Criminalization of debt in the U.S. - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15071350
blackjack21 wrote:And you think you have a point there?


Yes, we have a lot of dummies in America. This is why I also agree with you that Trump will get re-elected. We have enough dumb people in all the right places (i.e. gerrymandering).
#15071355
@Rancid

Gerrymandering is a big problem on both sides of the aisle. Racial gerrymandering has also been a problem in the South. Regardless of who does it or which party does it, that is a problem that needs to be combated in our political system that way we can have genuine fair elections instead of this illusion of fair elections.
#15071357
Politics_Observer wrote:Gerrymandering is a big problem on both sides of the aisle


It is, I agree. That said, Republicans have done it better for about the last 20 years though. Hence, why the dummies can get Trump elected.
#15071362
late wrote:The rest of us left the 1800s behind.

Really? You left it behind huh? Isn't it more like you made peace with exploitation as long as it happened outside the United States, and the people who would have been exploited in the United States were offered subsistence welfare and copious amounts of opioids in exchange for long term unemployment?

late wrote:But I will say you found some better BS.

Well, you can rest assured nobody believes the establishment truly cares about poverty. They care about power. They are losing it, and they don't understand why because they are beyond a tipping point and didn't realize it because they got away with it for 30 years.
#15071368
blackjack21 wrote:
Really? You left it behind huh? Isn't it more like you made peace with exploitation as long as it happened outside the United States, and the people who would have been exploited in the United States were offered subsistence welfare and copious amounts of opioids in exchange for long term unemployment?


Well, you can rest assured nobody believes the establishment truly cares about poverty. They care about power. They are losing it, and they don't understand why because they are beyond a tipping point and didn't realize it because they got away with it for 30 years.



Somebody is definitely giving you better BS.

But it's sill BS. There are very few people that talk about giving up the empire, and I'm one of them.

You also can't seem to distinguish from DINOS and Progressives. No surprise there. While Clinton was passing the punitive welfare reform act, I was using the latest research to argue against it. But Progressives were ignored.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the party that has blown several trillion on pointless war and savaged the poor, since 1980, has been Republican. But what does reality ever have to do with the nonsense you type?
#15071372
@Rancid

Rancid wrote:It is, I agree. That said, Republicans have done it better for about the last 20 years though. Hence, why the dummies can get Trump elected.


I agree, the Republicans have, especially down South with racial gerrymandering to prevent Democrats from getting elected into political office.
#15071408
@blackjack21 wrote:

No. I did work on a legal compliance expert system for lending, so I'm deeply familiar with the Truth in Lending Act, more specifically Appendix J to Federal Reserve Board Regulation Z of the Truth in Lending Act. So I'm quite familiar with the scams. Car dealers are also quite the scammers, charging "banking fees", "documentation fees", and loads of other BS that they tack on after the cost of a car to unsuspecting people.


Ok BJ. I read everything you have written here. The reality is that people who are desperate for transportation which the majority of poor people in California (especially Southern California are), they have little recourse and have to go through these predatory car lots. It is all part of the reality that people on low incomes who work full time have very little power over determining who they can negotiate with. Credit Unions run by workers themselves pooling their own paychecks and creating their own credit system is opposed with a lot of panic by the banking system. They do that because between ATM fees, and overdraft fees, and so on and so forth? They make a lot of money off of the lower income bracket. They nickel and dime people to death with their small paychecks. That is capitalism Relampaguito. That beautiful system that you believe in. I don't thin the overall premise of capitalism as it is actually practiced BJ is a system that is sustainable. It is rapacious, immoral and as much as you try to reign it in? It won't do a damn thing but expand and demand. The way you cope with these international greedy corporations is by regulating capitalism and taxing them so heavily for everything that they are not allowed to become these billionaire behemoths that when they fail due to betting on disaster happening to swoop in and live off of human suffering and misery---instead of thinking how useful these fucks are in the world? What you need to do is severely limit them by making credit unions available to working people on their own terms and limiting their growth. Spanking them so hard that they get their hands out of all these moves they make...on nationalistic societies like the ones you advocate for BJ and international cooperative beautiful models like I advocate for. That is how you cope. Next....!

