But, as Thomas Jefferson wrote; “We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” The new world has outgrown its relics. Leadership that can evolve to keep pace and operate in a way that is truly commensurate with the intellectual, sociological, and spiritual development of a great humanity is slowly but steadily emerging.

There are, of course, times when a leader must rise to the occasion and become the supreme authority. When the Fire Chief tells you to put a fourteen foot ladder against the North wall to help the hose brigade fight a raging fire that’s about to jump to the next building, it’s not an appropriate time to question his or her authority and engage in prolonged debate. A fire department that’s actively on scene is not a democracy. When the fire is out, and the game tape is being evaluated, the best departments become more collaborative, drawing upon the experience from each of their members.

Authentic corporations and democracies are like the collaborative team. They are composed of people associating for a common purpose and acting corporately to insure success. A loyal opposition is highly valued, like an opposable thumb, for both make it easier to grasp each and every problem that comes before us. Such opposition is described as loyal because, even though there may be disagreement on the best way to overcome obstacles to ultimate success, the objectives are shared. Our depth of understanding is enhanced precisely because we are blessed with two eyes. Think about how much more meaningful the world will become when we have finally learned to also see it through the experience of others.

We must also learn to properly evaluate the opposition we encounter on the basis of its loyalty to, and affinity for, the values of those working to achieve a more perfect union that serves the highest and best interests of We the People.

In 1971, Lewis Powell presented a memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, In it, he repeatedly refers to an “attack on the enterprise system.” He rages against what he characterizes as “self-interest groups of all kinds” while failing to acknowledge that an American Corporation, especially one controlled by foreign potentates, is also a self-interested group. Powell scrupulously avoids addressing the primary criticism of what he tries to sell as “the” enterprise system. Our country’s evolving benevolence is not an attack on the “American System,” but rather a much needed critique of its integrity deficits.

The Powell Memo is a blueprint for the domination of American Democracy by inauthentic, out of balance, corporations. It is indissolubly linked to the Shareholder Rights Movement. Many who actively engage in free enterprise manage to do so while privatizing profits, but also without socializing expenses and losses. They conduct their businesses in a forthright manner without low-balling the workers and thereby forcing them to seek compensatory public assistance. In other words, people of integrity do not operate their businesses in parasitic fashion.

In December of 2021, The Atlantic contributor Peter Whener published an article that pretty much defined the Trumpi-Inanity cult as composed of people who have the devil on both shoulders. Once the emotionally-charged / intellectually stunted hoards at the December 19 Turning Point USA gathering finished with their chants of “Let’s Go Brandon,” Donald Trump Junior revealed what we have always known about the so-called Evangelicals and their thin veneer of religiosity.

Junior told the crowd that the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.” It’s worse than that, really; the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go.

The mammon serving evangelicals cheered. They have always subscribed to the Horse and Sparrow doctrine that teaches “If you give the horse all it wants, the sparrows can subsist on the undigested oats that are contained in the dung piles along the road.” This perverted twist on what Jesus was quoted as saying in Matthew 6 was clearly problematic for those feigning allegiance to Jesusonian principle. In the 26^th verse Jesus said: “Consider the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

In contrast to those of Jesus, the abhorrent values of the entitled class were on full display with the Horse and Sparrow example. It then morphed into “trickle down economics” which the masses correctly decoded to mean “trickled on.” Stiffing the public treasury shifted the burden to everyone else. It reduced the size of the middle class in The United States. While running against Ronald Reagan for the presidential nomination in 1980, George H. W. Bush had derided Reaganomics as “voodoo economics.” It gave the military industrial complex a sugar high while reducing taxation. Trump senior’s reprise of the ill advised consisted of further reducing taxation on the inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth as he squandered money and vandalized vital institutions.

The Putinesque Prevaricator occupied the nation’s highest office just as it was revealed that CEO pay had increased by 940% over a period of 40 years. During the same period, compensation for the average worker had increased by only 12%. During a period when members of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate were benefitting from generous automatic pay raises, the minimum wage had increased by only two dollars and ten cents, from $5.15 in 1997 to $7.25 at the close of 2021. The price gouging that was the proximate cause for inflation, during the nation’s economic recovery, has now completely offset the cost of living allowance relief Social Security recipients were hoping to enjoy in 2022.

