jmhamiltonpublishing

Saturday, December 21, 2024

VIOLENCE

Violence (n): actions that are intended or likely to cause harm to people or damage to property. extreme force.

By Gregg Wall 12-21-2024

America may not recognize it yet, but December 4… the day Luigi Mangione was alleged to have shot United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson… may become a national holiday, not unlike other popular commemorations, Labor Day and May Day. On that day, December 4^th, Luigi, allegedly, lashed out at the systemic injustice and violence of the American healthcare system. A healthcare system that is based on placing profits first, before the health and lives of the American people. An American healthcare system beset with a bewildering maze of private insurance contracts, copays, deductibles, sky-high premiums… and most formidable of all for the American people, unconscionable and unprecedented greed (and the expectations from shareholders for higher and higher returns, most often generated by sacrificing American lives). An American healthcare system that costs double, per capita, versus most peer nations, a repugnant U.S. healthcare model that denies & delays routine care, and/or payment for care, provided by universal payer systems afforded in every Western democracy… a murderous system that is said to cost 68,000 American lives per annum. This is why Mr. Mangione allegedly fired three bullets with the inscription: deny, defend, & depose.

So, it’s entirely understandable why Mr. Mangione acted in the manner that he did, given the failure of the president and congress to respond to the highly reasonable requests and pleas of essential Americans. To wit, that the U.S., too, adopt the single-payer model and rein in Big Pharma greed. The majority of Americans support Medicare for All, and yet, our highly corrupt congress and president insist that our greed-based model is non-negotiable and sacrosanct. Most revealing has been the public’s reaction to Mr. Mangione, allegedly, dispatching the serial killer, Mr. Thompson. A concentrated and startling number of Americans have expressed support for Mr. Mangione, some going as far as to call him a hero, while many others express sympathy… so much so that the prosecutors of Luigi are worried about finding a jury to convict, so desperate is the establishment, monied interests, and the state to make an example of him. Meanwhile, a higher percentage of the nation’s youth support Luigi, versus the deceased.

To anyone paying attention, none of this should surprise anyone. America’s economy, government, and MSM are exceptionally violent and are supportive of great violence, often directed at the American people and the world. Violence is approved and sanctioned by corporations, government, and oligarchs (in many instances, simply as a cost of doing business & in the service of perpetuating a failed, inhumane status quo, concentrated wealth & power, in continuance of the greed-first paradigm, multinationals, profits, war contractors, and Wall St.). State and federal governments most overtly demonstrate this violence in the forms of law enforcement and the military (and via funding of same and the austerity and the lack of public services that follows). Elites fund a police & security state rather than address the systemic failure w/in the economy, government, and political process that makes an army of cops necessary for the preservation of a dying economic order … and this violence is, of course, condoned, fully supported, and rarely, if ever, challenged by America’s mainstream media. The misogyny, racism, and violence itself… they all go hand in hand within the necroeconomy… commodified and ultimately serving to compel compliance, demoralize, earn profits, oppress, and strike fear within citizens and humanity. The violence is not only physical in nature… but comes directly from economic dogma, the economy, foreign policy, from public policy… in which labor, lives, wages, and wealth are continuously transferred into the hands of bankers, billionaires, multinationals. Far more violence, on a far larger scale is executed with the stroke of a pen by well-dressed men and women… say, by a healthcare CEO… than by any single cop, soldier, or deranged school shooter with a gun.

