Electing Parents

Photo (c) Rafael Ben-Ari/Chameleons Eye / Depositphotos.com

Tom Sheppard

2/8/2020

Our political elites, both Democratic and Republican, seem to be under the mistaken impression that we voted them to be our elected parents.  Putting them in office because we lack the good sense and judgement to manage our money and other affairs wisely and in our own best interests.

Along those same lines, they seem to assume that being elected officials and political elites automatically makes them somehow smarter than all other citizens.

This sense of being above the rest of us, at least with Congress, is reinforced by their passing laws from which they are exempt.

For instance, the much debated minimum wage requirements don't apply to Congress.  The minimum wage and other mandated employee workplace rights are covered in The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  Congress made themselves exempt from the FLSA.  So, they don't have to pay minimum wage or worry about whether or not an employee is exempt or not exempt from the FLSA, because they made all Congressional employees exempt from the act, regardless of how little they may be paid.

Why is Congress exempt from the FLSA?  Perhaps they felt that being who they are, they would always do the right things by their employees and so, such regulation was unnecessary for them, but just, fair, and right to impose on everyone else.

Don't get me wrong. I am not opposed to the FLSA.  I am opposed to Congress making laws from which they exempt themselves.  If it is good for the rest of the country, then it is good for Congress.  If it is bad for Congress, then it is bad for the rest of the country.  There is no magical dome surrounding the Capitol which causes the laws to behave differently there than elsewhere - except the one erected by Congress.

Another of those regulations that are good for the country, but bad for Congress is the Occupational Safety and Hazards Act (OSHA).  OSHA has subjected countless businesses across the country to inspections and remediation costs, not based on any complaints or accidents, but solely because an OSHA inspector decided to walk into an establishment and assert his or her authority under this act.  But our Congress isn't subject to OSHA, so they will never suffer an unwarranted inspection, fines, and mandatory remediation of workplace safety hazards no matter how many people get hurt in the halls of the Capitol because OSHA might result in frivolous lawsuits against Congress.  Once again, those frivolous suits won't happen to business, only to Congress, so Congress must be exempt from OSHA.  Of course that it utter nonsense.  Laws that are bad for Congress is bad for the country, and laws that are good for the country is good for Congress.

Congress too is exempt from the Affordable Health Care Act (also known as ObamaCare).  Many on Capitol Hill continue to sing the praises of how wonderful this program is for America while they made themselves exempt from the provisions of the act that would have taxed their own "Cadillac Health Care Plan" which they enjoy.

To add insult to injury, Congress is exempt from Social Security.  They don't have to pay Social Security taxes.  And, their retirement plan is to die for.  If you get elected to just two terms as a Representative or just one term as a Senator, and then you retire, you get full pay for life.  With as little as four years or six years on the job our Congress gets to retire at full pay for the rest of their lives.  And they each get six-figure salaries.

Again, don't get me wrong here.  I am not opposed to our Congress getting paid six-figure salaries.  Getting the job requires that they maintain a household in their home state and one in the Washington, DC area.  That is not cheap.  What I object to is them having any retirement plan other than Social Security and an ordinary 401K, like the rest of us can get after working four to six years.

Most corporate retirement plans won't pay you anything if you only work for a company four to six years.

I believe one of the best ways to return our elected officials back into public servants is to deny them any retirement program outside of what is available to ordinary citizens, in other words, Social Security, a 401K, and an IRA.

Some might say, but what about those guys and gals who labor 20 years or more in DC for us?  I say, what about them?  They shouldn't be living off the public for that much time, and when they quit, they should be on their own.  There should be no other retirement plan for elected officials except Social Security and any private investments they make in their 401K or IRA accounts.  Once they leave office, they should no longer be fed at taxpayer expense.

All of these self-directed exemptions from the laws that govern ordinary citizens has the natural effect of making them believe they are an elite for whom the laws don't apply, because they have made that into a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Strip them of the ability to make themselves exempt from the laws they write and they will be in the same regulatory boat as the rest of us.  Strip them of their amazing health plan and make them buy one in the open market.  Strip them of a fat-cat retirement program and make them both pay into Social Security and have to live by what they get from that instead of giving them taxpayer money for life.

