by Barry Hastings
I have a number of things to complain about this week, so go get some coffee, maybe a Danish (or a doughnut), your thinking cap, and a comfortable chair:
Our shaken governor, Herr Schnieder, is on a campaign to shift blame for what’s happened to the city of Flint on the applicable federal law(s), to the federal government, the Environmental Protection Agency, and, in fact, even to anyone probably, possibly, plausibly guilty, who served under him during the time in which the problems developed and occurred. The men who created (and fine-tuned) the modern ‘big lie’ strategy (Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Stalin, Hitler) made it clear; the secret to success is big lies (the bigger the better), repeated often, distributed widely. Snyder and his henchmen have been trying to eliminate EPA for a long time, in the interests of their polluting business friends and benefactors.
The governor also is trying to make taxpayers cough up $400 an hour (each) for a team of hot-shot attorneys to defend him against possible (probable) civil and/or criminal charges… to the tune of $1.2 million for starters. The size of this herd of lawyers will increase (as will the costs) as the Snyder’s legal problems grow. Believe me, they are going to grow. My hope is to see him in jail (even if it’s a golf-outing jail.)
Michigan Republicans are far and away the larger part of what’s been going wrong. Privatization of government services /s the problem. It’s led our last two GOP governors to place critical (formerly state government) services in the hands of the state’s business community.
We can see results in many areas — the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans being the most disgusting and long-lived, but prisons, and many public school services, are also high on the list. What’s needed at the Vets Home is a return to management interested in helping vets, not in cutting costs. Of course, there are very few GOP office-holders who know what soldiering is all about. It might be a good idea to make military service a pre-requisite to elective public office. If we did, there’d be few GOP office-seekers.
Trickle-down economies, a product of Ronald Reagan’s over-active, though deteriorating, thought processes, certainly works, but only for the top of the trickle. By the time it’s trickled down, there’s little (to nothing) left for the old, the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the unemployed. One of every four kids in our state goes to bed hungry every night. Thousands of Michigan veterans sleep under bridges, or in the bushes every night.
Government responsibility is to provide necessary services, not to make profits. I don’t know exactly where that insane, inane profit idea came from, and certainly not from Democrats. Take a look at what it’s done to our crummy roads and highways, our crappy (and growing crappier) schools, our lakes and rivers, our entire physical infrastructure (when the wind blows, the power goes out; in a sleet storm, the power goes out). Hell’s bells, you’re putting your life on the line every time you drive, not even considering all the distracted drivers, and drunks.
If you’ve wondered why your auto insurance rates are so high (and get higher every year), it’s estimated somewhere near one in five Michigan drivers is uninsured. Apparently the state has no way to determine who they are (until we learn who they are when they crash into us, or someone else). They make the first monthly payment for “proof of insurance,”‘ then stop paying. Surely, in this marvelous electronic age, there’s a way to put a stop to this. “No, we can’t afford it, as it will eat into government profitability,” so take your chances. Big businesses, like the power and insurance companies, have done next to nothing to prevent, or alleviate, these problems. Because they thrive on them. Money is their only motivation, the GOP their only ally, but for the uninformed, who serve as both victim and ally.
The continued free fall of the GOP presidential primary
The two front-runners in the GOP presidential primary fight are the most disgusting men in American politics since George Wallace, and everyone knows what happened to him — shot, paralyzed, confined to a wheel-chair, and finally regretting all the ugly crap he’d said and done in his disruptive, mean-spirited, totally unproductive and wasted life. Trump and Cruz, at this moment, are exchanging insults, and completely unwarranted verbal and photographic assaults against each others wives. Certainly more unproductive and disgusting than anything I’ve seen in American politics since the “Swift Boat” twits’ attacks on John Kerry.
So, if you want a president holding office who’s in favor of discrediting his opponent’s wife, and literally asking for similar attacks on his own, elect a Republican president. They both make my stomach queasy. It’s enough to make one need to puke. Of course (read “coarse”) Trump has, through the years, ever treated women with zero respect, and filthy innuendo. What a bunch. twerps and bums.
Apple should hand over information to the FBI
It seems Apple Computer, and the legions of the J. Edgar Hoover building, are delaying their confrontation in federal court over unlocking the phone of the San Bernardino California terrorist attackers. The FBI (Federal Bureau of missed Information), is claiming someone has offered to show them how the information might be retrieved. (My guess is that Apple caved in, and the FBI is giving them some cover to help pull the wool over eyes of their clients.) Whatever.
If this plan doesn’t work, the company’s president should be clapped in the cooler ’til he caves. This is war, and American lives are at stake. No filthy rich corporate leader, whose wealth is derived completely via the paying public, should in any way be allowed to act other than in the interest of public safety.
Like Bernie, I believe these giant companies have too much money, too much influence, power, and pull (suction). On this one, I’m firmly with the FBI, despite their many FUBAR’s and SNAFU’s
The President in Cuba
President Obama was warmly greeted, doing good and necessary work to repair a long untreated relationship. You’ll likely recall the remarks of Marine Corps General Smediey Butler in a piece I wrote some weeks ago, regarding our treatment of Cubans, other Central and South American states, for most of a couple hundred years. About time we stopped letting a herd of relocated Cubans in Florida make our foreign policy.
The President said he’d, “Come to Cuba to bury last remnants of the cold war in the Americas.” Do it!
“Cuba Libre”
