WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO?

WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO?

By

Fay E.A. Reid

Last week my granddaughter, Amy, sent me an email recently lamenting some of the worst of Trump slime’s reign of terror. Yes, I’ve taught my grandchildren well. They’ve been listening to my rants. For a very long time. In her words “ I was thinking about how we at the bottom are constantly subsidizing the rich and how that might be a good topic for our blog if you’d like to pick it up” So Grandma is picking it up.

Amy’s first observation.”Our power bills are going up because of the massive drain from AI data centers. Why should our rates go up just because some tech billionaires want to profit off the unpaid labor of generations of creatives?

Obviously, I agree, why are we constantly propping up billionaires with OUR tax dollars? To address this we have to back before Amy was born–alll the way back to January 20, 1981 when Ronald Reagan first took office. I did not vote for Ronald Reagan, I voted (again) for Jimmy Carter. Reagan was a second rate actor, for heaven sake. How could that possibly qualify him for President of the United States? I didn’t even vote for him either time he ran for Governor of my home State of California. Being a shitty governor sure as hell doesn’t qualify for the Presidency. Ok I’ll admit he had a pleasant voice. Big effing wow. Calliope has a very nice voice for a cat, should I let her run for Governor? Frankly she wouldn’t have been worse than Reagan. His one and only accomplishment as Governor was to empty all the State Mental Health Hospitals and turn the patients out on the streets with no support whatsoever. Their counties and families will take care of them, says Ronnie Baby and given NO assistance, not a penny. Yeah, right, all of us Californians lived in Victorian three story homes where the insane were kept in the attic. Ronnie read Jane Eyre too many times.

So, he hadn’t done enough damage in California so he went to Washington, DC. My mother and aunt (who thank goodness couldn’t vote being Canadian citizens with green cards) [I became a naturalized citizen in February 1967] could not understand why I could possibly vote for Jimmy Carter who, gulp, wore blue jeans in the White House!!! And Mr Reagan had such a nice voice. But he doesn’t know how to govern, and has probably never read the Constitution. And sure enough, he proved himself the asshole he was. He espoused the “trickle down theory” (also known as supply side economics). If you gave the wealthiest people huge tax breaks so they could keep most of their ill gotten gains AND deregulated them to boot they would use their money to “improve the economy” thus sharing the wealth with ordinary working people. Sure, right! And there’s a leprechaun at the end of every rainbow, with a pot of gold to share with all the working folk. And guess what else? It isn’t your wealthy boss who broke your union and can’t afford to give you a wage increase. No, no, it’s the government - especially under the FDR Democrats - who gave all your hard earned tax dollars to the ‘Welfare Queens’ who drive up to the Social Services in Cadillacs wearing fur coats. He may very well have been telling the truth here, but not in the way most people think. In the 1980’s you could buy a 5 to 10 year old used luxury car for $250 and used mink coats were $25 to $50 in thrift stores in Sacramento. I know. I purchased a Chrysler Imperial for my youngest daughter who was going through a rough spot in her life. It had low mileage and was in reasonably good shape. I paid $250 for it. Of course it got a walloping 6 miles to a gallon of gas. A Chevrolet of the same vintage cost $1,000 and Nissans and Toyotas $2500. I also purchased two mink coats $25 each at a thrift store for my mother and her sister to wear to their Daughters of Scotia and Church.

Of course Reagan never discussed that. And the ladies at the Shriner events were sure I was lying, because that dear, sweet Ronnie would never lie.

From 1981 on it didn’t matter who we elected, MONEY was king. The corporate Democrats fed from the same trough as the anti Constitution Republicans. Oh, there were a few decent men and women now and then who decried the wealth gushing up but the sound of those gushers drowned them out.