While the Trump followers were mainlining deception, their cult leader was siphoning off most forms of equity out from under them. The scattershot rage machine is bearing down full bore as we are witnessing a new iteration of the Goebbelian tactic, “Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.” It consists of co-opting the top concerns expressed by the service-motivated; then twisting and using them as talking points to corruptly benefit the profit-motivated. 

Jerome Powell’s distorted conception of American Enterprise is directly attributable to the shell-like characteristics of inauthentic corporations; ones where the employees, if any, are typically devalued as low level functionaries. The sociopathy manifest by the stockholders makes no provision for the original meaning of corporate culture. For authentic corporations are formed by people, associating for a common purpose, and acting corporately.

The Employee Owned Benefit Corporation is truly of, by, and for the people. It is the best example of shared prosperity, one in which employees and that company’s retirees hold a supermajority interest of at least two-thirds, thus limiting the holdings and influence of outside investors to a maximum of one third. An EOBC also has a clearly articulated public purpose.

Once upon a time there were just a few destinations, hotels, and restaurants readily identified as iconic. These descriptions usually flowed from their unique atmospherics, their commitments to superior service, and consistently delivering culinary delights that earned them a truly enviable reputation. In essence as well as substance, iconic enterprises are characterized by fidelity. Faithful patrons have learned the quest for authenticity is only rewarded along a critical pathway that leads to full satisfaction. As if by contrast, the experience gained by not paying attention to the road ahead or where we’re going, typically yields a fleeting gratification at best, , , if at all.

The entrepreneurs of yesteryear usually identified a need within the community and then worked diligently; rising to meet that need. Today, the business plan often starts with a cool looking icon drawn on a cocktail napkin. In true style over substance fashion, identifying and delivering on promises made to the ultimate consumer can be an afterthought. The brainstorming sessions focus on the aspirational while the essential functions are relegated to an oft neglected category as backfill. Such an approach to entrepreneurship often gives short shrift to even the most foundational considerations.

Consider the promise of personalized medicine and, specifically, the recent Theranos experience. The marketplace is crowded and delivering on the promise of personalized medicine can be lucrative. Even disciplined business professionals usually have to compete with the ruffles and flourishes of forward looking statements contained in their rival’s fundraising prospectus. The idealistic goals put forth are probably yet to be realized. However, the legal consequences for damages, when others rely on such statements, are mitigated through disclaimers.

We have become acclimated to the current reality dynamics. Rightly or wrongly, we’ve come to accept a simple fact: When competitive pressures are on the rise, the line between potentials and actuals can become blurred. As more and more attention is devoted to the next raisin’, less and less mind-share is made available to focus on the fundamentals.

Theranos was not a lemonade stand. It was a highly complex startup with many moving parts. The idea that the skill-set required to be a tech industry entrepreneur, are somehow comparable to that of a custodial CEO riding a mature legacy business, puts the value proposition and the global competitiveness for our country on a plane of unreality. The future focused visionary is an essential component, as is the custodian. And, complementary relationships, with compatible talent, do not just occur independent of time. They are carefully and methodically forged.

In the mid 1980s, I served as one crazy-assed visionary for a Fortune 500 company that manufactured computer, television, broadband network, and cable television products. My job was to do product development in a way that leveraged such a unique product complement during a time when computer based imaging was considered to be too specialized an application to have any real market potential. While there were others in the company that shared my team’s enthusiasm for such an intrepreneurial effort, I was not an engineer. The company assigned an electronics engineer, who just happened to be a vice president, to my case. His job was to remind me of the laws of physics while also insuring that I was properly provisioned.

