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In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was promoting glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”) in an attempt to overcome the Soviet Union’s economic stagnation and stunted growth. These initiatives promised the “utmost respect for the individual citizen and favorable consideration for protecting one’s personal dignity.” By creating a dependable and effective mechanism for accelerating economic and social progress, Gorbachev hoped to encourage initiative and creative endeavor.

As General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991 and as that country’s de-facto head of state from 1988 until 1991, Gorbachov gained authority to create joint-stock companies out of state enterprises. The shares became available on stock exchanges. Gorbachev was instrumental in diminishing the role of the Communist Party in governing the state. The party’s official role was ultimately removed from the constitution, in a way that enraged some and inadvertently led to crisis-level political instability with a surge of regional nationalist and anti-communist activism. A failed coup attempt in August of 1991 was followed by an acute food shortage. On December 26, the Soviet Union was dissolved.

There were then fifteen new countries, of which the Russian Federation was only one. Roughly 45,000 state enterprises had been controlled by the Soviet Union. Upon its dissolution the planned economy was displaced by a market economy. The large scale privatization of state owned assets flowed primarily to form the financial, energy, and industrial sectors.

Opposing forces insured that Perestroika had more than one unintended consequence. As Russia’s planned economy transitioned from one in which the means of production was held by the state, to one in which work collectives gained a greater role in running enterprises, the country stumbled. It experienced what The Guardian newspaper described, on August 16th 2001, as “the most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history.

Gorbachov’s benevolent vision for the country had been thwarted at almost every turn as the country became divided by winners and losers. The well positioned were able to leverage conditions that were not readily understood by the rank and file. Although Russia’s citizens were generally well educated, most were overly specialized. The university system, while rigorous, provided certifications that were not all that portable as most regions within the USSR were dominated by a single industry or employer, the equivalent of company towns. No national provision was made for basic social services and few employees or front-line managers had any firsthand experience with decision making in a market economy.

Self-centered forces wasted no time in turning Mikhail Gorbachev’s, and Boris Yeltsin’s shared vision into a variety of schemes to exploit the poor. What was intended as an equal distribution of national wealth became concentrated within the ranks of upper management as the starving masses were caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Cash strapped workers relinquished whatever they may have held of any value, including personal shares, settling for fire-sale prices just so they could buy foodstuffs. When they did scrape up a little cash, they faced the bleak reality of purchasing power that was dramatically reduced.

In 1995 a Loans for Shares program was adopted by the government of Boris Yeltsin to address a severe fiscal deficit. The auctions were largely controlled by favored insiders and were, therefore, devoid of competition. The same banks that were retained by the government to conduct the auctions ended up winning them and the assets were leased at prices just slightly over the minimum starting bid. Voters in Russia described the process using a term that translates to what our urban dictionaries have coined as grabification.

From Vladimir Putin’s perspective, Russia had lost its national wealth and 2 million square miles of territory under humiliating circumstances. Although thoroughly pissed, he was perceived by Yeltsin as loyal. He commanded the FSB, a successor to the KGB, as Director. He was later appointed as Prime Minister with Yeltsin declaring “There will be no vacuum.” Vladimir Putin was uniquely positioned, early on, to benefit personally from the rise of the oligarchs.

As the gamesmanship over vouchers and loans for shares played out, one such grabber, an oil oligarch, ran afoul of Putin and was put on trial. Putin had then arranged for the oily Defendant to be seated in a cage at the center of the courtroom. According to the prevailing legend, one by one the other oligarchs came to Putin and asked: “How do we stay out of cages?” Putin’s answer: “Fifty percent.”

With all the ink in the water, no one, except Vladimir Putin, knows exactly how he acquired his vast wealth or whether he is, in fact, the richest person in the world. We do know that between 1993 and 1997, as Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Division, Putin organized a transfer of the assets of the former Soviet Union and Communist Party to the Russian Federation. Accordingly, he knew where all the real value was and, as a former Lieutenant Colonel of the KGB, he also knew where the bodies were buried. Consider that in light of the way he works the levers today.

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The fall of the Soviet Union was a vindication for the strategy of the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles. His plan to bankrupt the Russians through an arms race, a space race, and any other competition the adversary could not afford, eventually made it possible for Ronald Reagan to successfully challenge Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall.

Pitting a deep economy against a shallow economy, while effective, had significant costs beyond the economic. There was no shortage of individual stake holders in the old Soviet order that were outraged, including one Vladimir Putin. They found ways to make themselves feel better by indulging in grudges as they worked to redirect certain new equities, intended for Russian citizens, while enriching themselves.

The United States still struggles to manage the monetary debts it incurred over the course of the cold war, we are also paying the high reputational cost for impetuous behavior such as the 1953 coup d’état in Iran together with the 1954 coup d’état in Guatemala. While these events typically go unacknowledged over the course of our high school history classes, many U.S. citizens are surprised when, while traveling abroad, they discover our country is not seen as an honest broker in those regions of the world.

