Tag: politics

Listen to the Victims of Epstein’s Abuse

On By southwerkIn corruption

(The picture is in the public domain and does seem to have some satirical impact at this time!)

The victims of Jeffrey Epstein should have their time now.

Jeffrey Epstein had powerful friends who protected him again and again. Only after many years was he tried and sentenced to prison.

And now the question remains, should we publicize the names of those who received favors from him, namely young women and rides on his plane.

Historically I must tell you the names in these types of scandals never seem to get disclosed. I have read of cases of famous womens’ diaries, bordello madams customer lists and many other such scandals. The names never make it out.

Many years ago, one of my instructors was an old law officer in the State of Oklahoma. He told me lots of stories. Before election days, they’d raid the brothels to appease the Baptist voters. He laughed about finding all kinds of city and state officials in those raids — but their names didn’t get disclosed either.

But time has passed and perhaps things are changing. We as a nation have been talking about victim’s rights for quite some time with very variable results. (I have been more than a little disappointed.)

It is only just and honorable that we pay attention to the women abused in this case. The fact that powerful men and women participated in their abuse makes their memories, their testimony, all the more important.

And it is not happening. We get the occasional minor story but when are we going to get a major network interviewing fifteen survivors in a group and putting those interviews on television. Maybe I’m an amateur when it comes to broadcasting but isn’t that what television news was designed to do?

Where’s the print media? Are those who victimized these women so powerful that fear and cowardice grips the entertainment industry, the news networks and the great mass of journalists?

I have to wonder.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/epstein-victims-growing-political-threat-040042411.html

(Quoted directly from the article linked to above.)The women whom Jeffrey Epstein abused demand to be heard.

And their voices — long suppressed, but now emerging powerfully and with courage — could further fuel the maelstrom around President Donald Trump and aides who dig the scandal deeper each time they try to end it.

These are women who’ve been let down for years, at multiple levels, by a government that was supposed to keep them safe. Their families are victims, too, since abuse sows trauma through generations. (End quote.)

The main fact before us is simple, very simple. We may not have the lists of those who participated in the abuse but we can always just ask the women abused.

Why don’t we do it?

James Alan Pilant

Who Exactly is a “Patriot Donor?”

On By southwerkIn corruption

Picture above By David Maiolo – Own work, CC BY-SA (Borrowed from my friends at Wikipedia with profound thanks!)

We are engulfed in a tsunami of White House lies and misinformation. Not only that but the White House itself, an American institution is being remade apparently in imitation of the President’s resort in Florida. Language is important. Let us discuss where and how the term, patriot donor, appears.

Take a look at this news article from the online magazine, Salon.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-sending-dark-signal-white-103011111.html

(Quoted from the article linked to above.)That was the premise of a White House announcement last week claiming that the president “and other patriot donors” would be financing the full, approximately $200 million cost of a gaudy, gold-tinged pseudo-classical addition to his current residence in Washington, DC. With renderings that look an awful lot like a wing at Mar-a-Lago, the so-called White House Ballroom would be a 90,000-square-foot party venue located where the “small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits,” suggesting that historical preservation is not top of mind. (End quote.)

Patriot donor? Just what is patriotic about giving the President money so he can create a Mar-A-Lagos on the Potomac in place or in addition to the current White House? It seems more like an opportunity to curry favor or gain favorable access to the current administration to me. Am I too cynical or is any level of cynicism up to the rapacious greed of our current “leadership?”

Patriotism in my definition does not involve coughing up enormous sums of money for the President’s pet project, the desecration of the American White House.

Patriotism is doing your duty as am American citizen, something being redefined here in a crude and dollar tinged way.

It is unethical to claim that patriotism motivates a donation to the current administration. It is unethical to use the White House in many ways, the peoples’ house, as an excuse once again to flatter and ingratiate money givers into a system of influence peddling.

And finally, it is wrong to cheapen the word, patriotism, which is so important when discussing the real virtues of America, shared sacrifice, moral values and a history of progress.

James Alan Pilant

Lies and Many More Lies

On By southwerkIn corruption

Business ethics are based on a bedrock of facts and reason, as true as we can make it perception of reality. But the leader of the current regime issues a constant stream of lies and misinformation and this is a constant danger to a common understanding of what is factual and what is not.