As a product development guy, foremost in my mind was what the customer wanted. It was way too easy to step in sumthin’ when your main customer was the Federal Government. So I was grateful that I was teamed up with a VP that was also a double E. In federal contracting that line, between actuals and potentials, was extremely important if you wanted to avoid jail time. And so, maintaining a timeline that accurately reflected the likelihood of product availability was key to survival. To this end I also made sure the government agencies I worked with had, in their possession, prototypes of my products so they could see the true functionality at any given time within the product lifecycle.

There are always things you can do to protect your enterprise from any claims of misrepresentation. The discipline required to actually do them, in the face of unrelenting commercial and political pressures, requires focus and persistence. For most entrepreneurial efforts the leading edge in the marketplace is seen as the bleeding edge because you are typically hemorrhaging money at the outset. Tesla was an exception. By selling the first Roadsters to the wealthiest individuals among us for $109,000, the company was able to recoup most of the development cost for its early prototypes. By early 2021, you could buy a standard range Model 3 for under $42,000.

Clearly Theranos could have and should have done things differently. Somewhere between the vision and the implementation, investors were misled. And while there is always a cost associated with full disclosure, that company might have survived after working out the kinks in their production chain in a more forthright manner. Unfortunately, we’ll never know. But one thing is certain. Personalized medicine will become real just as surely as I’m able to watch a movie on my computer-based handheld imaging device.

When members of the Supreme Court attempt to diminish what they describe as their “perception problem,” it may just be because the public’s perception of the court is accurate. Edward Rumely, editor-in-chief and publisher of, the New York Evening Mail, coined the phrase “court-packing plan” way back when Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to add more justices to the Court. Today, those who have a tenuous relationship with words still use the term “packing” to decry any effort to increase the number of seats on the High Court.

Those who hold a firm position, or even no position, on the abortion debate must acknowledge that cases heard in the final days of 2021 were brought precisely because the makeup of the court had changed. Much of the argument in December centered on the question of predictability and that is the question that should have been, first and foremost, before the Presidential Commission on the Courts. Of course any commission that is headed by co-chairs that are vested in traditional law would predictably find for maintaining the status quo.

It’s well past time to reform our entire process of jurisprudence. There is a statement inscribed over the doors of the United States Supreme Court building. It reads: “Equal Justice Under Law.” That has never been true. And, at this juncture we must ask ourselves: “Is it even an aspirational statement for those currently occupying the judiciary?” Nibbling around the edges, in incrementalist fashion, will not produce the change required to reform our system of jurisprudence. When one president can abruptly shift the idealogical balance of the court in just one term, we have a big, big problem. 

As state legislatures are producing bills, that actively corrode the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic, because they perceive a compatible ideological bias on the high court, it has become abundantly clear that the entire process has become corrupted. SCOTUS Justices, occupying positions of honor and trust, have no ethics code. Their nominations, confirmations, and accommodations are secured through dark money. If that’s not conducive to corruption what is? The stench described by Justice Sotomayor has, at this juncture, become just too hard to ignore.

We need to reform the judicial monastery in a big way. And we should begin at the very top. When a judicial panel set to hear any given case becomes randomized, by the drawing of lots, legislatures will be much less able to game the system as they did in 2021. This randomization should start with a United States Supreme Court composed of twenty one justices. When seven justices are selected at random to hear each individual case, only after certiorari is granted, we can then begin to trust the court again.

At the trial court level we must also realize that jury nullification is ill defined. It is, in actuality, what happens when judges selectively amplify, filter, and contextualize everything a jury gets to hear. Are these not the tools of the modern day deceiver? Witnesses are sworn “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Then we often watch helplessly as integrity challenged officers of the court routinely extract half truths so they can cobble together any narrative that might suit them.

The doctrine of equal justice under law has been a fantasy throughout the entire history of the United States. The country’s original sin of slavery was codified in the Three-fifths Compromise that insured a black man or woman would never be counted as more than three-fifths of a person. Since that time the jelly-bean jar, the shadowy purging of voter roles, the politically tainted district maps, the voter intimidation tactics, the removal of mailboxes and polling sites from minority neighborhoods, the legislative sophistries, and the deceptive practices of those occupying positions of honor and trust have surreptitiously kept the nation’s corrupt compromise alive.

