Everyone has an agenda

Our national attention span seems to last only few days at a time.  The media reports one thing, President Trump says another, and it's into the pit we go for another round of mud wrestling.  Then the next week we're on to something else.

Our most recent bout with dysfunction resolves around whether the FBI used the infamous Steele dossier (written by former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele) as the basis for obtaining a FISA court order allowing eavesdropping on the Trump campaign in 2016.  

Republicans say that Mr Steele was working for the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was in turn being paid by the Democratic National Committee, and that his dossier should therefore automatically be considered biased and invalid.  "No Steele dossier, no FISA court order, no FBI spying, case dismissed" they say.  The Democrats....wait for it....disagree!  *BIG shock*

Brief background:  The investigation by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS on Donald Trump was initially funded by a conservative political website, and was later picked up and funded by the Democrats after Trump emerged as the probable Republican nominee.  Fusion GPS contracted with Steele, asking him to use his foreign connections to investigate Trump.  Following Trump's election funding from the Democrats ceased, but Steele continued working on the report, with financing coming directly from Fusion GPS principal Glen Simpson. 

Lost in all this "yes he did...no he didn't" BS is this:  Is the information contained in the dossier true?  If the collection of 17 memos, aka "the dossier", written by Steele between June and December 2016 are accurate, then I personally don't care who paid for it.  I don't want Russia worming their way into our election system, and possibly into a position where they can blackmail a candidate they helped.   

We're not talking about a friendly Australia or Canada or even Spain here folks....but RUSSIA!  Russia is NOT our friend.  Vladimir Putin longs to see Russia elevated back to the level of power and prestige enjoyed by the old Soviet Union.  Contrary to popular myth, Russia in NOT a great  economic power today.  In fact, Russia's GDP is roughly equal to that of the state of California.  Their ace card, of course, is that they still possess a massive nuclear arsenal, and they are rapidly modernizing their conventional military forces as well.

Putin alone controls Russia.  The billionaire business oligarchs inside Russia operate with the approval and support of Vladimir Putin, and they in turn know that when Putin calls, they respond.  Nobody crosses him.  (The few that have tried have found themselves charged with "tax evasion" and locked up, or worse.)  Think of it as an old-school organized crime family.  Russia's objective is to weaken (mainly) the United States, NATO, and the European Union any way possible.  If the West bickers and fractures, Russia benefits.

This is a serious position we're in today.  Much is at stake.  Anyone who doesn't understand this and blindly tries to stymie Special Counsel Muller's investigation are potentially doing the United States great harm. Let Mueller do his job, and if there has been Russian collusion, say so and put away the guilty.  And if not, tell us that, too, and lets move on.

S

It's like losing a bet all over again watching the instant replay. DUH!

Every night the news is filled with the latest efforts of US SecState Kerry and other world diplomats as they try to start talks with Vladimir "Pootie Pooh" Putin on securing the return of Crimea back to Ukraine.

 

Look...a booger!

These people must be a very special variety of stupid!  Russia now "owns" Crimea, its troops are dug in, and it isn't going anywhere.  And we can't make it.  We need to quit beating our heads against the wall and face it.

Trouble is, this is the first....the second actually after Russia's little foray into Georgia back in '08....of many upcoming moves by Putin to reconstitute Russia's old empire. He telegraphed it back in 2012 upon his return to power as President.

At that time he told Russian industry / banking leaders (the oligarchs) "Owning assets outside Russia makes you too vulnerable to moves by foreign governments.  It's time to bring your wealth home."  Hello!  He wanted to make Russia "sanction proof".  This whole Crimean crisis, and the ones soon to come, are all premeditated.

Pootie Pooh is an unreconstructed KGBer.  All he knows how to do is step on people's throat to get them to do what he wants.  He once declared the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geo-political catastrophy of the 20th Century.  He wants Russia's empire back.  

All the former USSR republics are now on notice....close ranks with Russia and you'll be left alone.  Step out of line and there can always be excuses found to invade "for the good of the people."  *Ha!  He cracks me up some times!*

We really should make a game of this.  "Who will be he next two-bit Russian neighbor to feel Putin's wrath?"  There's money to be made here Vegas!

S

And nobody saw this coming? Really?

Once again it has been brought to my attention that the world's economy is royally screwed up.  This time it's the tiny island/nation of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean that has imploded.  It seems Cyprus and its banks have become a major tax safe-haven for the world's oligarchs, particularly the newly-rich Rooskies.

Except, as with banks almost everywhere, the Cypriot banks didn't have enough safe places to invest their depositor's money.  Instead they chose the high-yield but also high-risk route and invested in Greece.  Yes, THAT Greece.  

Here's the problem in a nutshell:  There is too much money concentrated in the hands of too few people.  The wealthy have already bought essentially everything they want....homes, islands, exotic cars, planes, trains, jewels, art....and they still have trillions of dollars left over. Their excess cash just piles up and they often have no where but high-risk places to put it.  That's a disaster just waiting to happen.  

Meanwhile, with too much of the world's wealth in the hands of too few, there isn't enough left for the masses to buy enough of the things that spurs production and creates jobs.  That's why unemployment is so high worldwide.  The wealthy simply can't buy enough "stuff" to keep the rest of the world busy producing it.

So how do you fix it?  No, you don't just pull a "Robin Hood" and confiscate money from the rich and drop it on the poor.  That's a double-bad move.  The rich won't have any incentive to work because they'll just have their gains taken away from them, while the poor won't have any incentive to work because they'll just be handed a windfall for doing nothing.  

So what then?  Level the playing field.  We need a new tax code written on a clean sheet of paper and not just another band-aid on what we have now.  Start right now phasing out all the hundreds (thousands?) of tax credits and deductions and subsidies that are increasingly making our "free-market" economy anything but.  

The idea that we need to give all those loopholes to the wealthy so they can have more money to "invest" in the economy is bull!  They have several trillion (with a "T") dollars on the sidelines right now doing very little.  (And let's be honest....it isn't just the wealthy that benefit from loopholes.  We all benefit from a few....it's just that the rich's are bigger.)

Without special favors for a few I think you'd see in short order income becoming more equal based on the efforts of those working and not just flowing one-way to those who know someone important or can afford a lobbyist.  

The rich can still work and get richer, but it will be due to their superior intelligence or by the sweat of their brow and not by just knowing a congressman willing to sponsor their heavily camouflaged loophole.  More well paid workers = more  consumers = more production = more tax revenue.  See how this works?

It's called "growing the economy", and it's not a new idea.    We've heard a lot of talk about it recently, but very little movement towards it.  That's because some toes will have to be stepped on for it to work.

Finding someone willing to do a little "toe stomping" is the first challenge.  Any volunteers?

S