The thing is that when you get to my class of people, you don't just have health care and dental. You also have legal insurance, car buying services, employee discounts, etc. I'm not going to walk into a car lot. I'll find what I like online, then tell the car buying service to line it up for me. We'll save $3000 on average. Some poor schmuck though gets scammed. Hell, I can even have them fight speeding tickets for me.


Yes, it is wonderful feeling privileged and being able to be educated and computer literate and speak English in an English speaking society and understanding so many things that favor you a lot. I understand it is great. Be humble. Privileges mess with your head BJ. They make you feel entitled, better, and superior. In reality? All that shit is illusory. Vulnerable. You get a car crash? You lose your ability to code. Your ass gets fired from your job. Your girlfriend whom you marry and she doesn't love you for real only your money? Cleans you out while you are in a coma....your house is unpaid taxes the state takes it over. In the blink of an eye your life changes. That happens in life BJ. Which system will be there for you if you run out of money to pay private insurance? MINE. Not yours. Which system will insist you have rights according to your need and not your ability? Because you lost it due to a damn car accident you never planned on? MINE. Which one is going to be making sure you get to keep your house due to an accident and you need to get time to pay the back taxes? Mine. So, no I don't believe in snobbery. Not your kind, or the corporate liberal kind. It is deeply inhumane. Both of them are inhumane BJ. I love humans. Not their toys, or playthings or privileges. I love their spirits and their human need to live and be in society. Their dignity is the primary concern for this international socialist. Punto y se acabo.
The world we are living in BJ? It is transitory and impermanent. You put your sense of identity into possessions, job status and social status? It is all very impermanent Relampaguito. Your new car gets scratched. Your house gets damaged by a fire or a storm and you lose your prized possessions, your investments get tanked in some volatile situation a la Bernie Madoff or something. Your girlfriend decides she wants you to pay for all her children's education and you don't agree and she knows you have the money and she takes off and leaves you? Life is not predictable and permanent. It never is. You need to have a center in your life that is there no matter what. In terms of the state? It should deal with practical matters. Making sure that you are viable in the society if there is insecurity. That is all I think that the state can do in this present moment. Other forms of the Left are thinking way ahead into a society that is no longer restrained by the money, the toys and the possessions and people are not lumpens and not fighting their obligations and responsibilities and the wealth is very well managed. To beenfit everyone. But that future is far off BJ. While the ones still holding on to a feudal past? Is futile to do so Senor Blackjack. Feudalism died because its utility for a human structured society was no longer viable. It had a new model that was more efficient BJ. I find you interesting. You are a modern man and with coding as your profession. But your style is old fashioned with old fashioned and very traditional values. It is a contrast. I love that in a way. I do think you are trying to preserve what you think is the most true to you and your experience. PoFo is about people who are not that conventional in thinking. Your throwbacks to feudalism while doing modern coding.....is unusual. It fits this website.

That's a way to make sure health care providers and educators make more money. It doesn't do anything for people who can't get jobs. We have a lot of graduates that have college debt, because they got fleeced by "woke" colleges who sold them a bag of goods. We don't just have predatory lenders, we have predatory colleges getting people to trade some of the best years of their lives and saddle themselves with debt for degrees that are functionally worthless in the marketplace.


