Senator Romney's anti-stimulus ideology isn't balanced

 Mitt Romney isn’t a bad guy, he is just rich and a little out of touch with the life experience of ordinary people and the poor- that sort of thing. During his Presidential campaign he said that half the people of the U.S.A. don’t want to work. Social disadvantage has an inertia that is hard to break sometimes. Society tends to be picky as well- people that are a little older or uncool may be unwelcome in the workplace. Once one gets out of the social average mainstream of the workplace there is a kind of antibody response that can react adversely to those seeking re-entry into the workplace.   Stimulus unemployment benefits should approximate those of individual employment pre-Covid though.

https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1364557875323015168?s=20

If employers had incentives to hire those out of work longest that might alleviate chronic unemployment. If free education continued through graduate school some people could develop meaningful careers instead of competing with illegal aliens for minimum wage jobs. If all Americans had some secure place to keep their stuff they would not need to repurchase basic items every time they are homeless and recover a little.

The income of C.E.O.s and top executives is vastly greater than it was in the mid-1970s while the average wage of working men as stagnated adjusted for inflation and hasn’t changed in nearly a half century. Capital increases faster than wages over history. Wealth concentrates and Senator Romney is a member of that capital-grows-faster-than-wages class making a farce of wages.

Even during the Covid 19 pandemic the capital and wealth of Wall Street has increased. Giving some Americans a little spending capital is nothing comparable to the wealth the Federal Reserve is giving the rich with continued near-zero interest loans (with one dollar on deposit a bank and loan out nine times more e-dollars (free money).

In actual fact a decent job without victimization in the workplace is far less work than being unemployed…one does not have a fantasy life where work is not necessary-except maybe for the rich who can live off their savings and capital. Real poverty creates real hardship and adversity physically and socially.

Could a different administration reaction to Covid have avoided lockdowns etc

 Trump’s swift response to halt flights incoming from China wasn’t followed up well by actions and leadership that would have defrapped the spread of the virus most effectively. The President lacked motivation, as do many others apparently, to combat biological war at a low level effectively. As a former NBC army trainee I believe the administration should have got hot suppressing the virus- that could be good practice for an actual biological war with an advanced genetically engineered vector.

Could the administration have acted so effectively that Covid 19 restrictions wouldn’t have been needed for so much time, or could any other U.S. politicians have taken charge and eliminated the virus in a few months- probably not. Politicians are promoted to their level of incompetence and aren’t selected for having state of the art intelligence concerning non-traditional economic, technical, environmental or scientific innovation.

While many citizens were concerned with protecting their fellow citizens against Covid 19 there were many others that did not and were as useless as dopey cattle at taking simple measures like wearing a mask. Personally I was disgusted with people going maskless when I enjoyed wearing full M.O.P.P gear at chemical war defense school and could put that on in a couple of minutes. President Trump was a farce of an example at mask prophylaxis. He probably did not want to be reelected…many of his voters from 2016 were aging boomers whom he seemed not to give a whit about.

America’s tardy and uninventive response to Covid 19 besides the manufacturers of the vaccines confirmed my suspicion that a lot of not too bright people live in this nation that are clueless about the meaning of life in general on this somewhat fragile planet and would not do anything to reconfigure economic structures or society that would inconvenience themselves as they use their infernal machines to get things done the easy way, repeat, expand, repeat… Biological war is possibly the most efficient way to kill healthy soldiers and others targeted by special weapons. The brain-dead dragging their feet at Covid 19 defense could themselves be the victims of a future incident that might be just as far away as some secret PhD’s basement laboratory. Biological war is not an obsolete fact- it is a future possibility that national defense needs to develop swift reactions to that would also allow the economy to continue to function- that criterion demands the capacity for walking and chewing gum simultaneously.

The people that manufactured masks at home contributed far more than the scoffers did for the nation to survive the virus. Those people seemed to believe that herd immunity was the way to go and let a million or two die would have suited them just fine. There are many people that increase knowledge with age and some middle aged people that are never more than vehicle driving, beer-drinking consumer-producers with a paycheck never thinking about global or national issues before they drop dead on their sofas. With national and planetary demographics being what they are that attitude will serve the principle of human survival better than lemmings racing toward oblivion. People really need to think and develop good political economy that maximizes human potential for everyone on Earth, as well as the ecosphere.