The reputational cost is exacerbated by the least intelligent and most boisterous within the MAGAlomanic factions. People around the globe have come to believe that if you are Asian, African, or Central American you will never gain the approval of the most inbred SOBs occupying the North American continent. And they’re not just talking about genetics. As master propagandist of the Nazi regime and dictator of its cultural life for twelve years, the selective inbreeding and hate mongering of Joseph Goebbels, was achieved through an earlier manifestation of the big lie. He said:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

While MAGAlomania may be defined as Goebbelian twist on statecraft, the state of denial has now manifest on an epidemic scale within the USA. Of course, the big lie did not originate with Stephen Miller, Joseph Goebbels, or Adolf Hitler. They may have summoned it and embraced it, only to become subservient to it. It is the legacy woven throughout human history that was best encapsulated by the Rolling Stones with the lyric: “Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints; when heads is tails just call me Lucifer cause I’m in need of some restraint.”

Unbridled liberty is the legacy of Lucifer. It is, in effect, the license to rape, pillage, and plunder. It is always a matter of subjugating someone else. Liberty that is unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled invariably leads to the abject bondage of someone. To differentiate between true and false liberty, we must learn to balance freedom with self-control, to develop self-mastery.

At issue is truthfulness. Is it ever ok to mislead someone who may rely upon your word to their detriment? Those who participated in the racist riot of January 6, 2021 in Washington, are now using reliance on the alternative facts from faux news as an affirmative defense in courts of law. Pseudo-Christian pastors are actively deceiving the masses. When, in the Book of Job, God asked, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?,” one might reasonably conclude that he was talking about the anti-immigrant, anti-mask, anti-vaccine pretenders that are turning their congregations into death cults.

Now that Putin’s harem is out of the White House, he is protecting the big lie in his own country by, as Goebbels prescribed, repressing dissent. Anyone sympathetic to Alexi Navalny is now an outlaw within Putin’s domain. Here, in the United States, Liz Cheney or anyone else advocating for a more traditional conservatism or republicanism is similarly subject to attack by the hoards of Hell, absolute enemies of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic. When every cop is seen as criminal, they are bludgeoned on the capital steps with flagpoles. When all the sinners are saints, they corrupt the likes of Liberty University. When heads is tails, voter suppression is sold as voter integrity.

A scholar’s parrot may talk Greek and rehearsing those that have traded their Christian witness for a masquerade is simply a matter or rote learning. This phenomena, where the most ignorant are quite literally the most arrogant, is not unique to the United States. But the USA has no excuse. It has a public education system where critical thinking skills are increasingly moving front and center.

Whether we will actually use the intellectual disciplines, to build a more perfect union, remains to be seen. In the meantime we can avoid the contagion and those intent on spreading it through their reckless indifference to the truth.

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Way back in 2005, The New York Times used the expression “gesture politics” to describe the substitution of symbols and empty promises for policy. Today, gestures towards bipartisanship and voting integrity together with a feigned respect for the United States constitution ring hollow. The will of the electorate really hasn’t mattered to some politicians for a very long time. Sure, we occasionally witness a certain genuflection as an election draws near. But, the real focus for politics, and its practitioners, is always on the big, oftentimes dark, money.

In 1870, James Freeman Clarke said: “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.” The Clark quote is especially striking in the midst of our country’s hyper-partisan election cycles, as so many politicians seem willing to betray many of the ideals they once touted, just to win re-election. Beyond politics, there is a higher plane where true statesmanship thrives. Within such an environment the cultivation of that entrepreneurial spirit, that can take our country from one level of attainment to the next, is encouraged and nurtured in accordance with the laws of fruitfulness. 

Some politicians have decided that, being in the game is just not worth it. They’ve asked themselves what their grandchildren will think of them once the kids have blown through the money gained through their forebear’s complicity in moving the country and the planet towards a dystopian future. Today, many Independent’s believe we have way too many politicians that are seemingly unable to even come down solidly in favor of democracy as opposed to autocracy.

Currently, principled compromise is rare as the modus-operandi of politics appears to have mutually assured destruction as its aim. This vengeful culture strikes at the heart of – and in many ways is calculated to cause damage to – the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness that Americans have long sought to cultivate. The stark contrast between those patriots who would lay down their lives for their fellows, and those pretenders who have selfishly placed their own political ambitions above the welfare of the country and future generations is, at this juncture, hard for people of goodwill to ignore.

Fledgling democracies look on as principle has been sacrificed for political expediency by the most self-serving, It’s time for each of us to engage in some real soul searching. As groups inclined towards democracy, and once considered allies, were abandoned and uprooted to appease dictators, moral cowardice took center stage. As the politics of destruction is finally understood to be, first and foremost, about the tactics of distraction, it has dawned upon some of us that this may really be, for the USA at least, the last call for democracy.