Let’s start with this story from The Daily Beast.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fbi-reveals-trump-crime-wave-164848654.html

(Quoted directly from the article linked to above) New FBI data contradicts President Donald Trump’s often-repeated claim that crime is surging in the U.S. and Democrats are to blame. Violent crime went down 4.5 percent in 2024, while property crime dropped 8.1 percent, according to the freshly released report. The trend was apparent across the board—every single one of the FBI’s reporting violent crime categories showed a significant drop: murder (-14.9 percent), rape (-5.2 percent), robbery (-8.9 percent), and aggravated assault (-3 percent). (End of quote.)

It is a fact that crime has been dropping in the United States for last forty years from its statistical high in the 1960’s. That fact and the data behind it does not exist in the President’s mind or the Right Wing media machine. Cities and blue states are portrayed as sinkholes of moral depravity while red states are bastions of tranquility. And factually?? I live in Oklahoma which is ranked 21st in intentional murder while New York is ranked 35th. It is more dangerous at night on the streets of Oklahoma than it is in New York.

But the lies benefit the President and his twisted view of the United States as battered hell hole he has come to save.

How about this story from The Maddow Blog?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maddow-blog-u-economy-cools-150520471.html

(Quoted directly from the article linked to above)The question I haven’t heard him answer is why, exactly, he came to this conclusion. This went largely unasked because the answer was so obvious: Trump had some baseless assumptions about what the numbers should’ve been, based on what he perceives as the greatness of his economic agenda. And since job growth continues to fall far short, common sense (or at least a Trumpified version of common sense) led him to conclude that officials in his own Labor Department must be conspiring against him. Indeed, over the weekend, as part of the larger gaslighting campaign, the president insisted online that he’s responsible for “creating the greatest economy, where prices and Inflation have come way down,” despite the economy being demonstrably and quantifiably worse than when he took office, and neither prices nor inflation have “come way down.” (End of Quote.)

The economy is doing badly based on objective information, that is, the truth. However, the President believes and states the contrary based purely on how he feels the numbers should be and his historical reliance on his narrative of himself as a genius afflicted by constant conspiracies.

Now can anyone, anywhere explain to me how he is going to make intelligent and effective decisions on the American economy when he simply does not have a grasp of economic information? And what’s more he just makes stuff up. In Business, making up your own “facts” is not a formula for success. And it never will be.

How about this from Huffpost:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/cnn-data-chief-shuts-down-071445353.html

(Quoted from article.) Trump — in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” host Joe Kernen — urged viewers to watch “Harry Emden” on CNN, declaring that the data analyst “went crazy over how well” he was doing.

The president claimed his approval rating was at 71% and, among Republicans, bragged that the figure is around 94 to 95%.

It’s unclear where Trump was getting such figures, which seemingly don’t mirror reality and were swiftly fact-checked by Kernen on CNBC.

Enten quickly dismissed the president’s remarks on his numbers.

“You know, I give him a fair shake. I don’t give him a positive spin,” Enten told CNN’s John Berman. (End of quote.)

Here are the real numbers of approval and disapproval, in case you want to compare.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-approval-rating-right-now-heres-what-latest-presidential-poll-numbers-show/ar-AA1K6Ogm?ocid=BingNewsSerp

(direct quote) RealClear Polling which encompasses the average of different 14 different pollsters, including all those mentioned above, shows Trump’s overall favorability today at 45.9% that approve and 51.4% that disapprove. These numbers are nearing his lowest rating this term, when it reached a 52.4% disapproval rating and 45.1% favorable approval rating in late April. (End of quote.)

How does someone get such numbers where are publicized widely and constantly so wrong. I think his mind filters out facts and knowledge so that thoughts and opinions can give him good feelings about his performance and his image. One of the worst things about this is that he might learn and improve if he had to deal with reality but since he is unable to cope with facts, he is sentenced to his life of mediocrity.

Let me close this brief look into the President’s lies with a comment from Maggie Haberman possibly the greatest expert on our current “leader.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maggie-haberman-flags-1-way-071911535.html

(Quoted from the article above.) New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman argued Tuesday that Donald Trump has somehow “convinced himself,” without evidence, that the July jobs report was manipulated for political reasons. (End of quote.)

This is truly terrible. It is not just that he lies. Is is that he believes the lies.

What kind of leader lies in such huge quantities of lies that it has been described as a fire hose of lies and then believes his own nonsense.