If we do that, perhaps we will come a little closer to helping them understand they are us.  They aren't better, smarter, or wiser than us.  We elected them to represent us, not to rule over us.

We elect representatives, not rulers, or parents.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

 The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe that Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, thenyou will want to read Godvernment: Government as God

Socialism is Economic Rape

Photo (C) Katarzyna Bialasiewicz photographee.eu / DepositPhotos.com

Tom Sheppard

11/22/2019

When a woman is raped, a man is forcibly taking something from her that she does not want to give him.   The rapist uses his cunning and superior strength to overpower his victim and do as he pleases with her, without any regard to her feelings, hopes, or wants. If she resists, and he is able, he will beat her and restrain her so that she will either be compliant, unconscious, or bound and unable to further resist.

Just like the rapist, a socialist government takes what it wants from its citizens without any regard to their feelings, hopes, or wants.  The socialist government uses the power of its police and military to forcibly take everything it wants and leave its citizens only with what it feels inclined to provide them.  Anyone who is foolish enough to resist the forcible rape is likely to end up in prison or dead.

If you don't believe that socialist governments work this way, then do just two things:

1. Read (or listen to) The Gulag Archipelago by  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and 
2. Look at what is happening in Venezuela right now as the populace suffers from scarcity brought about by their socialist government while controlling a land of abundance.

That should be enough to make my point, but if it isn't, you can read some history about

• what Adolf Hitler, the head of the National Socialist German Workers (NAZI) party did.  
• Or Pol Pot, the head of the communist Khmer Rouge who took over Cambodia.  
• Or the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics where Josef Stalin deliberately slaughtered millions of Russians who didn't embrace his plans with sufficient enthusiasm. 
• Or. follow the adventures of the handsome and charismatic Che Guevara as he tortured and murdered his way across the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Africa trying to 'persuade' people to embrace communism.  Wikipedia notes that "... he murdered political opponents, eliminated the free press, and put homosexuals in forced labor camps."
• Or, read about Che's good friend Fidel Castro and the prisons in Cuba he has filled with political prisoners who didn't agree with his communist/socialist ideas.

Che Guevara

Communism and Socialism

Just as the puma and mountain lion are the same animal, so too are socialism and communism.  Both are rooted in the philosophy explained by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto.  The slight difference is that communism actively seeks to do away with all other economic and political orders and run the entire world, while socialism throws nationalism into the mix with the aim of making sure that the socialists from a particular country are all in charge of the world, or at least most of it.

Socialism Must Use Force

Socialism requires that all private resources become owned by or 100% aligned with the purposes of the state.  Very few people will willingly give all they have to government bureaucrats.  Even the leading socialists in the USA today won't do that.  They are hypocrites and liars who don't walk the talk.  That means that the soldiers and police will have to come in to force the compliance of anyone who fails to cooperate and behave as the bureaucrats direct.

When socialists come to power one of the first things they do is they use the coercive power of government to forcibly transfer ownership of many companies and even whole industries from shareholders and investors to the government.  The government doesn't pay for these companies.  This is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibiting the government from illegal searches and seizures.

To be clear about this, shareholders are not just a bunch of fat cats with wads of cash.  Most retirement funds (like yours) are invested in stocks and mutual funds (which also are invested in stocks).  So, when the government takes ownership of a company without paying for it, they are taking money right out of the retirement funds of millions of working-class people, helping to ensure that their Golden Years of retirement are hungry, cold, and poverty-stricken.

You, as the working class person hoping for a decent retirement someday, just got raped by the socialist government.

When socialists come to power, they immediately raise taxes and use the coercive powers of government to seize the property of anyone who fails to pay "their fair share" as defined by the very luxurious-living leaders of the socialist government.  Your wages and taxes are both set by a government bureaucrat who decides your wages based not on your wants or needs, or how well you do your job, or how demanding or dangerous your job might be. The socialist government bureaucrat sets your wages at what s/he feels you need in order to survive, because in this socialist utopia there is officially no such thing as "getting ahead."  Unless, of course, you become a socialist government bureaucrat and can manage to claw your way up the government hierarchy to a position where some other socialist government bureaucrat above you has decided that your contribution to society, through your amazing government service, is sufficient to warrant a slightly better lifestyle through things like access to the top-bureaucrats-only stores when you can get almost as much decent food as you want, almost whenever you want it.