When the Preamble of the United States Constitution is effectively set-aside by the courts; and when the various oaths of office are widely regarded as somehow having little value by those sworn to uphold them, the legitimacy of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government are severely undermined. The proximate cause for such a rotting foundation is directly attributable to those occupying high office who have a reckless indifference to the truth. In the context of an authentic democratic republic, deceiving We the People in elections and judicial confirmations should carry penalties far more severe than even those typically imposed for lying to law enforcement or for perjuring oneself, while testifying in court or before congress.

Being truthful with the general public is an indication of rare statesmanlike qualities. It insures the consent of the governed is one that is fully informed. The dark money, the closed door hearings, the shadow docket, and the unsigned letters are all indications of a deep seated cowardice that is antithetical to informed consent. Together, they constitute the best evidence of a ruling class composed of individuals that are morally and intellectually defective thus prompting their pathological engagement in subterfuge.

We the People, in order to form a more perfect union, must demand integrity.

The main difference between bribery and lobbying is that bribery is considered illegal, while lobbying is not. That’s it folks! Bribery has always been about the effort to buy power and paying to guarantee a certain result. And, until recently, lobbying was about influencing power. Today, those distinctions are mostly gone while the money offered as contributions by lobbyists is simply laundered through campaign and PAC accounts.

While the Federal Election Commission has strict rules prohibiting the personal use of campaign funds, helping one to get elected or re-elected to a cushy job is just one type of payoff. In addition to the form fitting seats and a generous vacation schedule, legislators make names for themselves that have marquee value. They have a history of using inside information to acquire or dump stock while exempting themselves from the insider trading laws that typically land mere citizens in jail. 

Officially, lobbying is organizing a group of like-minded people, industries, or entities to influence an authoritative body or lawmaking individual. This influence is often brought to bear through financial contributions. Bribery involves the payment of something such as money, services, goods, or an intangible favor in the subversion of normal practices. This is done for gain, special treatment, or some sort of advantage.

If this seems to you like a distinction without a difference, you’re not alone. Efforts to differentiate between the two is, in today’s politics, intended for deceiving the public. The one thing that should now be obvious to all of us is that bribery in the form of lobbying is systematically diminishing the influence of voters while steadily augmenting the influence of donors.

Lobbyists have existed for as long as governments. They once operated as information givers and were considered to be a valuable source of facts. Although the information was typically skewed in support of their cause or industry, they rarely engaged in bribery. They would instead gradually and methodically build support for their causes. They might have funded a study, survey, or research that would sway a politician’s opinion and that of their constituency.

Now lobbyists operate by ensuring contributions are made from all levels, the grassroots on up, to influence decision-makers at all stages. These contributions aren’t directly paid to any official or lawmaker. They might go to that person’s election or re-election campaign, to purchase advertising, to finance a fundraiser, to help a politician’s favorite cause or charity, or to support a project in the politician’s home town or state. The excessive prominence of a politician operating in such a quid pro quo fashion only serves to enrich them in some way.

We need to pay attention to each and every announcement about some former politician joining a lobbying firm and thereby leveraging their knowledge of how the government machine works. We should also confront each and every one of those companies, and each politician, including Supreme Court justices, about the use of dark money to distort the public discourse. The total spending on lobbying has grown from $1.44 billion in 1998 to $3.53 billion in 2020. And that just includes the amounts that have been reported. It doesn’t include the fungibles and intangibles. 

Bribery is the first step leading to subversion within any system of government. An alternate and corrupted system is formed incrementally that introduces inefficiencies, instabilities, and obstacles to democracy. Over time, it erodes the economic foundation of a country while redirecting its benefits to a select few. The most vulnerable members of society get marginalized and any middle class, should one even survive, becomes increasingly cynical.

Once upon a time, a gift was given freely out of goodwill. When it became an incentive provided with the intention of receiving something in return, it became a bribe. Certain members of the United States Supreme Court and the Legislature have shown increasing contempt for the cardinal precepts of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic as they have undeniably and steadily blurred the lines between gifts and bribes.

