Political Psychic

Daily Rants about Politics

I finally saw Micheal Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story documentary on Pay-Per-View last night – especially shocked by dead peasants insurance policies.

Link:  http://deadpeasantinsurance.com/

I can’t find the words to describe how disgusted and shocked I was to learn about such a disgusting scam. My God. There is a special place in hell for the corporations who practice this.

I’m still trying to process it all. Such an incredible flick.

Makes you wonder if Massey Energy had dead peasant life insurance policies. It would certainly explain why they cared so little for safety and human life.

See if your employer has such a policy. Your boss would much rather have you die, soon, so they can collect on the secret insurance policy they out on you.

Sounds crazy – but it’s all true.

Most states by now have “At-Will” employment laws, versus “Right to Work” laws.  “At will” laws prevent you from suing your employer for what might be considered an unlawful termination (discrimination, whistleblower, etc).  In the old days, “Right to Work” laws meant you could not be fired by your employer on a whim.  Proof of incompetence along with documented warnings is usually required to show your termination was justified.   You were usually given a week or two notice (like a pink slip in your paycheck envelope).  But now, most employers (depending on the laws in your state), your boss can get rid of At Will, without any reason or warning.

But under Reagan and both Bushes, because companies were generously rewarded with huge tax breaks if they sent jobs outside the U.S., At Will employment rules became the new tool to help destroy unions and fair labor standards.

One of the things the Obama administration needs to push forward is an agenda that requires or rewards states that recognize “Right to Work” rules or laws.

It basically gives an employer the right to fire anyone he wants for no legal reason, without being liable for any potential lawsuit.  For example, if someone is discovered to be gay or Muslim, or refuses the unwanted advances of a boss who is sexually aggressive, that employee can be fired without any explanation.  An employer is given unlimited rights to fire someone, regardless of the quality of job performance or contractual obligations.   The only thing that employer is liable for is outstanding unpaid wages.  And for some reason, this is still not enough for many employers.

The moment we let the Republicans control the arguments, we let them place doubts in our heads about who we are as a party.

We let them doubt ourselves on abortion, single parenthood, genderhood, homosexuality, infidility, spending, taxes, you name it, they control the argument.

Hell, I’m surprised we haven’t started scratching our heads on evolution and global warming.

The media might be on the Republicans’ side of the argument – but that doesn’t make them right about ANYTHING.

Yelling louder doesn’t make you correct.  You can have your own opinions but you can’t have your own facts.

Clinton really dropped the ball when he kept denying his affair with Monica Lewinsky.  If he had only said “so?” or “it’s private, my family and I are dealing with this”.  In other words, if we had simply separated the job from the private life, we would’ve all been better off.

It’s not hard for them to control the argument, even when they are wrong.  They own and control 90% of all domestic media – print, radio, television, etc.  If you want to find out anything about what’s going on, factually, you have to go to the liberals for information

If you want to be pounded to a numb, mindless, non-thinking neocon, well you simply turn on any “news” channel in any part of this country, and you’ll hear what THEY want you to hear.

Politically, they are masters.

But they are not academics or experts in any field, except deception.

It sounds crazy to say it, but it’s true.

If you don’t fight off the nonsense, you end up finally backing down and forcing yourself to somehow agree with them.

I have been fighting this for the past decade – and I keep wondering when everyone else will, too.

The rightwing conveniently creates arguments that favor their point of view.  In their mind, if they didn’t see it happen, it never existed.  With that kind of thinking, you end up with flat-earthers who refuse to believe anytyhing other than what the simpleton idiot on TV said, then it must not be true of an “expert” challenged it.

It’s really easy to dumb someone down if you yell at them long enough.

They’ve proven this point over and over again.

What we need is to finally wake up and take back our dignity.

Refuse to be bullied – and start sticking up for ourselves.

If you don’t stick up for what’s right (which in this case, is the left!), then you won’t have anyone left to stick up for you.

Just heard this on Thom Hartmann this morning and he made an excellent point – Copied from and credit to Josh Ezekiel at the website The Californian.

Here ya go…

Last week’s Reagan-Bush-Bush Supreme Court ruling completely eliminates any restrictions on corporate spending on federal election campaigns.

This has been the historical tendency of these justices, and the philosophy of the presidents who appointed them. So corporations will be able to contribute millions or billions to federal campaigns or political parties.

The High Court will most likely “legislate from the bench” that these soulless legal constructions have First Amendment rights that cannot be abridged by federal statutes. I wonder if Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams would have signed off on “… all men and for-profit corporations are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” My guess is no. Corporations have human rights only because we have chosen to allow it.