Amy: “Any time inflation increases, one cause is ridiculous high CEO pay. We have to pay more so their bottom line continuously sees increases. And when their bottom line is in danger, the first thing they do is lay people off, rather than risk paying the CEO even a cent less.” While, I agree for the most part, high CEO pay is a symptom of the much larger issue that pertains to how we got in this mess–the breaking of the unions. Yes, CEO pay is obscene and stock buy backs also have a devastating effect. But, none of this might be as bad as it is today, if not for the efforts of Reagan and generations of Republicans and even Democrats doing their damndest to destroy the unions. And here, Ronnie Baby, had a big hand when he broke the back of the Air Controllers Union. To hell with public safety, the corporate airlines aren’t making money fast enough. And here I think some small part of the blame goes to the flight crew unions, they should have supported the Air Traffic Controllers - their lives were on the line too.

But another cause was the American public. Throughout the War Years (WW2) and continuing through the ‘50’s, ‘60’s, and well into the ‘70’s, Americans cared about each other. We marched, chanted, and protested for Civil Rights. We reached our high in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. But Vietnam changed things for all of us. I started actively protesting that war in early 1964, because in the course of studies (I started Community College in the Fall semester 1963) I found some really interesting information about the South Vietnamese Government. They were a very corrupt autocratic group, supported by the French Colonialists. The French opposed the North Vietnamese revolutionaries, who did not begin as communists, they began as desiring a free government for the people - not the aristocracy. They ended up communists because only China supported their quest for freedom. I don’t intend to refight the Vietnam War, the only reason I bring it up is the Pentagon Papers. For the first time in memory we found that our own Government lied to us. Not just Democrats, not just Republicans BOTH parties. It began late in Truman’s presidency, continued with Eisenhower (whom I admired in spite of being a Republican) then John F Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson and culminated with Richard Nixon. Admittedly Johnson and Nixon were the worst but that any President would outright lie to the American Citizenry was a blow. If you can’t trust your own government, who can you trust?

I think this, stagnating wages, rising cost of living tipped a majority of Americans into accepting the “Greed is Good” philosophy. The fact that more than 50% of our populace is deliberately under-educated doesn’t help either - but that’s a different subject.

Amy: “Corporate welfare, your favorite topic.” I’m sure I bored my children and grandchildren half to death with my rants against Corporate Welfare. Them thars still fightin’ words for me. I first came across Corporate Welfare in a magazine article about the “Jolly Green Giant” at that time part of General Mills. Apparently; under a well meaning law by some legislators from agricultural States, large subsidies were paid to farmers not to plant unwanted crops like corn, tobacco, wheat and to plant something else instead, like soy beans. These subsidies were tied to specific acreage. Corn is a very ‘taking’ plant that requires a lot of fertilizer and it drains the soil. Therefore it should be rotated on a regular basis with a ‘giving’ plant like legumes that pour nutrients into the soil. Sounds fair, right?

But Corporate America, ever on the take, took advantage and bought some of the subsidized acreage. They had no intention of ever planting the unwanted plants anyway and in Jolly Green Giants case they planned to grow “row crops” vegetables. So they received annual subsidies NOT to grow crops they hadn’t planned on growing anyways and, therefore, got to grow their vegetables for free–paid for by the government. Perfectly legitimately and oh, so, wrong.

Digging a little deeper I found out about oil depletion allowances. Now oil is a free gift to us from the Jurassic Era, when the enormous acreages of tropical plants died off and were promptly buried, cut off from oxygen the plants metamorphosed into thick gooey oil. This is spread throughout Planet Earth. And yes, there is a finite amount, that, if we continued to use it at the rate we have we might run out in a few hundred thousand years. BooHoo. None of today’s oil barons are going to live one hundred thousand years. What’s more the damage we’ve done to planet Earth through the continued use of fossil fuels is too destructive. Those of us capable of using 1% of our brain cells understand this, even though it’s beyond the capacity of poor widdle Donnie. Therefore the oil depletion allowance is a free gift to the already too wealthy oil barons. And it’s OUR money they are giving away. I’m sure if I took the time I’d find many more examples (generous government contracts for instance) of taxpayer money being gifted to the uber wealthy.