My parents moved from the state of New York to California in 1973. They arrived in California to attend graduate school. San Diego to be specific. The California college system back then was almost free for all students. They saddled no one with debt. The woke colleges were filled with many conservatives and many liberals. Pepperdine University BJ is conservative. Berkeley is liberal and very woke. Lol. But in the end? People need educations and for it to be affordable. If you allow banks to enslave people who want to study and enter the middle class and this society has sold the middle class dream to the vast majority of people BJ as holding a bachelor's degree and more....how many people can afford to keep young and energetic workers out of a full time workforce for 4 to 5 years sustaining increasing debt. People now are forgoing going to college. They assume that all education is just fluff. It is not. I was trained the classic way. I actually answered @Politics_Observer about my undergrad, grad, etc background. How it worked for me. People now don't get broad based educations. They get specialized ones. And for me that is a mistake. You should form critical thinkers who don't really get their information from a college course but by being voracious intdependent learners who are fired up about seeking knowledge, organizing it and synthesizing it BJ. Not making getting en education just another commerical enterprise where you make payments and assume you are educated. That is not how it works. Education is internal and a concept that comes from the word educare--it means TO FORM. Which is about creating a fully thinking, realized individual who understands what kind of society they live in, what the purpose of societies and how they deal with the world----is about. It is about making human beings who are not passive sheep but very alert autonomous analytical crtics of what they see...in order to push the society forward and being able to give more of themselves than they receive. EDUCARE. Formation. Complete realization. Asi es. Not some business that says, you pay for this tuition? You get this job and you don't have to think for yourself. Just put in your hours and get your paycheck. BYE. That is instruction. Not education.




Yeah, and if doctors don't charge full freight, Medicare will cut their reimbursement. If they are specialists and do this, primary care doctors will punish the specialists by never giving them referrals. The problem in health care is cost, not price. They are allowed to gouge consumers. They will gouge taxpayers too. Nobody will support a public option until there is billing reform.



Billing reform is needed, drug cost caps. But there are brilliant people dealing with that problem BJ. Trump promised something "Beautiful, better, etc to replace Obamacare". Show me the Trumpcare? Where is it? It is a bunch of lies BJ.

Yes. And the law is cut-and-dried. It's not flexible for landlords either. They can file unlawful detainer, or be construed to waive what is owed. Estoppel by laches. The law does not allow landlords to extend credit.


You don't want to hear my answer to that. It will give you a heart attack so I won't. Lol. The law makes it impossible to not deal with a pro capitalist paradigm. That is why it needs to change. The laws have to start accepting non capitalist forms of organizing society. But? It is a long process BJ. Rent controlled buildings and communities and government sponsored housing is a start. But there is a worldwide shortage of affordable housing in excellent condition. I like the concepts of Habitat for Humanity BJ. Have people with a lot of help build their own homes. Control the output. I find it a great start. Ex prez Jimmy Carter does a lot of that. He knows how well it works for very poor people who need homes.

Try it out from the court's perspective. A defendant has been served with a summons 10 times, and they don't show up to court. What do you do? Courts are not going to get on their hands and knees and plead you to come to court. It's absurd. If they can find you to arrest you, they can find you to serve you. If you don't show up to court, you will get arrested.


Courts need to stop being in cahoots with private prisons, private probation service industries, and seeing cases as possible money making opportunities. They need to go back to dealing with how to prevent crime, and how to prevent recivitism with the criminals. How do you create a better person out of someone who decides to break the law....do the work. It is a lot of work BJ because by the time a person is sentenced to a jail? They usually had a lot of people failing them massively. Drug addict parents, bad teachers, uncaring low standard schools, careless social workers, don't give a damn cops, indifferent community problems...about a lot of things. Poverty and jail? It is a snowballing effect BJ. A lot of things fail in the system like a perfect storm for most inmates. And also the person themselves has enormous lacks. Most jail students I got were functional illiterates. They could barely read and write. They came from homes where very few routines were followed. Almost no steady working class people, no real loving mothers and grandmothers, fathers who never were responsible for their children, people in power who saw them as throwaway people who are useless. People who think they are never going to be intelligent enough to do a damn thing and are told so.....The blame for a poor man is really the entire society acting together, failing people in these powerless positions in society. Usually they become expensive to deal with....because educating older people, housing, feeding them and giving them medical attention in jail, counseling, etc. is going to be cost involved. If not in the present? In the future. Have you ever heard an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure? That is true for crime as well. I suggest people start analyzing what happens to neglected human beings BJ? They are a lot of them in the world. In Mexico, in Puerto Rico, in Canada, and in the USA and every other nation. Got to work on it. Some nations are much better at managing that issue than the USA is. I suggest you start studying them and not doing things that don't work at all.