What on earth are you talking about? Well, think about it. Essential Americans are beset from all sides, starting at birth, where the average expense to bring a child into this world is said to cost $18,000 and that’s with outrageously priced health insurance and zero complications (prenatal, delivery, and postpartum care). America, expectedly, has the most expensive baby delivery system in the world. And the grave? Funerals and planting someone in the ground can cost close to $10,000. In between, in the span of a lifetime, Americans face monopolies and monopsonies… which not only increasingly dominate entire sectors of the economy, but demonstrate totalitarian control over: employees, who gets employed, who stays employed, the wages and benefits (healthcare) employees receive, as well as, hold considerable sway over the government their employees are confronted with, economic & public policy, and the candidates Americans are allowed to vote for. Then there’s the control these enterprises & Wall St. exercise over the general public… and increasingly, college students, campuses, and universities, and what students – potential future employees – learn, think, say, protest, and do. The free surveillance corporations consume, on social media, as a way of exerting control, domination, and protecting & preserving our ultra-violent economy & system of government. The U.S. economy and the private sector can make or break an employee and their family, fire them, and destroy their reputation on the way out the door. Price or wage discovery, a free market for labor to move about freely and work for the highest bidder, in many industries no longer exists and maybe contractually forbidden. (This is all what? VIOLENCE. Actions that are intended or likely to cause bodily harm or damage to the future earnings capacity & property of others… and for the bottom half and the youth, the greatest asset & property they often possess is their health, labor, their potential, and ability to earn a living wage.) America’s economy is singular in its violence directed at essential Americans, versus comparable peer nations. And don’t get trapped in America’s criminal justice industrial complex, where slavery is allowed under the 13^th Amendment. And Americans wonder why the ‘land of the free’ has the world’s largest mass incarceration state. Exploited prisoners, inflows of immigrant labor, ultimately, serve Wall St and help suppress the earnings & negotiating power of the labor force as a whole.

Food is contaminated with poison, livestock is shot up with steroids, PFAS is in the water and soil, there’s a national obesity epidemic, sperm counts are plummeting… cancer alleys thanks to fossil fuels, chemical, and O&G refineries mete out violence daily… welcome to hell. Manufacturers inside boardrooms and C-suites do lethal cost-benefit-analysis to see how much damage, death, and crippled lives their products and services can cause before it makes financial sense to come clean and do a recall. There’s wage theft, gig work, subcontracted labor, the exploitation of immigrants, sweatshops, temp agencies, and America’s strong affinity for exporting the economy and jobs offshore to make sure Americans have fewer and fewer opportunities for ease of exploitation and economic violence. I’ve just scratched the surface and could write volumes on the violence inherent in the American economy and who pays the price. Who always pays, while the rich profit and hoard. And the rising tide Ronald Reagan spoke of 45 years ago, created by supply-side economics & trickle-down tax policies, never arrived. But don’t expect presidential candidates and senators to talk about this.

And the government? America’s government is not there for you and I but is there to deflect, deny, protect capital & the establishment, sell a failed economic model, and hold up the façade of democracy… and run cover & narratives to distract from the serial criminality, class warfare, and violence waged against the American people every day. America’s failed two-party system is so entirely antagonistic towards democracy, so violently opposed to The People and providing Americans with a leg up, a glimmer of hope, let alone a level playing field… so entirely against change, reforms, or delivering upon popular will… that, arguably, they’ve made violent revolution all but inevitable (borrowing from President Kennedy’s famous quote). And America’s ultra-corrupt judicial system and judiciary… Americans see cops beat and murder citizens daily, most often the disenfranchised and poor, with absolute impunity. We recently were treated to the spectacle of a mother of three, incarcerated with a $100,000 bond, for verbally expressing frustration with a healthcare insurer for denying her claim. The mother had no criminal record, apologized, and expressed immediate remorse. That was not good enough for the psychotic in judicial robes presiding over her hearing.

And congress, to deal with systemic and structural failures throughout the economy and government, provides a socialist paradise, but not for essential Americans, of course, but for corporations, Israel & the Ukraine, and the catastrophically wealthy. It’s no accident that billionaires have seen their net worths exponentially explode with the exponential growth in the national debt. Net worths that are in turn used to buy the U.S. government. In the end, it seems all our congress is capable of… aside from day trading, burning up the clock, and lining their pockets… is providing more welfare for corporations and a private sector continuously on the dole and in need of another bailout (as CEOs and private equity loot corporate balance sheets for immediate gratification). Congress and the Federal Reserve providing a never-ending redistribution of taxpayer wealth & the nation’s credit line to the depraved and the entitled… America’s failed corporate elite and ultra-violent, neoliberal, wartime economy. The sole purpose of the duopoly… Dems & GOP, in practice… is to continue to transfer taxpayer revenue, the nation’s credit line to the least deserving cadre of criminals & violent thugs the world has ever seen: America’s billionaire & political class, and multinationals. In the end, it is nothing more than theft of taxpayer money, leaving the public with an IOU, a depleted, looted nation, & a crime scene.