Passenger Service Vessel Act and Alaskan Cruises

 I probably would be opposed to loosening the PSVA or the Jones Act because of the potential damage to Americans seeking to operate vessels in a very competitive international shipping environment. One could open a Pandora’s box of international firms operating around the nation including Alaska that might endanger national security and otherwise could serve to make being an American even more irrelevant in the corporate, globalist economy.

In a year or so the Covid 19 vaccines probably will let the cruise industry return to normal. Before Covid Juneau had maybe 30,000 visitors a day and even small towns like Wrangell were anticipating a rise in the number of cruise ships tying up. That all crashed in 2020 and 2021.

Rather than end existing legislation it would be better to stimulate land transport to Alaska through Canada on hyper-tubes for cargo. People have discussed extended a rail road to Alaska for more than a half century and that should be upgraded to hyper-tube technology.

Alaska hasn’t got a tradition of bright and innovative politicians except for jay Hammond and Steve Cowper in the office of governor in my opinion. The present fine governor seems not to understand the marine Highway System very well- not that his predecessors did either, and has let it atrophy during the budget crisis. Some private enterprise has stepped in to provide passenger service locally and that should be supported with contracts of some type and perhaps bids to provide private rather than state-owned ferry service in S.E. Alaska at least.

Alaska should try to be more modern an work to upgrade an infrastructure and housing that are ecologically sustainable and practical such as giving tax breaks to earth homes that stay warm when it is -30 F outside and developing fuel cell power plants in remote sites.

The state of Alaska had dumped Prudhoe Bay oil money for decades and that brought a brand of politicians to Juneau that didn’t need to do much besides apportion pork; critical thinking and fundamental policies that governments have used such as a state income tax have never needed to be on the agenda of political leadership. I believe they still cannot reconcile themselves to the end of easy oil royalties as the basis for state government. Clever free enterprise and invention can go a long way to make an economy function well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Vessel_Services_Act_of_1886

Aren't the 1% ad hoc suzerains

 An empire usually has foreign colonies historically speaking and the United States has none. Except for a brief 20 year period when the United States had the Philippines as a colony as a result of the Spanish-American war, before it gave that nation independence. The U.S.A. never did have colonies nor an emperor or imperial government. The original 13 colonies were of course part of the British Empire before the revolution. Today the U.S.A. has a few territories populated by citizens of the U.S.A. in addition to 50 states that became part of the union voluntarily at some point. Puerto Rico is an example; they could petition Congress to become a state yet appear satisfied to be a territory.

There is a plain difference concerning empires and nations historically easy to discern. Britain and Rome had empires as did the Soviet Union in some respects with Warsaw Pact nations taken during the war against the Nazis, yet that definition is debatable. The trouble with morphing historical terms is that they become meaningless in respect to their original sense and one may conflate completely different forms within one form mistakenly. It is as if contemporary history analyst recognize only several ancient forms of government and try to fit new forms into old categories lacking the will to create a new definition for themselves.

Some people like to call the United States an empire because it has a lot of wealth and foreign troops stationed abroad to bring or keep the peace, and one might regard the 1% as an aristocracy, yet technically the United States isn’t an empire so much as a corporatist entity with plutocratic suzerainty that evolved from a national democracy. In this paradigm I would say the 1% act toward the 99% in their own country as suzerains.

Environment and Recession

 The world environment is in long-term decline from over-use and abuse. If an economy was ecologically sustainable and well designed to let people work without harming the ecosphere recession would not be a factor in regard to the environment. With the present economic structure that plunders the ecosphere, displaces and edges it toward extirpation the ecosphere declines during recession and expansion.

During recession or depression poverty may move people toward exploiting anything of value from Saguaro cactus to desert turtles and bear livers to earn something. Enforcement of endangered species laws may stop as funding decreases. etc.

During the Covid 19 recession the San Francisco peninsula did not bounce back with an old growth Redwood or Sequoia forest appearing to bump out the buildings and asphalt.

