I speak about current banking disasters, the welfare state for the wealthy, right-wing fondness for authoritarians, the right-wing attack on learning about racial and LGBTQ issues, and recent Labor activities at Temple, Penn Medicine, and Rutgers.
Hello, hello, hello, John Mason. How is everybody? Hope you're all well. Well, we've been keeping track of the uh bank failures going on. You know, the bank fit bank failures that our glorious free enterprise system has done nothing to correct correct and lot the cost, such as with the Silicon Valley Bank and the signature bank, and the and the Federal Reserve has to go in there and straighten it all out. How's that Laissez-Faire doing for you, huh? I'm thinking back now on the other uh recent uh financial disasters, like in 2008 the the mortgage uh the mortgage disaster and how and how the mortgage companies had to go to the Federal Reserve for trillions of dollars in aid and support. And it all benefited the uh the corporation executives, the CEOs, and nothing, nothing for the people who lost their homes uh due to the due to the mortgage mortgage crisis. They lost their homes and they got nothing for it. I think it would have been better if the uh Federal Reserve uh picked up their their mortgage payments. That's how economic recovery, economic development, just as political development and social development occurs from the bottom up. People having the money in their pockets to uh spend on what they need. And I'm also thinking about the 500 or 600 billion dollars of Federal Reserve sent to the savings and loan corporations early in the 1990s. Oh, that was a success, wasn't it, for the laissez faire idea. Not so and and you know how people when I was I've been on welfare and and unemployment and food stamps, and I had to prove that I was employed at some point in my life, and they had to ask me how much money I have in the my checking accounts now at the time. So I was under some scrutiny. However, the what do these guys uh get? The corporate CEOs who go to the Federal Reserve to bail them out, they get golden parachutes when they're kicked out for their incompetence, and and they award themselves nice bonuses from the same Federal Reserve money, and also they get the money to buy back uh their own stock so that the current stock's still available, the value rises. That's uh that's what we call free enterprise in this country. Socialism for the social register, welfare for the wealthy, and laissez faire for all you suckers and losers, as Donald Trump would say. I'm still thinking now about Rick Santelli from CNBC back in 2008. Instead of serious analysis of the stock market, he called working people who were losing their homes suckers and losers. Like he had this stereotyped idea of working people and didn't know them from Adam. And thus the Tea Party movement is was born full of uh made up of people who who were told that the real enemy was were were people just like them but of a different color, of a different race, and not the corporate moguls that were ripping them off. And and now we have the now we talk about uh the sing the long slog down to authoritarianism, which is endemic in the current Republican Party. Like we're seeing now how Republicans, DeSantis and Taylor Green and Tucker Carlson, are chairleading for Vladimir Putin and his unwarranted invasion of Ukraine. They're making up excuses like it's not our war, it's not our border, let's concentrate on the border with Mexico. But see, the pe the people on the border with Mexico border in Mexico are are dark-skinned people. And we can't we have and dark skin all dark-skinned people are our enemies. So so is the Republican logic. But and they're more than willing to let Putin off the hook. And the same uh propaganda that uh Putin espouses about his war on Ukraine gets picked up by Tucker Carlson as his talking point for his bullshit show. And conservatives and Republicans have long loved the idea of authoritarians. They love authoritarian types. I heard some people during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan talk about how the Soviet army just rammed into Afghanistan without any protesters, without anyone saying anything. Like they admire it. And also admiring how it just they just rammed, how the Soviet army just rammed into uh Czechoslovakia in 68, 1968, without any fuss or trouble. Those are the people that the Republicans and conservatives anymore admire. And that's where they're leading us if we allow them, and we must not. We and we must and with all the discussions going on about the economy in our society, in stuff going on in the news, we must have more focus on economic issues at the most basic level. I mean the working class level, the shop floor class level, at the clock in, do your job, clock out, and retire at a certain age level. I mean those are issues that need attention. I'm particularly pleased with recent developments in the labor front here in Philadelphia, such as the recent approval of the contract between Temple University and their graduate student employees. Tugza, the Graduate Student Workers Union, voted overwhelmingly to improve a contract with them that guaranteed them more acceptable livable wages, health insurance, and coverage for their tuition. And there's also organizing work at the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia and among the interns and residents at Penn Medicine. And there's also rumblings of organizing among the faculty in Rut Rutgers. Let's cheer them on. Let's stop now for advertisements. My novel Soldier of the Cross is available on Amazon.com. 