We let wage arbitrageurs and human traffickers screw the lights out of our working class. That's why they are in those straights, and that's why THEY voted for Trump because Trump promised to deport illegal immigrants, build a wall to prevent them from coming in, and putting up tariffs against China and renegotiating trade deals. You may think those policies are wrong, but that's why Trump won so much support among working class people.


I already told you what the socialist policies are about BJ. Bernie says there can't be open borders. Got to kick the corporations exploiting the hell out of workers in the USA and in other nations in the ass. That is the solution. I agree. But I don't think Mexicans and Central Americans are rapists and criminals because they want to make $15 dollar an hour minimum wages versus what they pay them here at $2 an hour. That is looking for a future for your kids and your family in these rural high unemployment towns. Mexico has issues with small town Mexicans who can't make end's meet and go to the big Mexican cities. Competing with urban Mexicans who are a lot more formally educated. They wind up getting desperate and heading for the USA. Do I think them rapists and human traffickers? No. Most are ordinary rural Mexicans of which are some of the most hard working people with very great moral compasses. I love Mexican rural small town folk. My next door neighbors are that. Mayan speaking and Spanish too speaking, little town raised people. They bake bread for a living. They are sweet as pie and good people. I hear about rapists and so do they coming out of that Conman from Queens....and I think? What an asshole BJ. He is condescending towards Puerto Ricans too. Puuuuerto Riiiccooo he says. We love Puerto Rico. We also love Porto Rico. Lol He is a racist asshole BJ. He is my inferior and I refuse to be ruled by my inferior. Isn't that what you said? Well in Trump's case he is my inferior for sure. That man never reads. A video of Indians in India fleeing from Trump's fake speech in which he mangles all the names of the Indian national identity like Sri Vivekananda...whom I read extensively....he is a fake piece of lying crap Trump is.....Here see how the Indians reacted to that speech? Half the stadium was out the door way before he finished.




And you think you have a point there? A lot of those poor people voted for Trump. A lot of them will vote for him again. Who is most hurt by illegal immigration from Mexico? Lawfully resident Hispanics and Blacks. Whose wages are going up the fastest in the Trump era?


You keep missing the point BJ. I am an international socialist. I don't believe in only protecting the working rights and working wages of American workers. I want all workers in many nations to get decent enough wages to be able to stabilize the immigration problem all over the world. The musical chairs will continue with people fleeing war, famine, instability, poverty and lack of education, clean water and basic necessities and also lacks in educational attainment. They flee terror, violence, and the inability of governments to make life decent for millions. How to cope? Thinking of only the working class and you see them as the low performers who are Black and Hispanic and bottom of the barrel people.....capable only of bottom of the barrel tasks...and work....as the ones who you need to stabilize. You are patronizing in your class consciousness and your Í care about the little people. No, BJ, I think one has to deal with the issue. Mexico has way too low wages and it drives immigration that you don't like. Get the heads of the rich in Mexico City and the corporations. The friends you socialize with from Mexico City are the fucking problem BJ. They are RIGHT wing assholes who don't believe in paying people a fair wage and go on killing rampages using cops and police and federales and their own corrupt cronies in quashing worker revolts. The RIGHT is driving the illegal aliens you gripe about. If the Mexican system paid a decent wage? None of those Mexicanos would be interested in the American Dream bullshit. They would stay in this beautiful country with their own Mexican dream in their own Mexican reality. But the Right has to KEEP ALL THE MONEY HERE. As usual. So they are stuck with fighting these horrifically selfish rightists. The horror! :roll:

You're a lot closer to it. I don't oppose class mobility at all. I'm not looking for a 19th-mid-20th Century British system where your accent determines how far you can rise. If you recall during the utterly pointless House impeachment hearings, Fiona Hill was griping about people in the UK making fun of her working class accent. Going back to what I said to you before, they can pull out a lot of things about me just by my name--religion, region, Norman ancestry, etc. America was not set up that way; although, a lot of people on the East Coast have tried to make it that way. It just so happens while Michael Bloomberg is very well off, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Jeff Bezos are richer and they've set up shop outside of the East Coast.