And the American mainstream media in the final analysis: garbage. The MSM repeating the same exceptionalism, fables, and lies for at least the last fifty years. The framing surrounding the vast majority of news stories, nearly w/out exception, coming from the perspective that corporate rule, our ultra-corrupt congress and two-party system, the courts, the empire, oligarchy, and Wall St rule should neither be questioned too seriously or reformed. That American ways -- at a macro level -- are best. Best for whom? Nearly all of the corporate MSM were, and remain, universal in their condemnation of the alleged “killer” and in their efforts to humanize the true mass murderer, the healthcare CEO. Cheerleaders for empire and imperialism, lie factories for endless state propaganda, half-truths, and omission… simply regurgitating the narratives and spin put forth by public officials, corporate leaders, and politicians in exchange for access. And of course, reporters often subject to the same containment and controls as essential American workers face in their workplace, in an increasingly consolidated news industry. In short, if you want to work here, toe the party line. And toe the party line and issue forth propaganda they do. How sad that if Americans want to learn about the genocide and the violence their country and government are waging against Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, they are better off reading Al Jazeera, Haaretz, and domestically, independent media. Even worse than the papers of record, American network news… home of the feel-good story, infotainment, the party line, coverage of the latest mass shooting, and coming up later, the ubiquitous sports & weather report. No one would ever know the U.S. economy, government, and the ruling class are rife with murder & violence, as a matter of doing business, from watching network news, CNN, and FOX news programming. Conservative/GOP efforts to burn books, dictate the curriculum, dumb down education, and make sure colleges and universities remain out of reach and unaffordable are specifically tailored to make sure America’s children and young adults don’t learn a thing (about the Great American Nightmare and the highly dangerous and violent world they face).

And the greatest disservice of all: No one in elite circles - the private, public, and media centers - seemingly, is interested in educating the public on the world they live in, and how arbitrary, completely gratuitous, and entirely systemic the violence is. That no American has to live like this, in a perpetual sea of hate and violence orchestrated by economic royalists.

Fortunately, Mr. Luigi Mangione and the establishment’s reaction to Mr. Mangione are sparking conversations, education, and fear … on the topic of violence (who wields it and who profits by it) … that is long overdue.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024

Saturday, December 7, 2024

Trump and Dollar Supremacy

US President-elect Donald Trump warned the so-called BRICS nations that he would require commitments that they would not move to create a new currency as an alternative to using the US dollar and repeated threats to levy a 100% tariff.

Trump and his economic advisers have been discussing ways to punish allies and adversaries alike who seek to engage in bilateral trade in currencies other than the dollar. The measures include considering options such as export controls, currency manipulation charges and levies on trade, Bloomberg News reported in April.

- Trump Demands ‘Commitment’ From BRICS Nations on Using the Dollar – Bloomberg

Presently, however, under the American regime, one nation under oligarchy, exorbitant privilege, the debt ceiling, the national debt, and the failed two-party system… are all being used to do hell’s amount of evil to the American people and to the world. It also explains why the Federal Reserve is both the most powerful and least understood U.S. government branch.

Exorbitant privilege reminds us that democracy doesn’t die in the darkness… no, democracy dies in broad daylight, under azure skies of the deepest blue, like semi-automatic weapons fire inside an American school.

- Exorbitant Privilege – J.M. Hamilton Publishing

By Gregg Wall (12-7-2024)

Many will recall that Trump is generally silent or far less verbal when things are going well, like after his debate with Biden. Conversely, Trump is more verbal, fires off more Xs or Tweets, when he appears rattled or upset, like much of his first term. Less verbal, more verbal being relative terms, such as Trump’s inner demons allow. A week ago, last Saturday Trump unleashed an X where he basically threatened the BRICS nations, and presumably the Global South, with punishment and punitive measures, if these nations banned together and dumped the precious American dollar.

Trump very well may have been threatening the BRICS with a good time, as Russia and other nations, already suffering banking, economic, and trade sanctions from the U.S. Treasury, have begun to move away from the dollar. In fact, America’s actions against Russia, as a result of War in the Ukraine, have driven China and Russia closer together and with increased partnership, greater use of China’s yuan to conduct trade (hence, defeating and overturning President Nixon’s epic achievement of driving a wedge between the two nations). Ironically, for a nation that wants to maintain exorbitant privilege, America sure has a unique way of demonstrating it… the dollar has been weaponized to a considerable degree, going back to the Bush (W) administration and the War on Terror (with the U.S. Treasury, in partnership with Wall St banks and other allies, using dollar & financial warfare against rogue actors, states, and terrorist groups to diminish economies, eliminate the ability to raise money, & cut off trade). The dollar is such a formidable economic & foreign policy tool that it's little wonder that BRICS and the Global South have been in search of an alternative. Biden’s latest and hopefully last round of Ukraine welfare & war funding will come from and be secured by frozen Russian assets.