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Michelle is wonderful in helping you develop your professional career or a small business. Let you know what you're doing right, where you need work, they help you network with other up and coming entrepreneurs and professionals. Look her up please. Grow with snow.com Okay now another rant of mine. The ongoing Republican war on learning is all covered up by by terrorized terrorizing by by such maniacal uninformed groups, one group calling themselves Moms for Liberty, some liberty, going in barging into school boards and libraries, terrorizing them about transgender kids. The presence of transgender kids and state legislatures using transgender kids as scapegoats to rile up their base. Denying the existence of transgenderism, denying there is such a thing as transgenderism, and also terrorizing books related to LGBTQ issues for kids. You know the classics like Heather has two mommies and all that. They're trying they're accusing the school boards of allowing allowing these books to groom children. For what? If a kid's gonna be gay, they're gonna be gay. No matter what the parents say or think or rant or rave about. And it's good for the kids to know that there are people just like LGBTQ kids who are just like them, who who and are great famous people who have accomplished great things, or also either lesbian or gay or bi or trans or what have you. These kids need positive role models, and they need to know that they and others like them aren't demons, aren't monsters, aren't freaks. They're actually good patriotic American citizens who do their jobs, take their trash out, pay their taxes, pay their bills, walk their dogs, take their laundry out, and sometimes serve their country. Kids need those positive role models to boost their self-esteem. As unfortunate that the parents don't know this. They don't realize it. Do they really think they're protecting the kids from being gay or what have you? Or are they using the kids to as their appendages? It's happened to me as a kid. Do they think that their their kids are appendages of them? Uh they're not gay, so their kids aren't gay. Let's support uh kids to find out who they really are and celebrate that. And also the whine that uh conservatives and republicans and such neo-Nazi maniacs have about the terrible, awful, no good thing, critical race theory. Which do I have to say it for the millionth? Do I have to say it for the millionth time? Is is a is a doc is an idea taught in law schools, not pre-K or kindergarten or first grade law schools. And it discusses how racism is not a glitch or a tick or an unfortunate incident in American society, that it is deeply embedded in every institution in our country, whether it be the military or academia or the business community or politics or religion, what have you. What they're tr what what these parents are preventing, quote unquote, these kids from are learning about the real history of this country. That racism is and always was and always has been one of the shames and disgraces of this country that calls itself the land of the free. Kids have to learn that because it's the reality of their the history of this country. There's non-patriotus say there was race there's been racism in this country and still is like a mature adult man person, a mature adult nation recognizes their mistakes, recognizes what's wrong with them, and goes about everything they can to correct what's wrong. And that is a positive thing to show particularly non-white kids, gives them role models of who fought against slavery, such titans as Soldier in her truth, Harriet Tubman, Fried Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, Denmark Visi, all the greats of African American history and Hispanic history and Asian American history. Kids need to know that. So they can understand the differences and differences to celebrate, things to honor, not be scared of Let's not stop these haters and ignoramuses from us learning. I conclude with my usual adjuration. Educate yourselves on the issues as they really are, on the economy, on race, on ethnicity, on what's going on in the country, on the world. Educate come bring yourselves together and educate yourselves and act on what you've learned. Get out there on election day and vote. Like I myself, as a committee person in my ward, and active in urging people to get out there and vote. Voting is how you make change. Voting is what elected officials pay attention to. Social change, like economic change, comes from the ground up, not from the top down. So educate yourselves how how the world really is, and get out there and vote. That's my rant for the day. And trust me, more succumb. Please continue to enjoy your weekend. Thank you. Bye.
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