Scattershot artist

Scattershot artist

It's hard to tell these days what people believe or, worse, why they believe what they believe. If you start with the most commonplace issue people might have, such as homelessness or inflation and move through the spectrum to international issues, such as internecine warfare and genocides, every person seems to have a lot of opinions but with little knowledge. Our governments, both local and federal are so complicated and corrupted around the use of monies and influence, it's a wonder anything at all gets done, which usually doesn't.

Money influences everything, mostly in a negative way. Yes, in today's world, governments must have money, contractors must be promised money, businesses must be at least profitable to keep the owners heads above water, families have to pay bills, and federal expenditures are, of course, necessary to maintain annual budgets. Simple enough. Everybody needs money, so who gets to decide where everybody's money goes or what it buys?

The feds just lowered the rate after months of presidential haggling and federal hemming and hawing about inflation, unemployment, trade deals, future issues. Why do we even care.? Or why not care? Because it doesn't have the slightest thing to do with us. All this sleight of hand by the president and his cohorts is merely designed to control all the elements of both our working and personal lives.

When it comes to money there's no freedom of speech and there's no 2nd amendment.

All the opinions, rants, eloquence of our language doesn't measure up to the fact we care about the things we don't have any control over, or, at least, don't think we have control over. It's "taxation without representation." I thought that's what America fought for back there in 1776.

People are now talking about, just like in the fifties, what's going to happen when the shit hits the fan, The right is ranting, the left is ranting. In between is the mass of humanity, blindfolded, heading to the cliff.

Conservatives recently passed another tax bill that inherently raises taxes for most people, except wealthy people, who traditionally haven't paid their fair share since the Reagan era. Nevertheless, whenever democrats get power, they attempt to get more money from the wealthy but do they, no, so they raise taxes on the unwealthy. Why can't they just lower back down the conservatives put on everybody?

It keeps going up and never down.

Why not? Because bringing in less money brings austerity measures and austerity is considered not a good thing because services and social benefits rather than big budget items, like defense, are what's cut.

If defense, homeland security, and war making expenses are not ever going to be cut, then higher taxes, less social services or benefits, higher interest rates, inflation to the basic consumer are going to reflect that.

Rather than so many opinions, we have to get real. If we're waiting around for equality and justice to be taken up by our gods and presidents, we have to stop waiting for our democratic principles to be taken up by our judicial oracles, stop waiting for our justice to come from the heavens, after we're penniless dead.

Sent from my iPad