So, you got raped again either by the tax man, or the some other socialist government bureaucrat who decided how much need to survive.

Of course, you can always live a bit better by becoming a criminal and buying what you can afford through the black market.  If you get caught with this contraband coffee or bread, you will likely lose your job, spend time in jail, perhaps even get sent to a re-education facility where you will be shown how much better it is to embrace socialism than to be beaten periodically and work as a slave laborer.

So, you got raped by the socialist law enforcement.  They may, in fact, physically rape you to help you realize how good you have it when you are playing by the official socialist rules.

On the other hand, the criminals will always be there.  Capitalists in socialist countries are, by definition criminals.  Some will be offering to meet legitimate needs for things like good food or decent appliances.  Others will be offering protection from the police or other thugs.  Either way, unless you throw in your lot with the criminal capitalists, you have no chance of enjoying a life that is any less miserable than all of your neighbors.

Of course, joining the criminal capitalists, you risk getting raped by them, and by the socialists.

The Politics of Envy is a Lie

Socialists build their support using the politics of envy.  They pit the 99% against the 1% and feed the 99% on dreams of living in some measure of the opulence of the 99% by taking it away from the 99% and giving a nice piece of it to them.  The reality plays our very differently.

When the socialist governments confiscate the property and money of the wealthy 1%, they don't distribute it to the masses.  Instead, they use if for themselves.  You don't believe me?  Consider this, when you take away a million dollar house from someone in a newly socialist state, who can buy it to give you the million dollars it is supposedly worth?  The answer is... no one can because no one own owns any personal property anymore so it all belongs to the government.  That means the real property of the rich and famous cannot be sold.  Instead, it must be used.  And who deserves that luxurious house more than the locally appointed government bureaucrat who is laboring so diligently to make sure that no one is holding back any personal property or money, or labor, from the state?

So, not only does the rich owner of the million dollar house get raped by the socialists, so do you.

What about our great jobs!  Well, in a socialist state, labor is optimized according to the wisdom of government bureaucrats.  You get the job where they think you will make the best contribution to the greater good.  And, your boss will be someone who is politically connected within the socialist party, without regard to who is best at the job.  You too will not get promoted until you get all the right political tickets punched.  And, in a truly socialist society your promotion won't get you any more pay, because you don't need it and giving one person more pay than another would antithetical to the egalitarian notions underpinning the entire socialist philosophy.

Once again, you got raped.

It Won't Work That Way for Us

This is another great lie of the socialists everywhere and in the US particularly.  All of them deny or ignore the lessons of the history of abusive socialist governments by treating themselves to the conceit that we are much smarter than all the socialists who have gone before and we will do it right, avoiding the errors and abuses of past efforts and failures.

To believe that we are so much smarter than any who have gone before is simply vanity and conceit. 

Just as the leopard cannot change its spots, humanity is powerless to change its nature.  You can change yourself, but when it comes to changing someone else, the only power you have to either 1) accept them, hoping they will change, or 2) kill them so that they cannot do or say anything to contradict the perfect socialist fantasy.  And that is exactly why socialist governments are renowned for killing millions of their own people before they ever go to war with outsiders.

On this point, about recognizing the flaws of human nature, the men who wrote the US Constitution expressly recognized and made provisions for the fact that human beings are not angels.  They even used that term in the Federalist Papers where they explained and made the case for the US Constitution.  They had already seen how badly people could behave under their Articles of Confederation and had no desire to repeat their former mistakes in setting up a suitable government for this nation.  Nope, I am not giving you that reference, because I want you to spend time sifting through The Federalist Papers to find it yourself and read some advice directly from our founding fathers a little along the way.

Conclusion

Nearly six thousand years of recorded human history, with its repetitive wars, conquests, and countless perfidies both personal and national provides everyone with one clear insight.  Human nature has not materially changed in all of recorded history.  While some people will act selflessly, there are always enough selfish, greedy people out there that we must build our societies, governments, and laws in ways that will protect us from the depredations of those who are willing to get what they want by taking it from others.

Accepting and supporting socialism is not social justice.  Socialism is  rape.

