RedSpawn

The fallacy is corporations don't necessarily serve the best interest of the communities in which they operate. That's incidental to their primary motive. Corporations don't have a fiduciary duty to create a sustainable society. Their motive is strictly profit-driven. Historically, public companies have exclusively served the interests of their board of directors and shareholders to the detriment of all other affected parties. A corporation looks for ways to eliminate human labor as a costly economic input for its finished product. Its cold, clinical view of manufacturing asserts that automation of human labor is an efficient means to justify the ends of controlling cost and thereby increasing profit. Society and its safety net will deal with "the disposable container" the machine replaces. Machines don't need labor rights, smoke breaks, health care benefits, sick days or salary increases. The fact that said automation may create an unsustainable society, destabilize or destroy a local economy, and potentially cannibalize the corporation's existing customer base are incidental concerns to the short-term goal of profit maximization. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+brain+center+whipple+youtube&&view=detail&mid=B6E63817797920413535B6E63817797920413535&FORM=VRDGAR It's not a good idea to expect a legal fiction (corporation) to understand and appreciate the human condition or demonstrate compassion for the common man. Profit is strictly mathematical, but should include adjustments for ethical and moral considerations to temper the vice of greed from wrecking havoc in the community and broader economy.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/06/26/disability-lawyer-in-center-600m-fraud-case-reportedly-says-fled-country.html Agreed. This is social security disability which is not medical health care per se; however, if one lawyer can pimp the system for a whopping $600 million, one wonders what savings abound in the health care industry with even bigger players and a cottage industry of ambulance chasing lawyers.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/218555-are-we-sovereign Nice article about energy systems and climate change....what say you BBO Forum?

http://bizshifts-trends.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/feudal-th9023WI8M.jpg BBO Forum, what say you about the power of US Corporations over politics? Are we experiencing neofeudalism?

Agreed. We must demand our politicians be pensive, intellectually curious statesmen instead of obstinate, demonizing party zealots. The other side is NOT DUMB or EVIL. That is an ad hominem attack. http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/995/436/e5c.jpg https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not-dumb-2670c1294063 This goes back to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. When it comes to communication, "Seek 1st to understand, then to be understood!"

The problem is there are too many fallacies with the gun control argument: The fallacy of gun control is that by controlling legal guns, you stop illegal activity. Filtering new people from owning guns will do very little to control the 270 million guns already circulating in the populace. https://www.quora.com/What-are-common-logical-fallacies-in-gun-control-arguments

True, and the left and right wing must work together to help the bird overcome gravitational forces and take flight. Our political parties are becoming so divisive and absolutist that political inertia is becoming the norm rather than the exception. Can't they agree to disagree but still create legislation that compromises and "satisfices" instead of passing no legislation at all?

And here's Trumpcare facts... https://trumpcare.com Interesting....

https://obamacarefacts.com/costof-obamacare/ Never did look up this web site. It answers a lot of questions about Obamacare. Says the average plan after subsidies is $82 a month for all plans but that sounds very low. Hmmm.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jun/24/al-jazeera-the-qatar-broadcaster-at-centre-of-diplomatic-crisis There is too much emphasis on destroying freedom of the press in Qatar. Governments who can't control the propaganda narrative through a complicit and compromised fourth estate will ask for the destruction of said media. Why? Why? Tell them that its human nature....

Flag on the play....logical fallacy afoot...False analogy...though I know where your heart is. http://lovinglogicalfallacies.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/9/8/25985536/5060311_orig.jpg

My comrade.....well said! And you even threw in the monetary hegemony angle into the equation. We can spend $600-$800 billion ANNUALLY on deathcare but to preserve the health of we the people, domestically, we are all of a sudden broke and wanting in political will. War always results in 4 D's: Death Disease & Disability Destruction Debt Is war good for the economy? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-s-lofgren/is-war-good-for-the-econo_1_b_3185569.html We have money for unnecessary extended war campaigns but can't feed the poor or provide a tenable, sustainable form of universal health care....amazing priorities.