Bribery was once considered to be a felony. Now it is standard operating procedure. It is long past time to restore the penalties for both the bribe giver and the bribe receiver. We should not be giving a pass to those who exert or tolerate a corrupting influence. The electorate is not being served when their representatives are engaged in whoring for some donor base. Campaign Finance Reform is an issue that has, like any other can, been kicked down the timeline for as long as most citizens can remember. Why? 

The United States is now being seen as the dimming beacon of democracy while its credibility, as a representative republic, is also on the decline. Unless we,as citizens are also dim-witted, we already know that we must reverse this trend lest our grandchildren inherit a dystopian world. It’s entirely on us.

Unless our so called representatives are going to be true to their oath, and actively protect our constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic, they should be promptly and summarily relegated to the trash heap of our national history.

In the 1990s, I was working as a glorified pack mule. My load consisted of video monitors, trans-pushable computers, laserdisc players and a heavy case of twelve-inch laserdiscs. I would travel between the academies, colleges, and universities to demonstrate what curriculum designers of that day described as “interactive video.” Back then it was seen as supporting the pedagogy of full immersion instruction although, in light of the way things have evolved, that was a bit of a stretch in those days.

Still, the people I worked with were excited about the promise implicit to such technology and it had attracted the interest of such luminaries as Andrew Lloyd Weber and Paul McCartney’s former business manager. I represented their London based Interactive Instructional Systems product in the Eastern states of the USA. The offering included the most beautifully produced instructional videos I have ever seen, before or since. It was in this context and through this lens that I considered Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of Facebook’s name change to Meta. I wasn’t buying.

Among the earliest flight simulators was the Link Trainer. Edwin Link’s Binghamton, New York company offered it for sale in 1929. Ever since the feasibility of such immersive simulations became known to educators and trainers, it has been perceived as both a curse and a blessing. Some teachers saw it as a potential threat to their jobs. Others saw the technology as a way to liberate them from the most repetitive tasks, so they could instead focus on the highlights and hurdles as experienced by individual learners.

To think that Facebook is to dominate, in a world of artificial intelligence, largely depends upon our willingness to accept a filtered reality. There are lots of players. And, if Aaron Sorkin’s Social Media docudrama is to be believed, Facebook started out as a data-scraping project that had, as its aim, objectifying college women and their physical attributes; rating them on a scale of one to ten. To vest any confidence in that particular company’s good behavior, or its arbitrarily assumed authority to regulate proper social discourse, would constitute a serious failure to learn from history.

Evan Greer, an activist with Fight for the Future, told the Associated Press “This is Mark Zuckerberg revealing his end game, which is not just to dominate the internet of today but to control and define the internet that we leave to our children and our children’s children.” Amie Stepanovich, executive director of Silicon Flatirons at the University of Colorado, said “Picture an online troll campaign — but one in which the barrage of nasty words you might see on social media is instead a group of angry avatars yelling at you, with your only escape being to switch off the machine.”

Our broadcast news media has long operated in accordance with the profit-motivated doctrine “If it bleeds it leads.” And today we are constantly bombarded with the bullying tone of self-serving politicians and cult followers who never quite understood what most of us learned, through experience, as toddlers. The fact, that diminishing external restraints are always contingent upon augmenting internal restraints, is a tough lesson. And, some seem destined to learn it the hard way, by wearing an ankle bracelet. Or, perhaps not at all, even as they sit in solitary confinement.

A more service motivated approach to building meta-verse experiences that take us onward and upward is informed by what is arguably the high mission of true art. To be true it must be aligned with something. And if it is to serve as a prelude to something better, something higher; it will be born in a culture of benevolence. If true art is at the heart of the artificial, it must somehow take us from one level of attainment to the next. Rather than indulging the voyeuristic tendencies of those binge watching a Truman Show, we could be designing the next steps in societal evolution.