America was not set up that way because it is a nation of immigrants. People from all over who forgot their pasts in order to create an identity not based on class only. But they wound up making another class system based on how much bank you got in your bank. And race based shit that the South insisted on doing to build the agricultural output in the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries BJ. They did it by killing off a lot of Natives and violating hundreds of treatees and displacing Californios of their lands....It is about usurpation and imperialism, and repression. Freedom they say. I say hypocrisy. But what do I know? I just was born in an unincorporated territory of the USA in which one man and one woman and one vote doesn't exist. You leave Puerto Rico and enter Colorado and magically I can vote in the general presidential elections. I move out of Colorado and go back to my home Puerto Rico? And I got to be stuck with no voting except local stuff and now the governor since the PROMESA panel? His rule is moot. Only some banks that are not subject to a vote by a Puerto Rican is ruling PR now. Not even that mock fake local rule is working. No, can't vote there BJ for the people making all the laws and all the rules. Yet, there you are....saying how fair and orderly everything is....a great meritocracy. My entire life experience says that is not true at all. For you? It is true. For me? The Puerto Rican woman who is a socialist and doesn't like violence at all...but seeks justice? It is not true. It is bullshit. The meritocracy is bullshit. The orderly society. Nationalistic feudalism. All of it is not true for me BJ. It is for you. It works for you that society you are trying to save. It doesn't work for me. It never has. Mexico will give me more right in 4 years of being here than the USA had in 110 plus years with Puerto Rico. It is the sad reality of colonialism. Something you fail to understand because you never lived that thing....at all. I hope you never do. It is a very bad thing. Paul Revere and many others knew how bad it was. The American Revolution had internal people who loved to stick with England and King George and found them traitors. The traitors turned out to be right. In everything. Rebellion is the only path for people who are Imperialistic demanding and arrogant rulers from afar....that is the reality.


They don't understand finance. What allows some of this predation is the presumption of equality--it allows bankers to presume that you can read the terms of the contract--which you don't get to negotiate the terms of anyway--that you understand those terms, and that you are entering into the agreement knowingly and intelligently of your own free will and accord.


They understand that they don't have the $1500 a month for their one bedroom apartment and made after taxes $2300 and have to pay for food, electricity, phone, etc and will be short the $500 bucks and that their neighbors are all low income and their mothers are on social security restricted incomes, and their people are not rich. How much control you think a person has about being in an untenable position forced to pay for something that is vital like rent and food? You know what I dislike BJ? I dislike people who equate health needs to buying a pair of shoes. It is not similar. Shoes you can buy a cheap pair at Payless Shoe Source or go to Rodeo Drive and get some fancy custom made Italian leather ones. Both are shoes. You choose according to the budget you have. Ok, that is it. Health care is not like that. You got a tumor in your head and your private insurance says you got the cheap model of insurance. So you will be in debt big time for the tumor removal from your head. You can't get the Payless tumor removal. It is all custom Italian leather pricing. What do you do? Say, I guess I am gonna die. Let it grow....no. Go bankrupt. Lose your house, your savings, but you better survive. No choice. Many of the poor are in that position with survival loans BJ. They are not equal and they are not equal because they are living in a society that is privatizing health. You can't privatize health and education. They are vital services that have to do with protecting human society and keeping it humane and just. You lose that? You are asking for trouble. And you will find it. The ones having trouble with their medical bills are not seeing the TRUMPCARE to replace Obamacare....where is it?
Equality? It is about being humane BJ. Not about how they don't know about finance. No one knows how to squeeze more out of a budget than people who have a lot of bills and not much income. I heard it all. I clip coupons Tainari, I go on two for one sales, I go to the thrift shop for blenders, and cups and plates, no, I don't buy new clothes for my baby. Too expensive they got the blue bag special at the local Thrift store...I go then. No, I only eat out if it is ten dollar pizza night with drinks included. I only use internet in the library where it is free. Those people are the budget conscious ones.