We have been conditioned to think of ourselves as either liberal or conservative, left or right, Democrat or Republican, progressive or traditional, and socialist or capitalist. To those possessing a balanced intellect, it is clearly understood that, in actuality, we have all been hybridized to some extent. And, that the coercive labeling imposed upon us is simply the window dressing that obscures our view of the real battle that is raging outside.

The choice before us is between a democracy that will serve the highest and best interests of our children’s children or the featherbedded oligarchy that has, throughout history, sought to consign our progeny to conditions of peonage. In the United States, the first constitutional imperative is to advance the highest and best interests of “We the people” as we labor to “build a more perfect union.” To those holding some personal sense of superiority, democracy is instead seen as the domination of mediocrity. Such an ego-centric world view creates a definite preference for anything that will advantage they the few or they the rich. By this impetus it disadvantages everyone else and divides us accordingly, even on consensus issues.

The Us versus Them tribalism is directly attributable to divisions sown through the unmitigated and oft litigated selfishness of those placing their interests far above those of us they perceive as “the great unwashed.” Such a well advertised dysfunction is brought to us by malign actors intent on corroding the democratic underpinnings of our constitutional republic. Make no mistake, the oligarchy is the enemy of democracy. It always aims to wrest control from the demos, “we the people,” and instead vest it with the rich, “they the few.”

This gravamen is obscured by the dark money. It is evidenced by the suspect maps and moving polling places farther away from those that can least afford to travel or lose a day of work. It includes the politically motivated purging of voter rolls, and all the other forms of voter suppression and election subversion that seem to be in vogue. It finances the siloing and polarization of the press while it also impairs the First Amendment through its persistent attacks on the doctrine of net-neutrality.

From the tainted food supply to the high cost of disease care domestically; from the unrelenting attacks on education to the ritualized insanity of unwinnable wars abroad; each malady is directly attributable to the most self-serving of the few. This megalomanic oligarchy has been waging a deadly class warfare throughout history while, at the same time, they simultaneously accuse their targets of all things inexcusable, especially class warfare.

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Edmond Burke is best known for the quote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” He was also the first and, some would say, the best advocate of conservatism. He held that rulers are only “trustees for the people” and, in describing the character of an effective leader he said: “the temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of a Statesman.”

It may be useful to contrast and compare the way conservatism was defined, at the time of our nation’s founding, against what is sold as conservatism today. True conservatives understand the difference between that pride that comes before a fall and the kind exhibited by the person of true integrity, the one that puts the content of their character and the quality of their work above all else. Somewhere in the array of definitions for the term pride is the difference between motivating and incentivizing someone. 

Conservatives have long held that there is something to be admired and exhilarating about a forthright demeanor, a job well done. Much that is foundational to true conservatism is embodied in Burke’s portrayal of the “gentleman of fortune:” Burke said: “he did not take the ordinary Method of establishing Horse races and Assemblies, which do but encourage Drinking and Idleness but at a much smaller expense he introduced a Manufacture which, though not very considerable, employed the whole town, and in time made it opulent.”

Burke’s assessment of constitutional legitimacy was predicated, first and foremost, on its ability to resist tyranny. He believed claims of necessity and of new powers were an indication of tyranny. Many of today’s employees, that have to work long swing shifted hours for compensation that fails to keep pace with the cost of living, would likely agree.

The imperative, to resist slavery and tyranny, was underscored in his belief that a nation must guard against the tyranny of the majority. While today that may be defined as three wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner, in Burke’s day it was articulated as follows: “Aristotle observes that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with a tyranny. Of this I am certain, that in a democracy the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppression upon the minority whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of policy, as they often must . . .”

Burke also warned about excessive reliance on markets with the statement: “Your legislators, in everything new, are the very first who have founded a commonwealth on gaming . . .” Indeed, we have witnessed the folly of some, who have characterized themselves as “Constitutional Conservatives,” as they have prostituted their offices and systematically betrayed just about every aspect of such supposed reverence for constitutional principle.

Such tyrants resist any form of means testing for Social Security as they also try to kill it for future generations. They engage in coercive labeling, calling anyone advocating for any form of public assistance or government service, a “socialist.” They conflate socialism, marxism, and communism as if anyone in this entrepreneurial society is advancing the notion that the government should put the grabs on the means of production. For a nation supposedly dominated by Christian ideals, a pseudo-religious hucksterism has imposed a circumscribed world view that is self-serving, first and foremost.