I want to resurrect this topic in light of the Trumpcare health care plan. Is affordable and quality healthcare a right for American citizens or should it be a choice? Should the government be authorized to levy tax penalties against its citizens for failure to enroll in any health care plan? Do American citizens have the right to self-insure for medical services?

Very well said. Currently we spend $600 billion annually on military expenditures. Before we increase the military budget by $50 billion, Uncle Sam must require the Department of Defense (DoD) to do two things: 1) Fix that damn year-end $6.0 trillion+ accounting entry problem it has had for the last 17 years so we can get some reliable financial statements to justify larger budget appropriations. Uncle Sam and the public at large deserves some reliable financial statements from the DoD that contain "clean" audit opinions from the DoD Inspector General. It is 2017, not 2005. The only thing standing in DoD's way is DoD and its recalcitrance. Transparency hasn't been ingrained in its management culture yet. 2) Once the accounting problem is fixed, the DoD must identify cost savings opportunities. That is what normal managers do when they finally have financial statements they can rely on. The DoD wants an 8.3% increase ($50 billion) over its current budget, no problem! Come up with at least $5 billion in cost savings opportunities. . .that is 1% of its current budget and 10% of what is currently asking for as an increase. This is called giving to get. Our military deserves to come to the table with some pork reduction opportunities because no one believes the entire $600 billion is being spent responsibly. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asking the same thing in 2001: https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=2423 http://archive.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=1890

With all due respect, the oil and gas industry has had its fun in the sun. America has to be intellectually honest about its American imperialism predicated on oil. Oil, aka black gold, has had a virtual monopoly on the energy markets because it is government sponsored and government subsidized. The reason I say subjugate is if the government has willfully created barriers to entry for competitors in the energy market so the oil & gas industry can prosper, then it has played favorites. It is not allowing capitalism, technological innovations, and fair competition to determine the leaders and laggards and the winners and losers. Uncle Sam knows who he wants to win and why; therefore, he needs to subjugate oil and gas and stop the monopolistic or oligopolistic favoritism he showed oil & gas over the last century.

We have to convince the government to subjugate the oil and gas industry for the promise and benefits of solar energy. That is going to be a tough feat since the government's revenue stream, foreign policy, environmental regulation, and most importantly, its monetary hegemony are inextricably linked to oil & gas. The government will have to find another revenue source if it can't tax solar energy the same way it does gallons of gas. It gets even more complicated when you factor the petrodollar and monetary hegemony into the picture! I am all for solar energy but the oil & gas industry is a recalcitrant behemoth.

I love this quote from Through the Looking Glass, Ch. VI. It illustrates the importance of not allowing politicians to control the lexicon. When they control the language, they can misrepresent at will and not be held accountable since they control the filter through which words are defined and interpreted. Again, politicians are concerned about three things: Money, Power, and Sex (and not necessarily in that order). We can not give them power over our language. Doing so allows them to be masters by controlling the definition of words and directly controlling the filters through which we perceive the world. When a Former President answers, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is. ... If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement", we have entered Humpty-Dumpty land!