Amy: “The tax dollars that get allocated to the military, much of which will go to weapons manufacturers and, again, tech companies, with no input from us.” Mostly agree, but then the Federal Government lets thousands of contracts annually and we, citizens have no input. We hear about military contracts because they are the most expensive and many are ridiculous, spending millions or even billions of dollars on stuff that doesn’t even work planes that can’t take off or land and that catches our attention.

But also bids that are outrageous. Having worked in the space for close to 19 years the first stupidity are the RFPs [Requests for proposals]. Many of these are so poorly written and incomplete they are just begging for corruption. For instance an RFP was put out requesting bids for a computer program for Social Services providing Cash, Food, and Medical Assistance. DUH!!! There are four different cash aid programs for families with children alone, then there are adoption assistance and foster care assistance and assistance for needy and or disabled adults for limited times. Food Assistance is provided for one or two parent families with children and limited programs for able bodied adults. Medicaid alone had 168 different programs.

If I were the Director of any Department I would have a team of intelligent, skilled, trained writers of RFPs who would be required to consult with management AND more importantly with line workers to see what is actually required before writing RFPs. One program I worked on required the address of the applicant to be entered separately more than 100 places–inevitably leading to multiple errors. Even on the rare occasions when an RFP is well written there are innumerable change requests (CRs) each one upping the cost. Another problem, States, Counties, Cities, Agencies are required to accept the lowest bid–no matter how ineptly it is written. In one State with which I worked, the final cost for the low bid contract cost five times more than the higher bid proposals from far more reputable companies. In another State I was hired to tell the low bidder what changes were necessary for their program to work at all.

Frankly I don’t think the general public has the necessary expertise to input opinions regarding outside contractors. What I do think is the dumbest thing trump slime has done was to fire the Inspector Generals. They at least had the knowledge to step in and fix some really bad contracts.

Amy: “Meanwhile, any time we ask for the slightest return on OUR taxes, things like healthcare, education, unemployment, social security, SNAP, housing suddenly it’s a ‘government handout’” This Amy and I are in complete agreement. Apparently, assistance of any kind to tax paying citizens is a no-no; but assistance to tax avoiding billionaires is essential. This apparently is particularly true of Elon Musk. Not only does he hold billions of dollars in government contracts; but, he was allowed to run rampant through HIPPA controlled government agencies, closing programs, firing staff, stealing personally identifiable information on hundreds of millions of American citizens (information our government agencies treated as deep secrets) and that information is now lying somewhere in a cyber cloud, no one knows where or for what purpose). I’d also like to know who gave OUR NASA tied up in a great big bow to Elon. From 1959 until recently NASA was a source of great pride to America. It landed men on the moon, shared space information and technology with other nations. Was it perfect? Of course not. But it was honest, and admitted its mistakes. We knew NASA’s budget, its plans, its successes and failures. Now we have Space X in Texas, a very unwelcome, dirty,careless, neighbor in one of the prettier areas of Texas. My late brother and his wife owned some vacation property bordering Space X. It’s presence has lowered property values.

Amy: “Of course, Trump treats the Treasury like his own personal piggy bank. Saying we can’t have these things while funding ICE to the point it’s one of the world’s largest militaries.” I’m particularly angry about trump slime rewarding himself $230,000,000.00 of OUR tax money because we hurt his feelings by investigating his theft of government papers (some top secret) that he was carelessly storing in Mar a lago AND having the nerve to investigate his instigation of the assault on OUR Congressional Building January 6, 2021.

But that’s not the only outlandish thing he did. He sequestered OUR tax dollars that had been approved by Congress and prior HONEST executives and used some of those funds to hire more thugs to randomly attack Hispanic appearing persons, legal residents, American citizens, as well as undocumented workers. They might, just might have picked up 20 gang members among the 70,000 men, women, and children they have retained.

The last thing in the world America needs is storm troopers in our cities and our streets randomly accosting, beating, and even killing persons, without warrants, due process, and suspending habeas corpus. No matter what, we have always considered ourselves as the “good guys”. And most of the time we have been. Trump slime has seen to it we no longer can. Now we are the laughing stock of the world. Not just our former allies, but even Putin and Xi consider us a big joke.

So.what to do? VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. Especially in 2026.