BERNIE WON.

I love Bernie Sanders because if one man can change the world, he can. I love it that he exposed the musty underbelly of how our corrupt system really fails working Americans and he is game to fix it.

He believes that breaking the law should not be profitable and corporations should not run the country. And, best of all, he brought Americans, sickened by the failure of our government to work for the people, into the fight.

No, he didn’t win the nomination, but we are renewed, we see what needs to be done. He got the dialogue going and he did it without massive pac money. And now we know, that money isn’t the only thing you need to win an election. (He came close.)

We can help him hold Hillary’s feet to the fire so she will feel the “Bern.”Voting for her will protect America from an adolescent bigot who has yet to grow up from his cozy, rich upbringing, and who has yet to make something of his life besides money.

Don’t waste Bernie’s hard work by bowing out. Let’s keep the revolution going. Remember his senatorial work from 2015 when he introduced legislation that would mandate that pharmaceutical companies lose FDA-granted marketing monopolies for their specific drugs if they are involved in illegal activity.  This is a far more effective deterrent against  big pharma who prefers paying their millions in settlements and then go on with illegal, and profitable activities. Ho, hum!  Between 1991 and 2015, they settled 433 cases paying $35 billion total. A drop in the bucket for them.

LIBERALISM IS DEAD?

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., founder and editor of the American Spectator, claims liberalism is dead. It looks to me like the Republican Party is in disarray, befuddled and crying out for help. Asking Mitt Romney to step in and diss Trump. They have two presidential candidates who have the lowest voting records and attendance in Congress, Rubio has produced NO legislation and missed 35 per cent of the votes on bills in congress and Cruz has the third worst attendance and missed 24 per cent of votes in congress. (Republican Lindsay Graham, is in second place, having missed 28 per cent of the votes.)  And, their leading candidate continually has a problem with the truth? The party hopefuls are confessing to hold their nose if they have to support Cruz. Tyrrell sizes up President Bill Clinton saying “He did little to resuscitate liberalism.”   He may not have resuscitated liberalism, but he turned the party progressive. He got the country moving. Jobs were soaring, the biggest national debt in history, at that point, left by Reagan, was paid off. Clinton poured surplus money into social programs that conservatives had “borrowed”from like Social Security. And he left us with a balanced budget, and a huge surplus. Then Bush spent it all on a war started with a lie. His Vice President, Cheney claimed, “…deficits don’t matter.” Huh!  And, now Tyrrell for the second time is declaring that the Democratic Party is a relic?  In his words, “It is astonishing that so few Americans-even conservatives-recognize it.” Maybe it is the Republican Party that needs an autopsy.  People are tired of a do-nothing congress controlled by conservatives. People are tired of conservatives starving institutions like the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and The United States Forest Service so they can’t do their jobs. People are tired of a party that denies the very existence of science. Looks to me like revolution in the country and we have Trump and Sanders to thank for that.

 

FROM CHARLIE REECE

Today, I’m borrowing an essay from Charlie Reece, a retired journalist who wrote this as his last column for the Orlando Sentinel a couple of  years back. Its worth repeating.  And, it would be funny if it weren’t so true. Jim says I turn into a ranter when I’m away from the motor home. I don’t mean to, but the manure, as one reader called it, just hits you in the eye.

“Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The President does.

You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House now? He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan ..

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees…

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!”

I think there is a song out there that has these words,  “…there,  I’ve said it again…”