Yes. If you saw the movie "A Beautiful Mind," it was about John Nash. If you've read much on game theory, the Nash equilibrium is all about that. The problem with globalism is that it violates the Nash equilibrium. It's not about people with $5-10M that are a problem. It's people with $500M or more that are becoming a problem, and it's not because they are squeezing the poor in the US for low wages. They are doing that in China and leaving people in the US unemployed or underemployed, and the state allows them to do this. That is why free trade with China is a terrible idea. Tariffs on China should be high and permanent.


I saw a beautiful mind. He was a far right man with mental illness and brilliance. The $500M people are a problem that capitalism with monopolies create, capitalist bankers create, military industrial complex create......it is an integral part of the capitalist system as it is currently practiced BJ. It is not about Nash's ideal society. It is about the premise that underscores capitalistic failures....constant wealth and more market share....government by the people and for the people has to respond to the majority interests. Capitalism responds to the owners of capital. They are colliding. The ones who know about collisions in class conflict? Are the Marxists, socialists, commies and everyone on the left. The ones who keep thinking that Capitalism is the ideal form in their head that is not in reality? Are people like you. Nationalists who keep thinking that monster of a system is controllable with some nation state conservative principles. No. It is a beast. And the only ones capable of making the beast civilized for a bit til it is let out of its cage? Are the principled Left. Not the fake liberals and the liberal liars, and so on....No the beast of Capital is a wild animal that no one can control when the greed takes over...and the corrupt elites use it to enrich themselves without a sense of limits. A horrible thing bent on imbalanced voracious need to take it all...like it usually does after the conservatives with their greedy theories of class conscious based wealth becomes...this beast....everyone is got to be feudal? Relampaguito, everyone has to BEWARE of what that system does if not controlled.

You don't provide welfare to people who refuse to do unpleasant jobs. That's not welfare. That's buying votes. You don't want to pack chickens in the chicken house, because you have a bachelor's degree in music? Sorry. No welfare for you. You don't get to say, "I'm overqualified for the slaughterhouse, because I have a degree in music." The welfare state has evolved into nothing short of vote buying bribery. People get more in benefits than the minimum wage, and refuse to get work. There's work out there. We don't have immigrants coming here to take those jobs for nothing. We have a class of people who WONT work, because the government pays them not to provided they vote a certain way. It's a bi-partisan scam. Even John McCain would say things like Americans wouldn't be able to go and work in the fields. Oh yes they are able. They are just not willing. It doesn't take tremendous skill to do that work, but it's hard work and nobody wants to do it. Our political class is hopelessly corrupt. As one Congressman lectured about the unfair treatment of Roger Stone, "if you lie to Congress, it's a crime; if a Congressman lies to you, it's not a crime." Similarly, it's a crime to bribe a public official. It's not a crime for a public official to bribe a citizen with welfare.