References
The Communist Manifesto
The Federalist Papers
The US Constitution and Bill of Rights
The Articles of Confederation of the United States of America (not to be confused with anything associated with the US Civil War or the Confederate States of America)

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

(c) Copyright 2019 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Wealthy Socialists are Liars and Hypocrites

Tom Sheppard

11/22/2019

What do Bernie Sanders, George Soros, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Danny Devito, and Mark Ruffalo (AKA Bruce Banner) all have in common?

They all profess to embrace socialism, but they don't practice what they preach.  In other words, they are liars and hypocrites.

Unlike Mahatma Ghandi, who literally gave his all to live his beliefs, these wannabe-socialists don't walk the talk.  Not. At. All.

Granted, Elizabeth Warren claims to be "capitalist to the bone."  Notwithstanding her very public claim, the policies she proposes are decidedly socialist.  So, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, I am going to call it a duck, or in this case she walks and talks like a socialist, so I am calling her a socialist.

Here is the real test they should all take to see if they are really ready and willing to embrace socialism.  Let them give everything they own to charities for the poor (or the government) and make sure they work at least 40 hours per week while only getting an income of $45k per year, pretax.  This means they give up their bank accounts, investments, real estate, royalties, and all other sources of income except their job, which will never pay them any more than $45k per year.

Why $45k?  Because that is about the median pre-tax household income in the US.  In other words 50% of the people in the US live on that, or less.  The other 50% live on that, or more.  The actual median may be more or less than that, and we can agree to adjust the number to that, but the point is that they need to live by what ordinary, working-class people can expect to earn, and no more.

Did I mention this would be pre-tax?  Yes, taxes should be taken out of that gross pay.  Take the same amount of taxes out that anyone in that income bracket would usually pay.  That means their take-home pay is reduced by at least one-third, down to about $30k+ per year to actually live on.

Let them buy or rent a house, pay for their meals, cars, and transportation with this after-tax income.

Furthermore, regardless of what they do, contribute, invent, write, say, etc. limit their income to that $45k pre-tax ceiling.  Anything they get paid above that number goes to the state.  They never get to enjoy any fruits of their labor beyond what the $45k pre-tax income can buy.

"I wrote a best-selling book," Sanders told The New York Times in April. "If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too."

Bernie Sanders 

Bernie, that simply isn't true under socialism.  That is only true under capitalism.  Under socialism, you don't get to keep the fruits of your labors.  All the fruits of your labors go the government and the government bureaucrats give you back what they feel you need to live.  

A socialist government owns you, and all you produce.

Ann Schmidt reports that "after receiving pressure to release his tax returns during his presidential bid, Sanders released 10 years' worth of returns ... According to those returns, the independent Vermont senator's adjusted gross income was $561,293 in 2018 and he paid a 26 percent effective tax rate. In 2017, his adjusted gross income was $1,131,925."

So, Bernie would go from an annual income of anywhere from $500k or $1,132k down to just $45k per year.  On the low end, that means he would give up 90% of his income.  On the high-end, he would be giving up 96% of his current annual income. 

Given that his campaign workers had to go on strike just to get him to pay them $15 per hour, do you really think he would be happy to give up all that income and live on $45k per year?  I don't think so.

How much would they be giving up?

According to my research, what follows are the estimates of net worth of the folks I named above, in ascending order.

• Bernie Sanders (Net worth estimate: $2 million)
• Elizabeth Warren (Net worth estimate: $12 million)
• Michael Moore (Net worth estimate: $50 million)
• Susan Sarandon (Net worth estimate: $50 million)
• Danny DeVito (Net worth estimate: $80 million)
• Mark Ruffalo (Net worth estimate: $20 million)
• George Soros (Net worth estimate: $8,300 million)

While this is a lot of money, net worth doesn't really tell the whole story of what they would give up if the USA embraced socialism, as these folks profess to want.  They would give up much more.

Net worth represents the total value of your assets less the debts associated with them.  So, if you have, as many of these folks do, a house worth $1 million and it has a mortgage of $500k, the net worth of that house is $500k.

Under socialism, you would not only get that $500k mortgage cancelled, you would also lose ownership of and the use of that million dollar home.  