Sadly, key issues like dollar preeminence, what exorbitant privilege means to the American people, the nation, and the world rarely come up in America’s superficial, content-free campaign cycles. Instead, citizens are treated to the spectacle of poorly vetted candidates appearing on talk shows, rolling out the celebs, and burning through $1.5 billion in cash in a matter of weeks (on a single candidate & race), only for campaigns to go down in flames. And subsequently, requesting further bailouts and contributions from a public already impoverished by currency abuse, a debased dollar, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies, and the failed two-party system in Washington. Truly pathetic.

Since our ultra-corrupt government, the President & Congress, refuse to talk about these things, now is as good a time as any to very briefly go over what a complete disaster exorbitant privilege has been for the United States & the world, much of this covered a year and a half ago in my piece, Exorbitant Privilege. The Exorbitant Privilege piece provides additional background as to what dollar hegemony specifically means.

Domestically, possessing the world’s fiat currency has led to $40 trillion in national debt, ultra-accommodative monetary policies that have seen the asset classes of the rich skyrocket (along with the creation of hundreds of billionaires), the financialization of the economy, financial engineering on a catastrophic scale, soaring supply-side – greed driven – inflation, M&A and cartel & monopoly formation on an unprecedented scale, and the crushing of families, labor, organized labor, and a demolished middle class. Only a nation possessing this powerful of a tool could get away with printing tens of trillions in debt over the span of four and half decades. Debt the American public is indentured to at birth. And it’s no coincidence that the runup in the national debt has also coincided with the preeminence of libertarian, neoliberal, supply-side, and trickle-down economic fairy tales and lies… and the greatest fiction of all, meritocracy. In the land of financial dynasties, legacy university admissions, nepo babies, and a rigged economy & financial markets, the elites’ fondness for citing merit is truly the greatest class delusion of all. The dollar’s power has facilitated and translated into greed rule, a kleptocratic rule that, presently, appears unassailable. Dollar power and its ability to dictate perverse public policy means sky-high drug costs (because Big Pharma can & Bill Gates feels that’s best?), unaffordable for-profit health care, a national obesity epidemic, medical bankruptcy is the number one cause of bankruptcy, and declining U.S. life expectancy. It’s no stretch to say exorbitant privilege -- and the resulting financial engineering -- explain why Boeing aircraft fall from the skies; it’s why Intel is struggling and in a state of malaise. Financial engineering means less money for CAPEX, R&D, and is why employee real wages stagnate for decades. Exorbitant privilege and easy money policies in the service of all that debt are tied at the hip, have funded the most nefarious business practices and industry known to humanity, once again, financial engineering and private equity. Private Equity … that great destroyer of businesses, the economy, families, innovation, jobs, morality, all virtue, and an industry that along with free trade has carried out the middle class in a body bag. Exorbitant privilege, dollar preeminence means congress never has to make a tough decision… instant for-profit wars, instant financed tax cuts, all manner of corporate welfare… dial up the Federal Reserve and Treasury and have them print it up. To say that exorbitant privilege is directly and indirectly tied to all of the above -- and so much more -- is an understatement.

The catastrophic transfer of wealth, via the nation’s credit line, the rise of the billionaire class, kleptocracy, monopoly, and endless Wall St bailouts and welfare: Yup, exorbitant privilege. Every evil known to humanity and to befall a nation and its people: Follow the U.S. Dollar. As I’ve said before, it’s not a blessing, it’s a curse.