I’ll let you wrestle with the consequences although I may observe that facts and reality have an thoroughly dangerous habit of manifesting themselves over time.

James Alan Pilant

It is Here.

On By southwerkIn business ethics

We live in a profoundly unethical time under a profoundly unethical federal government which is in the process of becoming a totalitarian regime.

We are much of the way there and Rachel Maddow is telling us in the article listed below that a key part of the structure of that regime is already in place.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/rachel-maddow-warns-americans-1-134807335.html

(Directly quoted from the article above.) She then put it even more bluntly: “We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country.” While the MSNBC host went on to acknowledge that this might sound “melodramatic,” Maddow noted the U.S. now seems to have its own “secret police,” which is commonplace across dictatorships, in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under Trump. “A massive, anonymous, unbadged — literally masked — totally unaccountable internal police force that apparently has infinite funding but no identifiable leadership,” said Maddow. “And they act in ways designed to instill maximum fear and use maximum force.” (End of quote.)

I agree with her on this point. And we should all be concerned.

But why am I, a writer on business ethics, taking up this subject. Isn’t it just politics?

I wish it were but as the regime spirals into more and more open criminality, it is having a dramatic effect on the economy. When I say criminality, I am talking about thinly discussed bribes and charges for access and many other illegal acts.

It may be soon that speaking as I am may carry civil or criminal penalties and I have noticed that many moral people have gone silent as they see the political apparatus being constructed. No doubt they consider silence better than risk but honor is more important than life itself and it is vital to live as human beings standing tall than to crawl like a worm before a hideously deformed government.

Business ethics relies on reason, logic and evidence. These are all becoming scarce commodities under the trash talk of our current regime.

So, I write about our political downfall and current crisis.

It is only right that I do so.

James Alan Pilant

The President and the Nobel Prize

On By southwerkIn business ethics

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maddow-blog-white-house-lobbying-164641914.html

(From the Link above) Donald Trump’s desperate and yearslong desire for a Nobel prize is well documented. In fact, after his defeat in 2020, the Republican president released a weird, campaign-style video that suggested he’d already received a Nobel prize. But as pitiful as this has become, Trump isn’t lobbying by himself. Congressional Republicans have tried to please the president by nominating Trump for a Nobel prize, and foreign leaders eager to curry favor with the American leader have done the same thing.(End of quote.)

That the current leader of the United States is often delusional is readily apparent. He also craves praise and validation. His North Korean style cabinet meetings where his lickspittles thank him for his leadership and praise him to the skies are unprecedented in American history.

And he loves prizes and awards. His “amazing” string of club victories at his golf clubs are legendary. There is whole book about his golfing and what it says about him:

I have ordered a copy of the book for myself and it might be wise for you to do the same thing.

Returning to the subject of the Nobel Prize, I find it hard to believe that he would ever get one. If he did get one, how much value would any future Noble Prize have? Its value would be little more than a stuffed animal won at a carnival if that.

Newsweek Magazine commissioned a piece on Nobel Prize winners’ thoughts on the President’s chances. It’s a good piece of reporting. The hardest hitting and most acid drenched comments were those of William Nordhaus who won a Noble prize in 2018 in Economics. I have quoted him below.

https://www.newsweek.com/nobel-prize-winners-react-trump-economics-2107563

(Quoted directly from the link above.)“The way I understand Trump’s ‘successes’ is this: The United States has over the decades built up an enormous reservoir of soft and hard power as well as good will around most of the world—a vast amount of social capital,” said Nordhaus, who won the award in 2018 “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis.”

“Trump has drawn upon that social capital and is using it like a spendthrift teenager to achieve virtually nothing of value and to destroy many critical parts of the global institutional infrastructure,” Nordhaus said.(End of quote.)

There is some useful business ethics observations can be made here. Certainly competing for a prize for the best workplace, most effective innovation and many other things have led to positive good. But this is just another attempted reinforcement for a personality that craves attention and can never be filled. He is empty inside now and he will be empty inside no matter what awards and prizes he gets.

That’s just the way it is and his desperate need for it is more than a little unsettling.

James Alan Pilant

Thirty Dollars an Hour!

On By southwerkIn business ethics

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/la-passed-30-minimum-wage-085029075.html

Quoted directly from the link above.