All their private planes, mansions, luxury cars, fine foods, expensive clothes, etc. would be taken from them.  They would all become property of the state and they could only buy what they could afford on their $45k per year (less taxes) salary.

Does anyone really believe that these very wealthy people would be at all happy about giving up ALL that they have earned and ALL that they may yet earn, for any reason, ever?  No, they don't want to give that up.  

They want YOU to give up your opportunity to ever become wealthy like them. 

Capitalism = Opportunity

None of these people inherited their wealth.  They all earned it by their skills and ingenuity in a capitalist economy that lets people vote with their money for the most skillful and ingenious by paying for goods and services.  Under socialism, the economic mechanisms that allowed them to attain their wealth would not be available to them, or anyone else.

So, if they say they want socialism, and socialism would take away all that they have, and they don't want to give up all that they have, what is it that they really want?

Actors like Sarandon, Ruffalo, and DeVito would be paid by the government only what a bureaucrat decided was appropriate.  Likewise movie directors such as Michael Moore.  And, when their performances waned in value for the state, their privileges would be curtailed or revoked and they would soon find themselves living hand-to-mouth, like every other impoverished citizen. Oh, and when they produced a "block-buster movie" they would still only get paid their $45k per year, no matter what the show did at the box office or in video sales all over the world.  As good socialists, they would all be happy to see that their acting and directing efforts produced such a wonderful cash flow for the state.

In a socialist state, wealthy investors like George Soros would not exist, nor would they be allowed to exist.  Their very activities would be unlawful.  Soros himself would likely be killed outright, or arrested and convicted on trumped up charges of treason against the state. Regardless of the path of his fall, all his wealth would be confiscated, with selected holdings made available for use by social party loyalists and those in political power.

What do they really want?

I suggest that what these wealthy "socialists" want is not socialism.  What they want is a form of oligarchy where they are the aristocrats and no one else is allowed to enter their ranks, except through either birth to aristocracy or by power politics in the government.  

As aristocrats, they would retain their wealth and their privileges. Further, they would pass these on to their children in perpetuity.  As aristocrats, their children would have unequaled opportunities to rise to political power, along with all its perks.

In their world, aside from themselves, the government would be the sole vehicle for attaining the perks of wealth and privilege.  No other profession, outside of government, would control the spigots of wealth.  Those spigots would only open for those whom the power-elite and the aristocrats decide is worthy of living an abundant life.

Everyone else will need tighten their belts "for the greater good" and learn to live without.

References

L Maxim Lott, 30 April 2019, Lifestyles of the rich and socialist: American celebs who blast capitalism while making millions, Fox News, https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-socialist-american-celebs-capitalism-millionaires

Ann Schmidt, 21 November 2019, What is Bernie Sanders' net worth?, Fox News, https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/bernie-sanders-net-worth

Anne Sraders, 21 May 2019, What Is Bernie Sanders' Net Worth?, The Street, https://www.thestreet.com/lifestyle/bernie-sanders-net-worth-14678955

Michela Tindera, 20 August 2019, How Elizabeth Warren Built A $12 Million Fortune, Forbes Magazine, https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2019/08/20/how-elizabeth-warren-built-a-12-million-fortune/#1eecc607ab57

Taylor Nicole Rogers, 28 June 2019, What George Soros' life is really like: How the former hedge-fund manager built his $8.3 billion fortune, purchased a sprawling network of New York homes, and became the topic of international conspiracy theories, Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/george-soros-net-worth-wife-sons-news-house-career-2019-6

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

(c) Copyright 2019 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Moving Toward the Future While Enjoying the Present

Tom Sheppard

7/22/2019

A few years ago my wife and I were in the process of moving out of our home of 23+ years.  The process was very wrenching for several reasons.

The last two of our five children were born while we lived in this house and all five of our children had come to adulthood while we lived here.  So, the home itself had a great amount of our hearts and lives invested in its very walls.   The fact that our move was more or less being forced on us made the whole issue of leaving the house painful in itself.  Also, moving meant getting rid of lots of accumulated "stuff."  Much of that stuff was accumulated based not on monetary value but on sentimental value.  Every parent knows what I am talking about.  The pictures your children brought home which you hung on the fridge, etc.