An array of social programs, often designed to compensate for the absence of good corporate conduct, represents the least we can do in light of our failure to evolve in accordance with the true conservatism exemplified by Burke’s gentlemen of fortune. The faux conservative of today decries class warfare while thrusting it upon the masses. The ideological fault lines of days gone by have been blurred as the counterfeit, contorted conservatism of privilege looks down unsympathetically upon the struggling strata that rolls pennies to buy gas so they can work multiple jobs for poverty wages. The most selfish among us rise to occupy the commanding heights of the economy and object to any social program that might compensate workers for the parasitic behaviors of those employers that tamp down wages and benefits while simultaneously refusing to make any meaningful contribution to the public treasury.

In some European countries, monopolies have become nationalized companies in an effort to protect the population from unbridled monopoly power. In this respect, an emergent monopoly largely immune from anti-trust scrutiny may represent the most sure-footed path to a command economy. In our country, since the 1980s, Anti-Trust regulations are seldom enforced by politicians wholly owned and operated by monopolies.

Against a backdrop of morphing definitions for capitalism, and socialism, even the most casual conversations have become tedious. Other Western nations tend to define socialism not so much in economic terms, but in accordance with a given level of direct democracy operating within the context of what constitutes the greatest good for the general population. In his last ditch effort to dissuade the British Empire from going to war with the colonists, Burke argued: “To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself . . .” In short, Burke was a fervent advocate for the greatest good.

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The United Nations currently lists 18 “Global Issues.” Among the many are poverty, hunger, water, and health. Poverty-stricken communities are not only disrespected, they are often disregarded due to their low socio-economic status. This occurs even within affluent countries. However, according to the World Food Program, countries with the highest level of food insecurity also have the highest outward migration of refugees.

One in nine people on our planet goes hungry each day while also suffering from the lasting effects of nutritional deficiencies. Restricted growth, and the deaths of about 3.1 million children under the age of five occur each year as a result of our collective neglect. For countries with the means, the failure to provide comprehensive healthcare to its citizens hobbles their economies as well as their overall competitiveness.

Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor. In the late twentieth century he noted “We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist.”

During an interview in 1981, with Norie Huddle, Fuller said: “Those in supreme power, politically and economically, aren’t yet convinced that our Planet Earth has anywhere nearly enough life support for all humanity. They assume it has to be either you or me, that there is not enough for both. Those with financial advantage reason that selfishness is necessary and fortify themselves even further.” Later in the same interview Fuller observed: “We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be “you or me,” so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete.”

And yet they persisted. For some there is never enough power or too much military hardware. The resources necessary to effectively address all of the global issues listed by the United Nations and the World Food Program are closely held by the inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth. They avoid and object to taxes while being the first to complain when their shiny new ride hits a pothole. They claim to abhor socialism while running their companies in ways that privatize gains while socializing expenses and losses.

They make extensive use of the nations roads, bridges, and airports while promoting a definition of infrastructure that encompasses only those things. Then, when given the opportunity to support such narrowly defined infrastructure, about 20% of Fortune 500 companies pay none of federal income tax that undergirds such structures. They underpay the workforce, forcing employees to seek housing, heating, and nutrition assistance while subjecting their public charges to conspicuous ridicule, scorn, and indignity.

Oligarchs have no loyalty to the United States or any other country. If the American farmer is too pricy, big-agri will clear new farmland by burning the Amazon forest along Brazilian Route 163, just as they did during the trade war with China in 2019. Ever since the United States Supreme Court made it legal for corporations to own and operate our elected representatives, the country has become less competitive not more.

Millions of our highly creative, potential entrepreneurs, are reluctant to venture out because their health care benefits are inextricably and unnecessarily linked to dead-end jobs where such benefits are routinely hollowed out or eliminated. There is wage stagnation coupled with worker uncertainty that prevails when unemployment rates are high or low.

On September 1, 1997, the federal minimum wage was $5.15 an hour where it remained for ten years. On July 24, 2009 the minimum wage reached $7.25 per hour where it remains today. This means that over the course of about one quarter of a century, the minimum wage increased by less than half the rate of inflation, about 29% whereas over the same amount of time, inflation resulted in a cumulative cost of living increase of over 66%.

Even as we enlarge our time-frame and scope beyond the minimum wage analysis, the Economic Policy Institute reports that, over the course of about forty years, Corporate CEO pay increased 940% while the typical worker’s pay increased only 12% during the same period. The penny-wise, pound-foolish, pseudo-conservatives holding elective office today, typically receive regular automatic pay raises to avoid public scrutiny.

There is no performance metric for such prevaricating politicians and they have actively harmed the nation by dampening the enthusiasm of our workforce. Grifters favor companies that operate in the most parasitic fashion. And, as they feign reverence for our constitutionally grounded democratic republic, they work to corrupt it at all levels. As long as the entrepreneurial executive takes a back seat to the custodial, as long as wealth without work together with greed is somehow fashionable, the drudgery experienced by the rest of us will undoubtedly continue. And, as Buckminster Fuller made clear in 1981, there is no excuse for it.