Worker organizations, including hospitality union Unite Here Local 11, have been advocating for a citywide ordinance that would raise hospitality workers’ minimum wage to $30 by July 1, 2028, to accommodate rising costs of living as city hotels and airports serve an influx of tourists.

Though industry associations, including the American Hotel & Lodging Association, opposed it — claiming a higher wage could be disastrous for hotel owners and operators in the city — Mayor Karen Bass signed the Citywide Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance, sometimes called the Olympic Wage, into law May 27.

A minimum wage of thirty dollars an hour for many in the United States is unimaginable. And yet, we should be debating what is the right amount and should have been debating it for years. The current national level is seven dollars and twenty-five cents, a huge and incredible subsidy to businesses and corporations across the United States and an hourly insult to the American work force.

In normal times, this subject and ramifications would be the subject of business class discussions, written assignments and eventually published articles. But we don’t live in rational and intelligent times. We live in age of rampant stupidity, incompetence and corruption.

So, these kinds of academic discussion rarely take place. But we should try. The fact that expertise and science are derided and persecuted by the current proto-fascist administration does not mean that we who think and reason will obligingly disappear. I, for one, intend to put up a fight for wisdom, for intelligence and critical thinking. You can join me.

The issue of a thirty dollar minimum wage for hospitality workers is fascinating. The city of Los Angeles is hosting international events and the hotels and similar facilities make enormous profits. The city government thinks this largess should be shared with those doing the work. I find that argument very persuasive. The hotels argue that such a burden would be excessive and (I quote) cause an “economic tsunami”

I want you to understand that the “economic tsunami” line is a bit of attention getter and I might have wondered if they had a case. Except for already enacted twenty dollar minimum wage established for fast food workers. I regularly check on the right wing media portrayal of this act to amuse myself. If you believe their rhetoric, California is now a desert wasteland with ten dollar hamburgers and masses of unemployed wandering the streets in the form of hungry mobs.

Now, in California human beings are making decent salaries and can have good lives with recreation and housing even if they work in fast food and that is wonderful for everyone except the ideological warriors of the internet and the various conservative think tanks and astroturfed organizations they finance.

Anyone interested in trying to get rid of tips or get working Americans decent wages should wade through these hysterical screams of business agony. You’d think business owner were being set upon with hot irons inquisition style instead of facing a requirement to pay living wages. For the wealthy in the United States, the idea that they should pay people what they are worth is anathema.

Nevertheless, I say to business ethics and students that this would be a good class discussion topic and should be explored. There may come a time when we once again think and act intelligently as a nation. (It may take a bit.)

James Alan Pilant

The Lessons of this Administration

On By southwerkIn business ethics

The environment both natural and artificial shapes us.

I write about business ethics and I am deeply concerned about our current students in colleges and universities across the United States. Right now they are witnessing the highest and most powerful people in the United States government behaving in often illegal and continuously unethical ways. I am pointing specifically at the Cabinet members of the current administration although they are not the only ones.

They were selected on the basis of the most craven, servile loyalty and very often without any actual qualifications for their positions. And we see often on a daily basis, that to keep these jobs they must over and over again express their fealty to the current leadership. It is a degrading spectacle. Humans were meant to walk upright like free men and women not like some kind of whipped dog.

So, the current students here in this country witness a group of people getting ahead by sacrificing their honor, their self-respect, and abdicating their obedience and oath to the Constitution and laws of the United States. These people appear on television. They get good salaries and excellent benefits. There is an implication of after office service in think tanks and foundations at even more money. (However, the future of those from this openly corrupt administration is in some doubt.) Their lives are clear evidence that giving up your principles and abject loyalty to the most monstrous of individuals can be a successful strategy, if money and position are your only goals.

We do not live purely for money and position. I believe that is a truth. However, when I was teaching my students often told me that would seek a high paying position and do that job for twenty some years and then retire and live the life they wanted. I tried to explain to them that twenty years at a degrading and morally corrupt job would change them permanently, not to mention that a long life is not something that can be depended on. I am not sure they listened. After all, the lure of the opposite sex, nice cars, social position and economic security are very persuasive.

Explaining that a life you can look back on with pride is the only one worth living is difficult when your students are so young and want so many things so badly. And that is why we who teach are under a special and vital responsibility to point out the flaws in the “success at any personal cost” model.