I agree to certain extent with you BJ. The welfare state is about stabilizing the poor so they are conformists and don't rock the boat. There are a lot of welfare recipients in a capitalist state with flat wages since the 1970's BJ. Seniors who need their food stamps to eat. People who need subsidized section 8 housing to not be homeless. How do you hope to keep them employed if they are old, or sickly or too young and need to study for work? Because the healthy able bodied men are forced to work in the present welfare system. There are cut off dates to how many benefits you can get. You are monitored for fraud and underreporting income. They pressure to accept work if it is offered for unemployment benefits. Even if it is a drastic pay cut. So? Buying votes eh? Try the Mexican system then. No welfare. Kids selling candies in the street til 11pm to eat some frijoles that night. There is no welfare in this society BJ. The poverty is bad all over this country. People die of it all the time. Sell their kids into kiddy prostitution to avoid not eating. To avoid severe malnutrition. Because food stamps is buying them off. When the jobs offered are less than living wages of $2 an hour. It forces them to pull their kids out of 4 hour a day educational institutions run by the state for elementary school kids and put them to selling tamales on the street for twelve hours a day. I know them personally. The no welfare for buying off votes people in Mexico. They are in deep tragic situations. Do that in the USA and wait one hundred years and see what happens with that violent hate of not giving people living wages so they can get their basic expenses met? And see if the Mexican scene doesn't happen in the USA? IT WILL HAPPEN. And it will be bad. With guns and killing people on the street like dogs. Because the Mexicans have family values for sure. But the Americans are killing spree in schools and malls with guns and they got the FOOD STAMPS, and no starvation for now....til Trump cuts it off....massively....and then the lumpen proletariats are gonna be looking for a place to sell drugs, do crime and spray random people for sure.....go ahead BJ, weigh your options of what to do about the bought off votes in the USA? Everything that is stabilizing that USA system is socialistic. It is. Public free education, highways kept up, military pensions, social security, SSI, disbability, widow's benefits, disability people's services, single moms with dependent babies, WIC, HIV services, etc etc. Cut it all off and let the underperformers go pick fruit in the sun for minimum wage. Go tell them to go and work all the time (many of them do that already), but without health clinics, food stamps and TANF etc to help them survive....see how long that works in keeping an orderly society where everyone knows their place and accepts it...because the people with wine cave tastings are knowing what they are going through in their daily lives....yes, I do think you will be spending a lot of money keeping them from the streets. The intent of the liberals....was that. Contain the underclass. Or we will be in big trouble.

Many of them are absolutely horrible people. As you've also noted, that doesn't mean West Coast liberals aren't snobs. So "too" isn't appreciated in that sense. These are the types of people who read something about symphonic music and then lecture you about it as though you didn't know when they haven't picked up a musical instrument in their lives. They are frankly just horrible people. The wine snobs are the worst. When we want to get out of town, we're often down at a friends ranch adjacent to a winery his family founded--now owned by Seagrams, I believe. I've had access to some great wines my whole adult life; yet, you get these liberals around it, and they just feel the need to act as if they were sommeliers or something. You can do a blind taste test with the same bottles of wine, one opened before the other and a bit warmer. They cannot tell that it's the same bottle, but they will go on and on about the differences, completely fucking oblivious to it. The worst part of it is that in hyping it, they've got all the Chinese buying up good wines--and they don't drink them. So whereas it used to be a cut above your typical $15 bottle of wine to pick up a bottle of Stag's Leap Petit Syrah, now it's unaffordable to drink it regularly. Like $65-70 a bottle. So now you have to know the better unknown wineries and not tell anybody for fear that they will jack prices up and export everything. I'm sure that's why the French are so pissed these days too. The liberals are just intolerable, and so unnecessarily smug--not realizing we're making fun of them either that they can't tell the same bottle of wine in a blind taste test (and of course we don't tell them they're the same bottle).


I don't worry about the liberal snobs. They need to get out of the wave coming on now. They are useless. I don't like them either BJ. But? I don't find the right much better. Both are snobs. Both think they are the cat's meow. Both are entitled. One is sincere and the other is all about playing a sympathy game. In the end? for me? The Left needs to be about justice. Social, economic and political justice. Not about retention of a small group's privileges. That is all. I am very clear on that role.

They also hate the people they say they care about. Think long and hard about all the bullshit people like @late offer with respect to Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia. It's like Ivory Soap, only it's 99 44/100% pure bullshit. Even if you assume that Vladimir Putin hacked the DNC server, John Podesta's email and Hillary Clinton's server himself, what damage did he do to the 2016 election? All that happened in the scheme of things is that how the Democrats actually talk behind the scenes when the cameras aren't rolling and the public isn't watching was revealed. That's it. There isn't a shred more damage than that. Donald Trump turned over millions of emails to Mueller et. al. Do you know why there wasn't a constant stream of leaks there? Not because of the integrity of the prosecutors. It's because there was nothing particularly salacious. Yet, in troves of Hillary emails, she's talking about having a public position and a private position--that she's basically straight up lying to voters. So if Vladimir Putin exposed that, he's all but an American hero excepting he's not an American.