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<<AUDIO Part 1 (Ten Seconds): The Chair recognizes, , , Senator Smith>>

There was a time when, if you were to express an opinion in writing, it would likely be over your own signature. In fact, sending an unsigned letter was widely considered an act of cowardice. Today, those lacking the courage of their own convictions can express themselves through anonymous donations to political action committees. Under what is termed “traditional dictates of Senate courtesy,” a shifty member can even place a hold on legislation anonymously and two or more such members can make such a hold last indefinitely. Contrast that to the way the filibuster was once seen, almost universally, as an act of courage.

<<AUDIO Part 2 (Eleven Seconds): ’til doomsday>>

Yes, the filibuster was once painful. It was adversarial. And it was a way to reveal one’s true character. The person holding up a vote in the Senate would have to stand and be seen. Forty senators would have to be present for the arguments, the rhetoric, and the cookie recipes. It was not a back channel process for those lacking the kind of backbone required to be truly representative of one’s constituency. Today, dark money and under the table transactions rule in the USA.

The United States is now ranked by the Economist’s Intelligence Unit as a “flawed democracy.” The macroeconomic analysis of the EIU is seen by business leaders as a trustworthy way to determine how factors, such as the authenticity of any democracy, will impact strategic plans, business operations, and investment decisions. The vacillating coward caucus is making the United States far less attractive to the those astute observers currently vested, or planning to invest in, the de-facto global economy.

Our once constitutionally grounded democratic republic has become an embarrassment on the world stage. And it is due to the subterfuge of unprincipled senators, deceitful representatives, scofflaw justices, and compromised executives. No moral fiber is required of those who have aligned themselves with powerful incumbents. There is no perceived risk associated with making dark money contributions to political action committees that advance an agenda that people of conscience find truly abhorrent.

While retardant forces are sittin’ fat and happy, those looking towards a brighter future understand that every time an elected representative cowers before a tweet, an incoherent diatribe, or a person spewing the most self-serving BS, our republic falters and autocrats rise to say: “You see, democracy doesn’t work. That’s why you need a strong man like me.”

The long overdue sunshine that is brought to bear, as it exposes a wide variety of overpriced elected jellyfish, reveals stark contrasts when politicians are compared to steadfast statesman. Those who fervently advocate for government of, by, and for the people, one that is truly authentic and derives its just powers by the consent of the governed, are not dissuaded by smirks, shallow argument, or even death threats. While some prevaricating politicians hold a death grip on their cushy jobs, we should take note of great revelationary moments in history: One hundred and fifty years ago, James Freeman Clarke got it exactly right when he said: “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.”

On June 1^st in 1950, a little known freshman Senator from Maine took to the senate floor and exhibited the kind of courage that has rarely been seen before or since. Margaret Chase Smith challenged the pack mentality of that day as she took on the virus then spread by Senator Joe McCarthy. In an era when freshman Senators were to be seen and not heard, Smith later recalled “This great psychological fear…spread to the Senate, where a considerable amount of mental paralysis and muteness set in for fear of offending McCarthy.” Constrained by senate decorum, Smith focused upon the tactics of McCarthyism as she asked her fellow Senators not to ride to political victory on the “Four Horsemen of Calumny –Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.” The Hartford Courant later commented “This cool breeze of honesty from Maine can blow the whole miasma out of the nation’s soul.”

The FIBS acronym refers to this very same McCarthian tactic of leveraging Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear. It clearly encapsulates the ongoing and primary aims of those morally bankrupt political operatives that have effectively hypnotized and seized power over the emotionally charged and intellectually stunted factions within the US electorate. They are intent on sustaining that legacy of Lucifer that promotes the counterfeit, unbridled liberty that continues to rape, pillage, and plunder by any means possible. Rather than working to advance the planet towards its high destiny and an era of light and life, they are content with its ongoing orgy of darkness and death. 

<<AUDIO Part 3 (Five Seconds) – I’ve got a piece to say>>

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The first time the Supreme Court apparently held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations, as well as to natural citizens, was through the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. A headnote issued by the Court Reporter is alleged to have been secured by the railroad through bribery. 

The United States Supreme Court’s current view of corporate personhood is clearly not limited to any corporate need to enter into or enforce contracts. It has morphed to deceitfully rot the foundation of democracy. It now regards a corporation as something other, or somehow more than, the voice associated with the rights of those individual true citizens that are the lifeblood and the component parts of every enterprise.

Whenever these judges have held that corporations are, in effect supercharged persons with the right to exert unbridled influence, they have created a set of conditions that clearly favor oligarchy over the cardinal precepts of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic. The judicial monastery’s strange creature is an out of balance fictional character seen as somehow representing the corporation’s employees, retirees, clients, suppliers, and investors. In fact, the wildly disproportionate influence of those investors, that can pull up stakes as if they are shallow-set tent pegs, is typically based upon metrics that are little more than performance snapshots. It is sometimes referred to, by the more deeply vested, as “the tyranny of the balance sheet.” This is often the impetus for a speculator’s self imposed myopia and the most disruptive forms of influence.