We must be inspirational leaders not just teachers. We will have failed in a substantial and historically significant way if the current generation learns as a life lesson that servility and dishonor are proven paths to success. How will we be able to enjoy our retirements and our latter years when we see our students entering middle age in jobs they hate and despise because we were unable to communicate the important of moral and socially responsible conduct? And what of our nation? Can you imagine an entire generation admiring the antics of Pete Hegseth or Pam Bondi or any other of the cast of this ongoing federal reality show, a form of Wrestlemania writ large across our civic landscape?

If there was a time in your life to stand up for the values of the United States of America, this is it.

If you value your students’ futures, you must act to influence them to act in the interests of their nation, their posterity and their honor.

If not now, then when?

There is no convenient time to take a stand against evil.

Act now.

Your students and your nation are worth fighting for.

James Alan Pilant

Extortion as Policy

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Business ethics in the United States is taking some hard hits right now. In the last few days, one of the hardest hits that ethics in business has taken has come from what many people thought was a great university. They were mistaken.

Columbia University having agreed to a 200 million dollar payout has become the model for more Mafia style shakedowns of higher education in the United States.

Like Al Capone in Chicago, once you have one business paying protection you just roll up the rest of the block. So it is for American higher education. Columbia is the first in the dominoes.

Here – read the article about how Columbia will be the model.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-expects-other-schools-pay-164519393.html

“The deal didn’t just include a payout. Columbia also agreed to the appointment of an independent monitor who will determine if the school is abiding by the agreement, which includes provisions related to admissions, faculty hiring, and antisemitism on campus.”

Oh and look!! With an independent monitor, the shakedowns can continue indefinitely! You can bet real, hard money that a parade of demands for more money and power will come on a regular basis because once you’ve shown moral cowardice and the absence of any backbone, the extortion never, ever stops.

Perhaps, as in Florida, cronies of our “government” will find themselves well paying positions with lots of free perks in the now morally challenged atmosphere of the cowering leadership of a once great university.

The spectacle of a great university folding like a gambler with a busted flush sounds like a story from a bad novel. Who would have thought that a great independent bastion of thought would be kneeling before the great orange Cheeto?

This is a blog on business ethics so let us do our moral analysis!!

When your research grants are stopped on spurious grounds and you are given a list of nonsensical loony demands including giving up your independence and ability to do things like choose your own faculty, you should:

A. Deploy your lawyers and summon support from alumni to fight this assault.

B. Seek political support seeking input from your stakeholders while taking a principled stand for the political independence of a major university.

C. Ally with other universities like Harvard and demand fair treatment and justice.

D. Pay 200 million dollars and give into every demand the administration makes.

My analysis would be that A, B and C are all viable paths of social responsibility and justice seeking. They did D, the path of cowardice and compliance. That was wrong.

The moral bankruptcy of American businesses faced with threats from the administration offers clear parallels to the end of the Wiemar Republic and the end of democracy in that country. This is a national tragedy with dramatic implications.

Since, I have taught business ethics, I must find that Columbia has erred on the side of wrong doing and moral failure.

They have just sacrificed not just two hundred million dollars but their moral reputation and their sacred honor.

They will not be getting them back.

And their failure makes it easier for this evil administration to shake down other schools.

It will never be the same institution that it once was and may safely be discarded as having any principles besides keeping federal funding flowing at all costs.

My long term prediction is as follows. They will find in the long term that they will lose the money as well. This isn’t a just one battle, the long term goal is annihilation. As a defender of civilization and thought, Columbia is to be destroyed. And that is what is going to happen unless braver people with actual spines come to their rescue. A rescue I might add, they in no way deserve.

James Alan Pilant

    “Pure Cowardice”

    On By southwerkIn business ethics

    This is what David Letterman had to say about the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

    While the network and its owners claim that the cancellation was purely motivated by financial decision making, one would have to be clueless, thoughtless and endlessly naive to accept that as a fact.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/david-letterman-reacts-cbs-cancels-late-show-stephen-colbert_n_68842f5ee4b02a19bf1f8bde

    (Direct Quote form the link above.)

    “I think one day, if not today, the people at CBS who have manipulated and handled this are going to be embarrassed because this is gutless,” he told former “Late Show” producers Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay in a Zoom chat uploaded to his YouTube page.

    From the quote above one gets the impression that Letterman believes that there will be a future without the stain of the current administration upon us.