I am not a Hillary supporter. That woman is not for me. You read how I feel about her. No news for me. Two faced, liars. That is true. But the Repuke party is equally bad. Both corrupt. Trump is not some principled conservative like you are BJ. If ever the USA were ruled by you? You would do a heck of a job in that conservative mode. The problem is that you don't truly know your own system well. It is messy capitalism. Hard to control. It is simple as you say....but you are ignoring what Harari stated is the human 'stupidity factor' and you are assuming people have the same value system that you do....you are class conscious...for me that is a serious failure in a huge way with human beings. And a couple of other things. In the end, they are not you BJ. They don't have principles. Period. Not even nationalistic ones that are consistent like you do. So? You need to see it as a very difficult thing to overcome and do a long haul plan. Or accept the redistribution of wealth from the socialist column to stabilize the crazy economy collapsing due to top heavy concentrations of wealth and power in a globalist class who doesn't give a shit about national interests. That is the reality.

The Ukraine impeachment has largely tanked Joe Biden, because in trying to damage Trump they brought to light the fact that in every foreign venue where Biden had influence, the US was likely being taken advantage of by foreign countries and Biden family members were getting rich. Have you listened to Michael Bloomberg say he doesn't think Xi Xinping is a dictator? Who the hell would seriously be afraid of Vladimir Putin in view if Xi Xinping? Yet, we have an elite that is disloyal to the United States and its people and lining their pockets at the expense of the American people.

I highlighted something BJ. And my answer to your highlighted text? Welcome to Capitalism 101. If you advocate for that system? That it what it leads to BJ. The criteria of human practice. The practice of putting making money as the main value system that all actions gyrate around in this system of the USA? Will lead to that...lining pockets of selfishness over the American people. That I knew long long ago. because I am Puerto Rican and dealing with the lack of one vote one person for years....and the lying. The fake democracy. Contradiction. Sellouts. Welcome to the reality of disloyal to the American people. They have rotten and bad values BJ. It is endemic to capitalism. If you got bad values and you let other nations suffer those values but you don't give a shit about other nations and other societies, because? They are not your nation and your society? But those others get used to mistreating and being disloyal to gain more profit and more money and more power and more growth? Why not shit on your nation and your society too? International socialism. Many nations acting as one...to cut off their oxygen and blood supply kills the beast. Yours keeps thinking the beast serves you and you can control it. You can't. Can't go back in time to the robber barons, the carpetbaggers and the feudal lords BJ. It is time to make the technology and the freed up labor value serve the ones who are still trapped in poverty. Class consciousness will never be able to do it BJ. Only international cooperative models and human rights charters from many nations acting as one to contain exploitation will do it.

If you think your humanity is too different to be accepted in many societies? You stay in the nationalism BJ. The cultures you enjoyed experiencing all over the world are enjoyable? Because variation is the spice of life. But our common loves and needs and abilities? Will make it happen. Venceremos! ;)


Socialism is not inevitable. It's a shimmering promise that betrays The Road To Serfdom as Hayek pointed out. What's inevitable is feudalism. So the class consciousness is born of fear, because it's always better to be nearer to the top than the bottom.


It is always better to have everyone caring about everyone else, and appealing to the frontal cortex of politics leaning on the limbic love....so that everyone is not in fear, but so involved in a loving direction that when they die....the fear is gone, and all that is left is a sweet memory and good bye my love....for all that I am....is what I left in each of the hearts that I worked so hard for.

May humanity have freedom, love and happiness and the liberty to find common ground, and save the planet, save each other and find beauty in each life lived.

Senor Blackjack, your love for you country will never die, as long as instead of fear in your heart and mind? You leave behind love and a sense of human connection to all of your people. Even the Black and Hispanic lower class ones who you think do a good job of gardening and cleaning at your home.

Be fearless Relampaguito....you are lucky. You have an education, property, a good income, a loving relationship and ideas of making things work.

You got a lot. Share it. :)

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