In stark contrast to the comings and goings of what our nation’s founders undoubtedly would have described as “foreign potentates,” other stakeholders are not quite so portable. Employees must usually become “vested” over a substantial waiting period before they can exercise any stock options. They are typically required to live in close proximity to the place of business where they invest time and talent, as well as treasure in their communities. Their stakes are deeply set.

The Court has failed to understand just how its rusty scales of equity have been recklessly twisted in ways that adversely impact the health of the nation as well as its enterprises. When certain investors claim that managers and other employees have no stake in a company, consider just how fast an investment banker can dump their stock while the employee is left with few options when a company, or a company town, fails.

The Supreme Court, in its series of cases steadily advancing corporate personhood, failed to differentiate between employee owned corporations and those controlled by outside investors. This latter set often includes non-citizens that have surreptitiously become a big part of the donor base for politicians that are supposed to be representing actual citizens. A corporation that presumes to speak for its employees, without faithfully representing the needs or heartfelt desires of those same employees, gets a pass from our Supreme Court for a political influence that corrodes the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic.

A corporation is not a person. It may be a vehicle, an instrumentality, a device, a medium, a mechanism, a fiction, an auspice, an implement, or a contrivance. It is not however, by any stretch of the most overactive imagination, a person. At this critical juncture, we need our courts to behave rationally, and for the legislature to write laws unambiguously. As citizens of a participatory democracy, we need to understand why some in the corridors of power want a constituency that has never taken a civics class. Corrupt officials want an electorate that is entirely ok with effectively nullifying a constitutional imperative, such as the one popularly interpreted as “One man, one vote” by means of increasing the percentage of uninformed or misinformed voters.

Certain politicians have a long history of prostituting their offices to advance a form of corporate speech that has effectively drowned out the voice of the individual citizen. Today, those corrupt legislators and judges are discovering that this same corporate speech can be a two edged sword. Exposing the senatorial and judicial sophistries that have led to the legislature and the court of today being seen by many as illegitimate is the reap what you sow consequence of a stinky fertilization process. It was entirely foreseeable ever since they facilitated an all pervasive and reckless indifference to the truth.

It was inevitable that conferring corporate personhood upon a non-corporeal entity would lead to a distortion of “representative government” that is supposed to derive its just powers from the consent of the governed. Certain politicians can hardly be seen as representing the interests, or the will of, the electorate. In fact, in the context of our republic, they scheme to exacerbate the attention deficit of an intentionally overworked, under-compensated electorate that is distracted by the numerous difficulties often encountered as they try to make ends meet in conditions of peonage and on poverty wages.

The addled supremes, that strain at gnats while swallowing camels, have discarded the spirit of the law as it was so clearly stated within the Preamble to the United States Constitution. And, as long as they can continue to masquerade as originalists and textualists, the majority of us won’t have enough money to pay attention.

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Every once in awhile we take in a scene that speaks volumes. For example, at the height of the pandemic, passers by could write long dissertations on depraved heart indifference, as inspired by the folks filing out of church services without a mask among them. As the institutional church continues to accelerate its free-fall, people from all walks of life are asking the adherents: Just what is your attitude towards the most vulnerable, the least of these? If you really cared about anyone other than yourself, would reasonable precautions really be all that inconvenient? Is this congregation Jesusonian or Luciferian?

Right now Co-Vid variants are rising as vigilance is falling. You don’t need to be an epidemiologist to understand that increased mutations of the virus are wholly dependent upon increased replication. Those refusing to mitigate the spread are in no way helping. While this simple fact may be rejected by the most self-absorbed, it is fortunate that the surgical team performing life- saving procedures on such shrinking hearts, cares enough about others to wear masks when a chest gets cracked open.

Epidemiologists use an investigative methodology that includes certain essential questions called the 5 W’s: diagnosis or health event (what), person (who), place (where), time (when), plus the causes, risk factors, and modes of transmission that inform them as to the (why/how). Although many of the so-called “superspreader” events occurred before very much was known about SARS- CoV-2, one otherwise blessed event, a wedding in Maine, was linked to at least 170 cases and seven deaths.

At a soccer game in Madrid, a crowd of 45,792 people arrived at the stadium in cars, trains, and buses. They waved, whooped, and cheered and then headed to local bars; later on getting back into those cars, trains, and buses. As many as 7,000 Covid-19 infections were traced back to the event that experts now call “Game Zero” as it occurred two days before nearby Italy had its first confirmed case of the virus.

At a conference in Boston, Biogen held a meeting of 175 corporate executives. They gathered for buffets, cocktails, and networking at Boston’s Marriott Long Wharf hotel. The attendees then returned home, taking the virus to six states, the District of Columbia, and three other countries. 219 people were hospitalized and there were 25 deaths traced to the event.