Corporations are not the same as flesh and blood people, except in the eyes of the law. They are much more like vampires. They exist based on charters, which in the case of for-profit corporations require that all of their actions must preserve investors’ capital. Note that they are not required to act morally, with any civic-minded considerations, charity, or patriotism. If a corporate product will kill many of consumers but generate an enormous profit, what should we expect the corporation’s directors to do? (Think tobacco.) Guess whether I am describing a corporation or a vampire:

• It has no fear of natural death, and can exist for centuries.
• Because of its long existence it can acquire far more wealth than most real humans, and will be tempted to corrupt governments to further its own ends.
• It cannot exist unless it derives its strength from real human beings.
• It has no children who need good schools.
• It does not need to drink clean water, eat wholesome food or breathe unpolluted air.
• It can only be killed by great effort and daring, in an unequal contest that humans are likely to lose.
• It has the power to confuse people into acting in self-destructive manners.

At this point you may be having trouble deciding which one I described. Thank goodness only one of them is real! (I know some of you believe in vampires, but if vampires were real, garlic would be illegal.) When the Supreme Court gives corporations carte blanche to spend their way into control of all our elections, start thinking of how we can change our laws to drive a stake through corporate personhood.

(Joshua Ezekiel lives in Salinas, California)

Two hours ago, five conservative Supreme Court Justices ruled that corporations have the same rights as people.

This is probably the worst thing to have happen to our sacred rights as citizens since George W. Bush peed all over the constitution with his Patriot Act crap and his removal of the Magna Carta from our system of law.

Actually, this is worse.

Multinational Corporations are now the same as people.   They can now sue you the same way a person can.  They can now run for office.  They can now be a voice in our democracy.   Corporations that aren’t even based in this country now have the same rights as you and I.   Actually, they have more.  They live forever – humans don’t.  We go to jail if we break the law.  They don’t – Corporations have tons of immunity.

Corporations don’t live in houses, make babies, have kids to raise or worry about how they are going to feed themselves or their kids when money is low.    In fact, they are usually the reason why we end up having to worry about things like paychecks and maintaining our standard of living.

Michael Moore tried to warn us with his movie about our love affair with Wall Street.  But most Americans still don’t get it.  And understandably, they probably won’t for a very long time.

I know – because I used to have my own kind of love affair with the notion of working and succeeding within a corporate structure.  Right out of high school, I went to a trade school to become a legal/executive secretary.  Since 1984, I worked as a temp for some of the biggest and baddest corporations out there – I dreamed of making it big, taking home the same kind of gigantic paychecks they did.  But as the years went by, I saw what they really were all about.   I finally learned that while there are humans who work there, the people who run them are not.  They are entities that are immune from laws that they break.  Okay, sometimes they get “caught” breaking the law, and have to pay us humans for damages.  But please know that corporations fight very hard to keep from getting caught from breaking the laws.  Lawyers are like vitamins – they keep corporate criminals healthy and free – out of jails and out of the news (especially since they own them, too).

I just don’t know what else to say.

But I’ll bet you’re wondering why no one is saying this on the news.  News organizations are owned by giant multinational corporations which care only about public relations and advertising, which protects their profits, because it keeps the general public in the dark about who they really are.

Imagine yourself as a huge multinational corporation.  Let’s say you’re in the business of selling health insurance or pharmaceutical drugs.  Now let’s imagine your corporation has having recently been discovered as making huge donations to a number of elected officials, lawmakers, judges (yes, you can do this, too), and anyone else you’d need to keep you out of jail for all the lies you told – I mean, all the unsafe products you’ve put out on the market.

Imagine how worried you’d be as a giant drug company who has been selling drugs that don’t work at all – but you’ve managed to fool people into buying them.  In a world where the laws protected consumers, you would be worried about consumer groups coming after you.  You’d be worried about news stories exposing your harmful products.  You’d be worried about negative feedback by consumers and complaints by families of loved ones who’ve died from your faulty products.

Well, under this new law, and the previous administration’s generous heap of protection on corporations (that’s why Bush installed the last two judges – they are VERY corporate-friendly), you’d have every right to retaliate against – i.e. sue anyone – who spoke out against your product (even if it was true), you can hire judges (the technical process is called an arbitration – but corporations call it judges-for-hire), and you can sue for lost profits and can even prevent news organizations from saying one damned thing about it.

Because, afterall, corporations are just like you and me.