Tracking Amazon Deforestation from Above

How would an agrarian nation do today

 One has a few variable parameters such as ‘country’, ‘agrarian’ and ‘survive’ that would allow a hypothetical construction of numerous models including futuristic ones with hyper-modern agriculture- perhaps indoors. One might have an altered demographic or political constituency that would influence the standard of living.

If a modern nation was exceptionally productive it might dominate global food sales and create a surfeit of very cheap commodities for human consumption that would keep its people alive- surviving and thriving. It is difficult to say. Traditional agrarian cultures certainly have a hard time of things these days though for it implies a lack of advance, education and the ability to afford defense weapons that are quite costly.

Concerning the Return of Normalcy

 Millions of Americans not wearing somewhat ineffective masks and Covid 19 reduced to near non-existence would be elements of normality. I suppose there are already millions of Americans not wearing masks who have ignored the admonition to mask up and that too is normal.

One of the Kardashians has filed for divorce from the singer Kanye West and the nation may never return to normal after that. I saw a headline about it and maybe will discover who those people are some day and learn why they are so important. It can never be reasonable said that divorce is normal.

Mr. West apparently said something to the effect that after 400 years of slavery that condition had become normal or not-resisted well enough and that was a non-liberal sounding sort of thing to say unacceptable to Californians or others waiting for 100 million dollars in the Covid 19 relief bill to pay for something concerning the Bay Area Rapid Transit system also known as Black Bart. In my opinion any sort of mass transit system that runs of electricity is probably worth investing in especially if it has Covid 19 detectors and auto sampling needles that extract blood from each passengers entering a ‘train’ for rapid D.N.A. sequencing to determine if they have enough Neanderthal genes to be considered Republicans.

If the Los Angeles Lakers do not win another N.B.A. title the nation will have small chance of being considered normal. The Lakers need win dathe next three years for even a semblance of normality to emerge from the chthonic pathos of the Covid 19 era.

I think Democrats tend to feel normality is godless atheism running to transformation of Star Fleet headquarters in S..F. to evolve a Judy Garland world that might freely be renamed Fruity Rapid Interplanetary transit to paradise on the planet Bezos formerly known as Mars with all of the wealth in 1% of the people who are politicians and CEOS and lawyers with liberty and justice for-themselves.

In a renormalized U.S.A. the rich will keep getting richer in spite of the pandemic being over and Americans will climb over themselves to blow smoke up the bare backsides of the rich agitating for low tax rates and labeling any suggestion to the contrary as socialism. Socialists will believe they aren’t merging with corporatism and Obamacare will be believed in error once again to be a practical system that covers the poorest citizens comprehensively even if they need be homeless and move seasonally to moderate temperatures.

A bill or executive action will be made that will restore to ecospheric health one acre of prime Florida swamp land and guarantee a cleaner atmosphere without so much CO2 in the year 2739. Illegal aliens will be made citizens in order to get the fair $15 minimum wage and older poor Americans won’t be able to find any sort of work to supplement their retirement check that won’t pay for housing.

The U.S. can focus again upon Russian encroachment on historically Russian lands as a threat to Europe and reason why their need be a new, queer military division to combat global warming with automatic, shoulder fired nuclear neutron bullets. The public debt will increase temporarily for a trillion or two a year until 2028 by which time the federal budget will be balanced and the 1% have converted their U.S. dollars to bitcoin- and all of that will happen by the end of 2021 or 2 at the same time as student loan debt is written off and college education becomes free.

Why the Hong Kong Human Rights Act

 The Chinese government apparently has violated agreements made with Britain concerning the transition of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule. Those violations concern the end of freedom for the people of Hong Kong insofar as freedom is found within self-government of Democratic forms of government rather than authoritarian rule and Chinese authorities are ending several basic planks of democracy in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong | Human Rights Watch

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3289

Arresting pro-democracy demonstrators and holding them indefinitely as well as exporting them to distant Chinese jurisdictions for adjudication are a couple of items people regard as human rights violations. That is, government with the consent of the government and trial by a jury of peers, habeas corpus etc. are necessary for a free people to feel free with the best government so many people can use to remain as free as possible.