What would happen if we were to borrow the best from our universe of universes, to become strategically proactive in all the decision processes related to the architecture of a meta-verse? What if it were to have equality in structure to the highest reality we can envision? Why then we could bring people in, rehearse them, and then send them back into the real world as emissaries of social uplift. We could advance an appreciation for the enduring value of individual advancement, a culture of benevolence that will accept nothing less than truly authentic democracies and republics.

If you have been following this series, you’ve probably heard this commentator harp on the promise of a 21^st Century enterprise architecture. If so, you know that there is a way to express our preferences for what we call Employee Owned Benefit Corporations or EOBCs. Consider the possibility that the best meta-verse could be built by such a service-motivated group. For it is people, working in company with one another and acting corporately, that are building the most authentic corporations. And, such a benefit corporation could be guided by an unambiguous mission statement to serve a greater humanity.

To have a vested interest in something means that one has a personal stake in its continuation or success. This simple fact explains how politicians can engage in continued subterfuge long after it has become apparent that such a course will lead to their ultimate destruction. And it is one way that, once compromised, a person is no longer the arbiter of his or her own destiny.

Consider the kind of obfuscation that typically surrounds the person championing an abhorrent system of values. When it is no longer possible to win, based upon a concise delineation of principle, a politician will undoubtedly resort to deceptive practices that include, but are not limited to, diverting the attention of the electorate away from first principles. The path is especially perilous for those who have traded what may have once been a Christian witness for what is now a masquerade.

This type of behavioral blasphemy manifests in a variety of ways that usually involve the simplest of sophistries. For example, you may have noticed that one former Senate Majority Leader constantly rails against socialism while, at the same time, his state gets three dollars back for every one dollar his Kentucky home contributes to the public treasury. His caucus warns about court packing when he personally enabled one president to pack it with one third of the Supreme Court justices in just one term.

It doesn’t really help to point out such hypocrisy to individuals for whom hypocrisy itself is a point of pride. And, this is why we should expand the common definition of blasphemy to include their contempt for the values Jesus personally taught and exemplified. Sure, they can conveniently interpret the words of his imperfect followers to support all kinds of moral relativism. But their motivations are clear to anyone in possession of the critical thinking skills they detest.

The kind of voter suppression and election subversion we have witnessed is the inevitable consequence of having an electorate, composed of special interest groups that are each focused, almost exclusively, on their narrow interests. When the right to cast a vote and have it properly counted goes away, most minority rights will disappear as well. The one exception will be the supposed right of the inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth to consign the rest of us to conditions of peonage.

It would appear that many, perhaps even most, of the elected representatives in our constitutionally grounded democratic republic are seriously vested in corrupt elections. Their lackadaisical response to the ongoing disenfranchisement of large constituencies is clear evidence of the extent to which they have been compromised. Their reluctance to address campaign finance together with their tolerance for dark money in politics is just one a category of the mounting evidence. And their inability to prioritize, in a way that serves the greatest good, makes it possible for them to pay lip service to important things without actually making any meaningful progress.

Edmond Burke is best known for the famous statement: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” He was also widely regarded as the quintessential conservative. It is unlikely that Burke would recognize what passes for conservatism today. He once wrote concerning a Gentleman of Fortune saying: “He introduced a manufacture, which, though not very considerable, employed the whole town, and in time made it opulent.” Contrast that with the fraudulent conservatism that characterizes the Shareholder Rights Movement.

When a business pays poverty wages, for full time labor, it is offloading expenses and losses to the public treasury. Housing, heating, and nutrition assistance are not without cost to the taxpayers. And it is important to recognize the proximate cause for what appears to be parasitic behavior. The whited sepulchers of today are to be found in the corporate boardrooms and the halls of congress. Milton Freedman wrote, the corporate executives are merely employees of the shareholders. And, as anyone who was born and raised inside the Washington Beltway can tell you, congressional leaders spend most of their time whoring for those same shareholders.

Now that the perceived legitimacy of the Supreme Court is gone, we can take a fresh look at their sociopathic notion of corporate personhood. Legal scholars continue to advance the original definition of stare decisis as “the legal principle of determining points in litigation according to precedent.” A more contemporary understanding is informed by the way it has actually been used throughout our integrity challenged court’s history. Today it constitutes a doubling down on prior idiotic decisions in ways that insure our society simply cannot evolve.