    It is to be hoped that this current regime’s catalogue of horrors will some day end but that is not at this time clear. We are faced with the possibility of these wicked monied interests and their debauched and greedy lickspittles may have permanently impaired our democracy and perverted our future into a Putin like totalitarian regime.

    Should democracy survive we will have to come to terms with the cowardice of CBS and many other businesses who gave up any shred of decency to serve the regime. But above all, we must turn our attention to the six Justices of the Supreme Court who during this time of crisis have served as the President’s abject servants in disregard of their oaths, their duty and their status as citizens of the United States. Their decisions opened the pathway to the end of our democracy and if it is saved it will be in spite of these six. They must be dealt with – impeached or the court packed — but these proto-fascist, pseudo judicial decisions must end. We must have actual judges who follow the law.

    I have been away from this my web site, Pilant’s Business Ethics, for a long time. I retired from teaching and only wished to sit quietly, read my books and maybe write a mystery novel or even a Western. At one time, I had around seventy thousand followers. Right now there are a little more than two hundred who subscribe. It has been a long time.

    But I cannot be silent. A horrifying evil infests our nation and while my voice may be small and ineffectual, it is still my voice and I am American – and I have a duty to speak and speak as loudly as I can against the current regime.

    And so, I’m back. Daily posting and much outrage. May God bless us all.

    James Alan Pilant

    What Can One Person Do During this Governing Crisis? Part 5.

    On By southwerkIn business ethics
    (This picture of the Liberty Bell is borrowed from Wikipedia with my thanks!!)

    Embrace Your Rage!

    You have decided to resist the current regime.

    One of the strangest things that I continually encounter is that we must be civil, kind and forgiving of our opponents.

    Not only that, but we must also be careful not to exaggerate the threat. We are told over and over again that such “exaggerations” play into the hands of our enemies.

    And so instead of saying that a man who tried to violently overthrow the government was a threat to democracy, we should admit that there are two sides to the argument and spend endless hours on television news shows interviewing his devoted followers in the hope of understanding their grievances.

    No more. I’m not interested in their point of view. They are violent, foolish and a threat to American democracy. That is all the analysis I need. It is all the analysis you need.

    And yet I look on my internet feed and I see people who voted for the new regime who lost their jobs or their homes and their businesses and now they are sorry. They are on podcasts and network news and many other places. I don’t care and no one should.

    It took a massive amount of moral and ethical indifference to vote for the current president. They wanted to “shake up” the system. They wanted to “own the libs.” They did this to themselves with their indolence and stupidity. Victims of this regime deserve sympathy, not the enablers and cheerleaders of the regime. Their just reward is what is happening and what will happen.

    Our intelligentsia, our ruling class and business executives across America have walked us into the hands of a lunatic and his barely rational associates. The intelligentsia assured us that at all times our words must be measured and academic. Our ruling class is almost completely absent even the tiniest shred of moral authority or for that matter any interest in any form of morality of any kind as long as they are protected from the great unwashed masses. And above all, you have to admire the complete absence of intelligence and judgment in our business class who signed on with a madman in the hope of a crypto profit bonanza and a juicy tax cut.

    If you feel that the nation that you love is being devoured by a deranged lumpen pile of carnivorous maggots, you are not alone. And it is not surprising that you feel enraged about it.

    You are entitled to your anger. 

    Be enraged. Every day a band of foolish narcissistic clowns is making policy for the United States. What has been called the “Cradle of Liberty,” a great powerful and respected nation now appears as international source of humor, ridicule and satire. Everywhere we are pitied and the absence of what we were is lamented.  

    Any good, God fearing, patriot would be angry.

    Our enemies are rejoicing and our friends planning on a world without us.

    Yes, you are entitled to your rage.  

    We must act.

    We must resolve to never allow these neo-fascist goons access to our government and its powers.

    We must resolve never to allow the foreign nations that hate and fear us access to our elections.

    We must resolve to end the corrosive influence of money in our elections and restore the power of the American voter.

    We must resolve to end forever the revolting, rotting sewer pit of social media that poisons every aspect of our lives.

    We must resolve to live our lives with wisdom, resolve and righteousness while facing the incoherent ravings of madmen and fools, knowing that this will be hardest of all.

    God bless you for your willingness to join the cause of freedom and liberty. God bless you for courage and bravery. And God bless you for continuing the creation of democracy for our generation and all generations that follow.