The Chinese government has a tradition of crushing human rights these days in order to further communist rule that is of course also liberalizing business to a certain extent. The west is partly at fault for building up the Chinese economy with technology transfers and financial investment that swells Chinese military spending and the aggressiveness of Chinese politicians seeking to expand their power peripherally so far as they can. Hong Kong is something of an innocent bystander being run over by growing Chinese economic power and neo-authoritarianism that isn’t looking far enough beyond purely materially and atheistic ideologies to find a greater spiritual foundation of freedom for its people that might be a good influence on decaying western moral norms as well as its own.

Sometimes a government must intervene in a free market

Governments sometimes need to intervene in free markets in order to keep them free from the collusion of super-rich playground bullies and basic hogs of domination that would tilt the field toward themselves. Hogs don’t care about social progress nearly as much as personal power and total control of money (the root of all {or much} evil). Networks of colluding rich people may form planetary plutocracies that are as unchanging and repressive as that of pyramid building cultures of the Old kingdom of ancient Egypt. Anti-monopoly defenses need to be upgraded continuously or all of a nation’s wealth becomes concentrated in 1% of the people. The marketplace of ideas perishes as an establishment of evil wealth makes sure that politics is controlled and massaged to reinforce the domination of the establishment.

Ideas are repressed and political opposition is labeled ‘extremist’. Currencies become encrypted in electronic data bits and bytes interpretable just by the richest traders swimming about like dark-web sharks in dark pools that have never seen the light of day.

Corrupt private interests with vast wealth may corrupt public interests and ossify social structures and influence economic evolution globally to reinforce their concentration of wealth and power rather than the public good. Millions of insider lackeys may work as sycophantic ideologues to help repress intelligent thought in return for biscuits of prosperity. Environmental decay may develop and the migration of billions of cheap labor workers may ensue to help undermine national political resistance to global plutocratic power or increases of minimum wages.

Free markets may benefit from rules changes that reflect the real economic failures of the day such as the degrading world ecosphere exploited by inherited business relationships that consider environmental harm as an externality to the pursuit of private capital increase. Capitalism may need modernizing upgrades to keep it competitive rather than concentrated. Limits on the size of corporate employment or number of corporations any individual can invest in might be developed to promote competition rather than inertia temporal control.

Economic infrastructure may be mal-adapted to the environmental and demographic challenges of a given era. Governments with intelligent leadership (yes perhaps improbable) can set parameters within which free enterprise can compete, and remain out of the business themselves. Governments can intervene to bail out the rich with quantitative easing and dump them the capacity to loan out an in effect mint their own e-dollars strictly in conformity to the marginal reserve rate of 10% and thus get 16 trillion times 9 dollars free without work and thus buy a free market. Since 2008 the U.S. government has helped via the Federal Reserve to let the rich own the free market- and that is an example of the wrong way to manage things. Governments can also do things the right way an set parameters that would encourage environmental sustainability in harmony with a low entropy economic model that supports all citizens to have the most opportunity for intellectual productivity they can attain without financial limits subverting their course of higher education. A surfeit of well-educated people is better than a paucity.

Plutocrats and Cryptocurrency working against Democracy?

 The U.S.A. might consider installing democracy in the United States before going off half-cocked considering foreign subversion. In a sense the American experiment in democracy has ended with corporatism and people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos and other plutocrats being the victors.

People can still believe the U.S.A. is a democracy with social media and broadcast networks owned by the rich that brainwash the public about whatever they want declaring undesirable content that opposes their wealth and new world order ‘extremist’. When blockchain cryptocurrency will replace the dollar so rich people can have encrypted financial trades electronically in dark pools globally hidden from local governments and their tax bases and the rich live on Mars or some other above it all places some folks might still be attacking Russian efforts to develop capitalism themselves or Chinese efforts to join global plutocrats half-way in capitalism.

With the recent Covid 19 death total reaching nearly a half-million in the United States the Biden administration is seeking to replace those older, expensive dead people with cheaper live Mexican workers on a pathway to citizenship. The U.S. capitol with its tall barbed wire fence is better defended from U.S. citizens than the U.S./Meschica border is from illegal non-citizens. Democracy at work; Nahuatal will become the primary language taught in schools.