In the midst of all the chaos of packing boxes, loading a moving truck, and emptying the house we came upon a box with this picture laminated and taped to the top of the box.  At the time it struck me as a sort of message from God, so I took a picture of it and shared it with my wife. 

I admit, amid the pain of the move it was cold comfort.  Still, it did help me to push aside my own emotional upheaval and focus on what might be on the horizon, even if at the time the view ahead was a bit murky.

From this experience I learned to not put so much of myself into "stuff."  The things we accumulate break, tear, wear out, and are eventually discarded.  However, the things we do can remain alive in the hearts and minds of ourselves and those whose lives we touch.

Now, to me it seems like surrounding myself with a lot of stuff seems a lot like living in the past instead of looking toward the future.  If we don't turn and face the future, it is going to smack us hard on the back of the head, because it will arrive whether or not we are facing it.  I have found I would rather be looking ahead so that I can manage things coming at me much better than when I am living in the past, or looking to the past.

Don't get me wrong, I think we all need to examine our history (personal and otherwise) to learn from mistakes (and successes).  And, we need to take those lessons learned and look at what is coming toward us and happening around us and see if we can use them to help us succeed amid all the noise and chaos of the present and the visible future.  The problem comes when we stand there looking only backwards.  Too often we are staring back at failures we experienced, and they are keeping us from succeeding in the future.  Likewise, we may be staring back at our "glory days" believing that the best of us is now in the past.  Being fixated on past successes is almost as deadly as being fixated on past failures.

Learn from the past, don't try to dwell there.  On the other hand, facing the future doesn't mean trying to dwell on it either.  What we see on the horizon may never end up at our feet.  This may be because it turns aside, we turn aside, or we die before that coming wave reaches us.  Instead of dwelling in the past, or fixating on the future we must live in the present and apply all our cunning, knowledge, and energy to making today as wonderful, valuable, and lively as it can be. 

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

 The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

 (c) Copyright 2019 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Racial Supremacy: A Color-Blind Problem

Tom Sheppard

5/23/2019

IN today's Deseret News there is an "in-depth" article asking "Are white supremacist attacks and hate crimes getting enough attention from federal law enforcement?"  In addition to the primary question, the author, Matthew Brown, posits another question, "why racially motivated violence is on the rise?"  Tellingly, the author points out that "the steady climb in the number of hate crimes in America pre-dates the Trump administration."

The plain admission that this increase pre-dates the Trump administration should be enough to allow any reasonable person to set aside any prejudice (or bias) against our current POTUS and look beyond his administration for answers to the questions raised.

My thoughts on this went away from the question of attention from the Feds and instead focused on exploring why racially motivated violence is on the rise.  Because the article specifically points to white supremacy, I will share my thoughts on this with the backdrop of white supremacy rather than focusing on any non-white related hate crimes.

Racial Supremacy Comes in All Flavors

Let me begin by stating that I categorically reject racism and racial supremacy.  I find racism an abhorrent exercise in ignorance, prejudice, and hatred.  Let me also be clear that I utterly reject the notion, injected into some or our middle school textbooks, that racism is only about whites being prejudiced.  It may sound a bit crazy to say it, but racism is color blind, it is not a whites-only crime.  To put a point on it, in World War II, the Japanese believed they were "the superior race."  They disdained, and institutionally treated as less than human, the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, whites, blacks, and anyone who was not Japanese.  In that regard they were both a perfect and ironic partner with the Nazis of Germany who believed in the superiority of the Aryan race.  The unrealized reality of World War II is that had the Axis won, they would have eventually, inevitably, gone to war against each other.  The racial imperatives of their respective platforms would have forced it to happen.

Closer to home, the preaching of the likes of Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright, are by any rational measure both anti-white and black supremacist.

Al Sharpton

Jeremiah Wright

Mainstream Media Promotes Racial Supremacy

Psychology has very well documented the "fight or flight" autonomic response people have to threats.  The simple reason for a rise in racially motivated crimes is a rise in racial supremacists of all colors.  Add to this the media barrage against white males which has been going on at least since the days when Carrol O'Connor put forward the ignorant bigot Archie Bunker as the epitome of the white working-class man and a rise in "white supremacy" is bound to follow.  The white supremacists are feeling threatened by legal, societal, and media actions which undermine the perceived foundations of their legitimacy and threaten their ability to be taken seriously and heard in the public square.  While many will flee this conflict, at least for a while, an increasing number will feel their backs are against the wall and will feel compelled to take a stand, perhaps even a violent stand, against those who seem to trying not simply to un-empower them, but to wage a war of extinction on them.