The regressive factions at the commanding heights are not conservative. The unrepresentative elected officials are not republican by any common definition of the term. That is, of course, unless you regard the representation of donors over voters to be appropriate in the context of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic. When we elect representatives and install judges that set-aside the interests of We the People in favor of they the few, we should certainly not be surprised when they operate well afoul of their oath.

One cautionary definition of democracy is that of three wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner. And that’s precisely why the framers of our constitution provided for two Senators to represent each state, no matter how sizable or populous. Then, the gamesmanship began when the so-called Great Compromise ensued, resulting in each non-white man or woman counting as only three-fifths of a person.

Less than three weeks after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as the 16^th President of the United States in 1861, Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America gave what has become known as his Cornerstone Address. On March the 21^st in Savannah, Georgia, Stephens declared that disagreements over the enslavement of African Americans were the “immediate cause” of secession and that the Confederate constitution had resolved such issues.

Stephens, in referring to the Constitution of the United States said “The Constitution… rested upon the equality of races. This was an error. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. . .” Stephens invoked biblical imagery and used the word “cornerstone” to describe what he called the “great truth” of white supremacy and black subordination upon which secession and the Confederacy were based. He said “Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

While certain Supreme Court justices characterizing themselves as “originalists” and “textualists” are longing for the good old days; others have come to realize that the court, as presently constituted, will never willingly allow a black man or woman to become more than three fifths of a person in the eyes of the law. The so-called blind justice that declares “Equal Justice Under Law” has promoted an ideological fantasy and, to integrity challenged justices, it’s not even an aspirational statement.

They have enabled the same dark money malignancy that supports their nominations, confirmations and accommodations to metastasize throughout the body politic. They have allowed race based gerrymandering, the purging of voter rolls without evidence of death or a change in residence. They have facilitated political bribery. They have advanced the sociopathic fantasy of personhood for shell corporations that have been empowered with free speech rights. The Supreme Court, more than any other branch, has converted what Marshall McLuhan once described as a whirlpool of information in to a cesspool of disinformation.

Despite the assertions that the Court is not a cabal or packed with partisan hacks, there is no denying that the Supreme Court of the United States is a product of political process. That process is replete with deceptive practices. And all of it emanates from the entitlement mentality so carefully articulated in the cornerstone address of Alexander Stephens. The confederacy may have lost certain physical skirmishes, but it is alive and well in the Judiciary as well as the Legislature where the so-called will of the minority is in vogue.

While the judicial buffoonery of the court has come to light in spite of its increasingly esoteric sophistries, the legislative bodies have become populated with a cast of characters that could be described as the court jesters. Most are similarly owned and operated by the inheritors, hoarders, and skimmers of wealth. Their reverence for “the will of the minority,” as expressed through their affinity for and use of the filibuster, only serves the billionaires and faux corporations that take advantage of the nation’s resources without making any meaningful contribution to the public treasury.

Some minority rights are constitutionally protected by the formula where each state has two senators. However, the diddling with the districts, the slight of hand with respect to voter rolls, the Electoral College gamesmanship, the lack of any consequence for lying to the electorate, the voter intimidation, the poll worker intimidation, and the election supervisor intimidation all have the effect of corroding the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic.

Why administer an oath, whereby elected and appointed representatives are sworn to protect the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, when the person taking the oath has proven him or her self to be a domestic enemy of constitutional principle? Why does putting the interests of voters over those of donors seem like such an arcane, banished idea? How deep does it have to get? Are we so immersed in the cesspool of disinformation that we are no longer able detect BS?

Edmond Burke once described the colonists as “able to sniff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.” Somewhere, between the three wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner and an unprincipled Senator wielding the filibuster, is a democratic republic. We now have two senators for each state, the Electoral College, and the filibuster. This constitutes, not just a doubling down on the will of an entitled minority, but triple redundancy. At what point will we come to realize such a scheme is an anti-democracy trifecta?