A five-day prayer meeting at a church in Mulhouse, France was attended by 2,500 people. In Corsica, 263 cases and 21 deaths were traced to attendees who had flown home after the prayer event. Traceable cases were seen throughout, Europe and Africa.

A Connecticut socialite celebrated her 40th birthday with more than 50 guests from around the world. As guests returned home and their daily lives, one attended an event with 420 other people. Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey became Covid-19 hotspots shortly thereafter.

While those events occurring early in the pandemic may be excused as clear patterns were few and far between, there was fully disseminated, actionable intelligence, prior to what happened during the late summer in Harrisonburg Virginia. In September of 2020, a class called Problem Solving Approaches in Science and Technology was held in a ballroom at James Madison University. It was standing room only. JMU had started in-person classes without requiring testing for any of its 20,000 undergraduates. 772 students and faculty were infected.

It may seem strange that such a spread would occur during a class titled Problem Solving Approaches in Science and Technology it’s even more ironic when one considers the most popular majors at JMU are within the category of health sciences. While the University Website states: ”Our students think critically,” it is unfortunately clear that certain administrators do not.

In early April of 2021 the People’s Church in Salem Oregon conducted four indoor, shoulder to shoulder church services on Easter Sunday. A few days later Oregon’s health authority was investigating a potential CoVid outbreak at the Salem church. It is now regarded as one of the state’s largest workplace outbreaks with 74 cases attributed to the Easter Sunday events.

Scott Erickson, holds the title of Senior Pastor for the affected church. It was one of ten litigant churches in Oregon that together filed a lawsuit in May of 2020 asking a Circuit Court to issue a temporary restraining order blocking Oregon Governor Kate Brown from enforcing stay-at-home executive regulations that limited church gatherings to 25 persons or less.

Erickson said his decision to keep the church open was based upon the words of Jesus when he said: ‘I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.’ Of course Jesus also said the Kingdom of Heaven is within you and his definition of pastoral care: to lead, guide, feed, comfort and protect the people, by teaching and and example, was very different from that of those that display such a thin veneer of religiosity. The idea of “pastoral care” suggests that pastors are to care.

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As they were breaking Jim out of jail, Tom Sawyer tells Huck Finn that “Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”

The number of videos gone viral, depicting police violence upon non-white citizens within the United States, has raised awareness of persistent failures to reform a cop-culture tracing its roots to deep within that of the slave patrols. As police unions continue to make excuses for oft repeated instances of brutality within their ranks, corrupt politicians game the system to insure that a black man or woman never amounts to more than three-fifths of a person in a vote tally.

The number of departments that have successfully policed themselves appears to be exceedingly rare. While this may be exacerbated by the fact that news organizations have, for so long, operated in accordance with the doctrine “if it bleeds it leads,” It is also due to the fact that getting to the real numbers has been obstructed by those who have resisted any efforts to bring greater transparency through the creation of a national database. That proposed database would profile officers who have been the subject of abuse complaints.

State and local governments have also been unable to curtail the power of those police unions that champion the cause of repeat offenders while blocking any meaningful reform. Clearly, the chants of “defund the police” are stupid, although the idea of subordinating police departments to public health and safety agencies may eventually prove viable. Hiring only the best of the former police officers into a new 21st Century agency could address all of the persistent problems. Simply sunsetting the old outmoded departments, after the new agency is up and running, could make such a transition seamless.

Defunding those police unions that have retarded evolution makes more sense than haphazardly defunding an organization chartered to protect and serve. As the new public safety officers join generic public employee unions, the stranglehold police unions have exerted to retard any effort towards real reform would be diminished. The clean break would also serve to dispel the notion, that some officers hold, concerning their arbitrarily assumed license to punish.

Nowhere, within the federal and state constitutions, or within the charters and oaths of such sworn services, is a police officer granted a license to be punitive. And yet, many in the force have demonstrated an abysmal ignorance with respect to their limited role within the criminal justice system. Any public servant that does not understand this most basic principle is unfit to hold such a position of honor and trust. This is true for law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges.

While the Census Bureau reports that only 13.4% of the total US population is black, the Bureau of Prisons reports that 38.5% of the prison population is black. While no government agency is reporting the extent to which the law is selectively enforced, it is most certainly a part of that public benefits package now commonly known as white privilege.

In 1911, Nels Dickmann Anderson wrote a poem titled “The Thin Blue Line”. In the poem, the phrase is used to refer to the United States Army and the fact that US Army soldiers wore blue uniforms from the eighteenth century through the nineteenth century. It also alluded to the Thin Red Line of the British Army in which the Scottish Highlanders stood their ground against a Russian cavalry charge in 1854.

New York police commissioner Richard Enright adopted the phrase in 1922. Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker used it in speeches throughout the 1950s. He referred to the “thin blue line” in efforts to bolster the image of the department saying the LAPD, was the barrier between law and order or social and civil anarchy.