And to the world? To the world, exorbitant privilege means America’s ability to wage, seemingly, limitless war: it means 400,000 tons of napalm dropped on families and freedom fighters in Vietnam, it means tens of thousands of dead women and children in Gaza, American troops spending nearly two decades in Afghanistan, it means America’s ally – megalo, psycho Bibi - bombing several nations and Gaza, relentlessly (so Bibi can indulge every degenerate & depraved impulse that comes to mind). The almighty dollar means a trillion-plus dollar security state, 700 to 800 military bases around the globe, U.S. soldiers stationed around the world and used as trip wires for the next casus belli. Dollar power means using nation-states, on the receiving end of America’s wrath, as proving grounds for America’s ravenous military contractors. Exorbitant privilege means babies murdered, economies wrecked, lives destroyed, and lifeless bodies. (As pointed out last year, war spending, deficits, and debt – supported by the dollar's ability to print itself – have become a crutch America is increasingly dependent upon to backstop GDP and grow the economy.) The power of the dollar means all this global warfare makes its way back home to be waged upon Americans in the forms of cop cities, mass incarceration, the police and surveillance state. Is it not grand: dollar’s extraordinary power partners with economic sanctions, dollar denominated debt, the importance of earning U.S. dollars to pay dollar denominated debt, economies preyed upon and set up for demolition… America’s gift to the world, the dollar, means the IMF and World Bank, in some instances, kicking in a nation’s front door to insist upon endless austerity & neoliberal reforms, as a foreign government’s economy spins out of control. It means American banks, billionaires, and multinationals descending upon your country like locusts… after it’s been bombed to a crisp… to buy and steal everything at fire sale prices. Dollar dominance in settling global commerce and trade gives the Federal Reserve outsized influenced over nation-states, financial and monetary world affairs. Sanctions can be crippling.

As they say, for some hell comes in the next life… no, thanks to dollar hegemony, American elites, AIPAC, the deep state, the Federal Reserve, the MSM, the necroeconomy & necropolitics, and Wall St., I’d say, we are already there.

This is hell, and exorbitant privilege is the Devil’s favorite toy: enriching the least deserving beyond all measure, destroying the planet (by financing subsides for the fossil fuels industry and wars), while a weaponized dollar – in the hands of bankers and the powerful - keeps the American public and citizens of the world deeply impoverished, often on the edge of existence, and commodified. This is the part, where I’m supposed to tell you great things could be done with the U.S. dollar if we had the right people in charge. No doubt. But no, America means never having the right people in charge, it means hell is in charge: the Dems, the GOP, the criminal kleptocracy, banks, monopolies, fossil fuels, defense contractors, SV, greed… yes, in charge & dictating policy decisions.

And clearly, they can’t handle dollar supremacy. If banks are more powerful than standing armies, than exorbitant privilege is a nation armed to the teeth with MIRVed, nuclear armed ICBMs.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024

Saturday, November 23, 2024

The Sixth Annual Neoliberal Darwin Awards

“I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

- Kamala Harris

By Gregg Wall (11-23-2024)

There's not much going well for the West these days... especially the Greed first - Neolib - Necro economic paradigm for which the West stands. Many Western capitals are mired in catastrophic debt, debt accumulated bailing out our illustrious Western economies, bankers, billionaires, businesses, funding for-profit wars, and tax breaks for multinationals & the wealthy. The best example of this is the U.S. w/ $40 trillion in national debt.

The American/Western empire is challenged as never before: externally, grossly overextended with somewhere between 700 and 800 military bases around the globe (what the American taxpayer gets out of this no politician dares attempt to explain) … and internally, the empire is dominated by cowardice in the congress, corporate greed, military monopolies, psychopaths that are mired in corruption, & a DOD that cannot be audited.

Western political leadership is as morally bankrupt & rudderless as they are worthless... see the series of heads of state who have been voted out of office (as 45 years of corporatism, globalization, laissez-faire, neoliberalism, and political centrism are revealed to be an unmitigated disaster). There’s a deep malaise that has spread across the West, as America, Germany, and Japan stumble. The tariffs that both Biden and Trump said would return the American economy & jobs home have failed to do so.

In brief, there’s no end to the top tier candidates for this year’s Neoliberal Darwin Award winner. But two candidates really stood out.