Well, let's review what the snake oil salesman has said, https://trumpcare.org His major promise was that he wanted to repeal and replace Obamacare which he labeled a disaster. Exactly what he was going to replace it with has always been open to debate and much speculation. If we look at his 7 point healthcare platform on his website, it seems that he is trying to accomplish what his platform says. Now, if it becomes law, will his health plan be better than Obamacare? That's a subjective question with relative terms. I don't know the answer. But you are correct.... https://www.vox.com/2017/3/13/14914812/trump-ahca-medicaid-cuts President Trump will break his promise not to cut Medicaid... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/04/this-is-not-the-health-care-bill-that-donald-trump-promised/?utm_term=.9aa8f26cdfd7 http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/15/politics/trump-obamacare/index.html And his plan may not insure or cover more people, but may cover less. . . https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/ahca-senate-bill-preexisting-conditions/531375/ And there are other concerns about the Senate bill such as potentially inadequate healthcare plans for people with preexisting conditions. Sometimes carnival acts have no plans or have no realistic plans because they don't quite understand the political calculus of universal healthcare coverage. This is Trump's dilemma. He promised way too much with conveniently vague, noncommittal language which gave the fourth estate wiggle room to create the narrative. President Trump didn't understand how complicated and complex the needs of the various stakeholders are from the patients, to the career politicians, to the insurance providers, to the medical services providers, to the prescription drug companies, and to the various local and state governments and their constituents. He didn't lie per se; he misspoke because he was woefully ignorant of the existence of all of these COMPETING INTERESTS. He underestimated the sheer number and sophistication of the players involved and how difficult the playing surface was. A typical rookie mistake! 1st rule of negotiation--Know thy opponent(s). Trump said nobody knew health care would be so complicated when his health care initiative failed in the House. That is projection talk....TRUMP didn't know health care would be so complicated. Trump also didn't know that POLITICS could be so complicated. He didn't know his opponents as well as he thought. He didn't do his political homework and got an unpleasant surprise when he took his first political exam and failed. That's a political reality he must learn from.

True. Very good observation. This indeed makes Russia a dangerous force. How do we know that our own government will remain objective and apolitical and not abuse this system vulnerability to tip the election scales in a politically advantageous way? We assume that legislatures will remain rational, honest, and reasonable and not gerrymander districts to control election outcomes, but even they give in to temptation and political expediency to secure their power. They violate the public's trust to achieve their own ends.

We have to be careful about our lexicon. True, a lie can be construed as a false statement made "intentionally". Therefore, if the speaker unknowingly made a false representation about a fact, you could technically say he didn't lie, but he misspoke. However, we are dealing with unctuous politicians here. The body politic must refrain from using vocabulary that is contingent on a politician's intent; he may, in fact, be self-serving and undeserving of having his words taken at face value with no further scrutiny. Also, we should not be in the business of reading a politician's mind because 9 times out of 10, it remains intently focused on 3 things: Money, Power, and Sex (and not necessarily in that order).

Deleted. I missed that South had 2 doubletons.

This statement, on its face, warrants more questions: What would Trump need with private data such as driver's license numbers and the last 4 digits of people's social security number to win an election? This could be valuable cross reference information to whomever hacked the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for all federal employees' data in late 2015. It will help build a more complete profile of government personnel and contractors. Interesting tidbit, fingerprint scans were also stolen from OPM. http://www.nbcnews.c...victims-n437126 So now the Trump campaign is allegedly supposed to have the entire financial backing of the Russian government to alter voter information in (fill in blank) number of states to win an Presidential election? Who are the organizations, domestic and foreign, both private and public, that have the capabilities and manpower to conduct this hack? Who stands to benefit from the hacking? Can this information along with other stolen information be used for political blackmail? Please note that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first started out by saying that it needed to control the airports to make America safe from terrorists. And now DHS says it needs to designate the information and communications technology at the ballot box as critical infrastructure to make us safe from allegedly unknown hackers. So who's watching DHS to ensure it doesn't abuse its federal oversight of the IT infrastructure behind the ballot box? If DHS has been caught invading state voting systems in 2016 without express permission (allegedly), can we honestly remove them from the list of suspects?

Congratulations!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/12/us-taxpayers-subsidising-worlds-biggest-fossil-fuel-companies If US taxpayers are subsidizing the world's biggest fossil fuels companies, we are already paying an "indirect" tax on the price of oil that is refined to make the gasoline we buy at the pump. I am sure barmar would agree that an increased add-on gasoline tax per gallon and "tax credits" for oil industries are the same tax in a different form. Uncle Sam is a slick cat.

http://ftmdaily.com/preparing-for-the-collapse-of-the-petrodollar-system/ This is an excellent long-length explanation of monetary hegemony and the rise and potential fall of the US Petrodollar system. Let me know what you think. By the way, I am not advocating for the fall of the Petrodollar system, but its explanation of how and why the system was set up has been far more intriguing than what the mainstream news media has presented. It explains our involvement in the Middle East from the financial angle (which is part of the narrative that is unspoken ;))