By the early 1970s, the term had been embraced by police departments across the United States. According to a 2018 law review article, by 1978 “thin blue line” and more specifically the “blue wall of silence” also referred to an unwritten code of silence used to cover up instances of police misconduct. On April 20th in 2021, that wall of silence was breached as a jury delivered its verdict in the murder of George Floyd. Former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on one manslaughter and two murder counts.

The Minneapolis Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division listed a total of eighteen prior abuse complaints against Chauvin. Sixteen of those were listed simply as “Closed with No Discipline while two were Closed with Discipline including a Letter of Reprimand. It should always be remembered that the original police report, released after George Floyd’s murder, read: “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) had a complicated relationship with religion. And yet, he managed to cut through all the crap with the words of Huck Finn as the character said: “You can’t pray a lie – I found that out.”

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From an early age we are admonished to “Never judge a book by its cover.” As we begin to pay attention to our participatory democracy, we quickly learn that any initiative named by a politician cannot be accepted at face value. Throughout history, we’ve been subjected to a wide variety of catch phrases that were used to deceive the general population. Most recently these range from trickle down economics to election integrity. We also suffer from the politics of destruction as childish coercive labeling is used to derail any sincere attempt to elevate the political discourse: Terms like repugs and libtards are now in common use.

One of the biggest ongoing deceptions involves simple misnomers. The term packing is generally understood to mean to fill a container of a given size. One might pack a suitcase or cram a large number of things into a given space, such as when a makeshift shelter is packed with beds jammed side by side. Of course, once a politician exerts their distorting influence upon the language of the realm, the meanings become contorted and decidedly self-serving.

When U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, in order to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation, his detractors described the initiative as court-packing. The sown confusion between packing and expanding persists even today and it will likely continue to distort the debate surrounding the prospect of expanding the Supreme Court to achieve an ideological balance.

It has become clear that, when one executive, over the course of one term, can replace one third of the the justices on the United States Supreme Court, the country has become highly vulnerable to tumultuous ideological swings. An administration that is able to fill three vacancies within a nine seat court is quite literally packing the Court. If ever, oh ever there was a time to consider expanding SCOTUS, it is now.

The U.S. Constitution does not define the size of the Supreme Court. In the Judiciary Act of 1869, Congress had established that the Supreme Court would consist of the chief justice and eight associate justices. The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 was the actual name of the legislative initiative proposed by Roosevelt. The central provision of the bill would have granted the president power to appoint an additional justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years and 6 months that refused to retire.

During Roosevelt’s first term, the Supreme Court had struck down several New Deal measures as being unconstitutional. However, included among the cardinal precepts of the United States Constitution is the phrase “promote the general welfare.” Roosevelt sought to bring the court into better alignment with constitutional imperatives through the appointment of new justices that he hoped would rule his legislative initiatives did not exceed the constitutional authority of the government.

The bill came to be known as Roosevelt’s “court-packing plan,” a phrase coined by Edward Rumely. In 1915, Rumely bought, and became editor-in-chief and publisher of, the New York Evening Mail. He permitted his good friend Theodore Roosevelt to use the newspaper as his mouthpiece. In July 1918 Rumely was arrested and convicted of violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act. To get financing for the purchase of the newspaper. Rumely was accused of receiving financing from the German government, which Rumely denied, claiming, instead, he had received money to buy the paper from an American citizen in Germany. Either way, he was known to be sympathetic to Germany and had failed to report this when he received the money. President Coolidge granted him a presidential pardon in 1925.

Rumely was one of two founders of the Committee for Constitutional Government (CCG) who were newspaper men. The other, Frank Ernest Gannett, was an American publisher who founded the media corporation Gannett Company which now owns USA Today. The Committee opposed most, if not all, of the New Deal legislation. The organization was successful in opposing the Bills because of a large mailing list campaign targeting legal professionals. Rumely, as executive secretary, successfully dumbed down the political discourse by employing the simplistic and misleading label that characterizes court expansion as packing.

The number of cases heard annually, by the Supreme Court, has declined steadily over the past few decades. While a Court composed of Justices who share the same world view is likely to hear forty-two more cases per term than an ideologically fractured Court, a smaller docket also increases the risk that important cases will be left undecided. This, together with all the dark money that supports judicial nominations, confirmations, and accommodations puts the Court in a position to be “captured” by certain interests or actors leading to a loss of legitimacy for the institution whose strongest reservoir of power is its legitimacy.

If the Supreme Court is the unifier of law, then the Court should actively resolve as many circuit splits as possible and thus unify the law. The best way to achieve this is to expand the Court to twenty-one Justices. In that way more cases could be resolved and a minimum of seven justices could be assigned to hear and decide upon each one. This could be achieved without adversely impacting the time allotment the individual justices set-aside for their book tours.