First, there’s Israel, which under Bibi Netanyahu’s leadership has revealed itself to be - for all the world to see - a fascist state. The relentless bombing of Gaza and the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, inside Bibi’s death camp, has burned up decades of goodwill. Arrest warrants have been issued for Bibi and former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant, by the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

UN resolution for ceasefire, and a UN report identifying Israel's war crimes are front page news… the U.S. standing pat by its ally finds itself increasingly isolated. The genocide, now nearly fourteen months in, shows no sign of abating or winding down. This as Israel murders thousands in Lebanon (as it deploys an all too familiar gruesome Gaza strategy). Bibi sticking to the line that it must defend itself, when no nation in the Middle East is presently a threat to Israel, least of all prisoners… unarmed women and children… in a Gaza concentration camp. The Biden administration has made excuse after excuse, told lie after lie, strung along the American public with ceasefire promises, only to see the Palestinian body count climb higher and higher with thousands buried under the rubble. The death camp looks like pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cruelty necessary to carry out such actions exhibits a truly depraved and psychotic mindset.

Bibi’s lust to retain power and megalomania knows no end… and aside from the colonial land & resource grab, that’s what this entire episode is about: keeping Bibi out of prison and on the throne. Netanyahu’s antisemitism, his willingness to slaughter Israelis and use the Jewish population to propel the nation forward in war crimes, is now legendary. The brightest spot in Israel these days is the Israeli Press, particularly Haaretz, which puts the NY Times and the Washington Post to shame (especially when it comes to calling out America’s and Israel’s sick and wicked leadership).

But the destruction in Israel & Palestine, by the Zionist cause, have only been matched by the destruction AIPAC, Bibi, and Biden have rendered to the United States’ credibility & reputation and in particular, this year’s second Neoliberal Darwin Award winner: The Democratic Party.

Four years of failed leadership went up in flames earlier this month, as Trump and the GOP crushed the Dems in this year's election. The GOP swept the trifecta, and the establishment is pulling out the same old bag of tricks to explain the Dem party’s defeat: blaming Russia, Kam’s nonexistent shift left, Arab and minority voters. And then, to see Dems and Libs gloat online about the GOP coming to power as payback for failure to support Dems on November 5th… is too much. This party, along with the GOP, is truly irredeemable.

Dems and Biden, of course, completely blew it. Starting with Biden’s first hundred days and a failure to push through his BBB mandate. But instead, the president signed into law billions and trillions in corporate welfare and funding for Biden’s defense budgets, Ukraine War, war with Russia, America’s overextended empire, the new Cold War with China, and Bibi’s Gaza genocide. Absolutely sickening as climate catastrophes, homelessness, poverty go unaddressed within the United States. This, at the same time essential Americans are getting stomped by corporate greed, price gouging utilities, a housing crisis, a health care affordability crisis, and what can only be described as a recession for the bottom 60%. A country flooded and in flames, seemingly endlessly.

And Kam and the Dems rolled out the celebrities, did the talk shows, burned through apparently $1.5 billion, practically ran a campaign devoid of content & policy, and then had the audacity to ask for more money, after they were soundly trounced. The Dems deserved to lose. If this is what America can expect from these two parties going forward, then the American people should march on the nation’s capital & disband this government.

And to pour battery acid onto the nation’s wounds, with roughly sixty to seventy days left in his presidency, there’s Biden and his administration – too senile to run for a second term – calling audibles in the White House: arming and running cover for Killer Bibi and granting long-range missiles to Clown Wonder, Zelensky, so he can start up WW3 with the world’s largest nuclear power.

The best Hollywood fiction writers couldn’t have written this script.

Western leadership… no longer capable of defending their actions, economy, empire, or the charade that is political duopoly… have resorted to attacks on the press, campus protest, threaten social media, and congress is passing legislation that amounts to a direct assault upon the right to speak freely & protest. Israel has murdered scores of journalists.

No, things are not going well for the West, at all. One hundred - plus nations are reportedly ready to arrest Bibi Netanyahu and his ex-defense minister, Gallant. America’s disgust with Democratic party leadership, its revulsion over corruption in congress are at all-time highs, so that Dems lost a great many voters, versus 2020.

Citizens are restive, their economic prospects are dim & worse for their children. Voting out one set of crooks means voting in another party of bootlickers, celebs, corporate lackeys, and oligarchs (under duopoly, kleptocracy, and with an avalanche of money flowing into elections). And the fossil fuels climate crisis has been, conveniently, pushed off the front pages by the establishment & corporate media.

Greed, Wall St, and the War lobby seemingly incapable of reform. And presently, one has to wonder if any of us will be around for next year’s Neoliberal Darwin Awards.