Racial Violence is a Reaction to Racial Supremacy

The reality is that racial and hate crimes will continue to rise as long as two things are happening.  1) As long as racism is institutionally supported and 2) while racial supremacists are being widely heard.

Because of the 1st Amendment we cannot deny racial supremacists their place in the public forum.  However, we can continue to combat institutionalized racism.  Right now, the majority of institutionalized racism exists in Hollywood.  Movies and television shows for at least the last twenty years have typically portrayed the straight, white, male (Archie Bunker) as everything from a mere buffoon to an evil villain. Favorable portrayals of straight, white, males in sitcoms on national TV was limited to Tim Allen's Last Man Standing, which the major networks cancelled regardless of its ratings.

When you couple unrelenting media bias against straight, white, males with the unvarnished willingness of the mainstream media to lend credibility to racial supremacists who are attacking whites and trying to invoke misguided notions of racial guilt and racial shame it should be no surprise that the result sometimes is violence.

All Racial Supremacy is Founded on Lies

The problem with all this racial supremacy is that it is all founded on falsehoods.  The reality is that brown, black, white, red, yellow, pink, or otherwise, we are all one race.  We are the human race.  Whatever genetic anomalies have occurred over the millennia which created the diversity of our skin colors has not created multiple versions of the human race.  So, if we want to feel superior, let's revel in the superiority of the human race, and quit stressing over our skin colors, hair colors, eye colors, etc.

To justify their enslavement of Africans, for a time Europeans promoted the notion that Africans were actually a species of ape.  They promoted the notion that Africans were not of the human race, but were a simian race.  Not only has science put that silly notion to rest, it was never more than an attempt to rationalize the treatment of fellow human beings in an inhumane way by pretending they weren't actually human.  Even today, to succeed, racial supremacists must demonize their opponents, changing them from human beings into some incarnation of evil or vile stupidity.

Just Say "No!"

So, the next time you see a TV show, or someone in front of a crowd (in person or on Facebook), calling those who disagree with them "evil", "idiots", "brainless", "stupid", etc. take a pause and realize that the speaker is trying to dehumanize those who disagree and by doing that is directly promoting the sort of unreasoning hatred and disdain that leads to both the crimes of racism and genocide.

The answer, however, is not to respond with equal vitriol and insults.  Rather, it is to make calm, rational, fact-based responses and to disengage when others clearly lose their hold on sanity and devolve into foul-language riddled rants which are aimed to incite emotion rather than citing fact and appealing to reason.  As I have said elsewhere, learn to disagree without being disagreeable.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

 (c) Copyright 2019 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Detoxing the Internet

Quarrel (C) 2010 by Lorenzo Rossi used with permission through DepositPhotos.com

Detoxing the Internet

Disagreeing Without Being Disagreeable

By

Tom Sheppard

4/9/2019

Civil discourse is a hallmark of a civilized society.  Civil behavior is based on people accepting and abiding by a set of common rules for behavior.  With the advent of social media it seems that civil discourse has suffered a nearly fatal blow.  It seems no one can comment on a news article or a social media posting without either enduring the abuse of some ill-mannered internet troll, or engaging in the online equivalent of a bar-room brawl.

When I was a young man, my mother taught me how to disagree without being disagreeable.  Others may have learned this while participating in a debate club.  Regardless, there are a few simple rules which enable civil discourse.  What follows are seven simple rules for civil discourse.

1.      Assume good intent – Consciously make the assumption that those who disagree with you are:

• Sincere – they believe what they are saying.
• Honest – they are speaking from a place of integrity and not deliberately lying.
• Good – they want a world that is better than what we have today.

2.      Don’t demonize – This follows closely on the notion of assuming good intent.  When we demonize those whose views differ from ours, we turn their honest difference into a battle between good and evil.  Demonizing makes you blind to the good in others and paints everything they do, regardless of intent or outcome, as something evil that you must oppose or denigrate.

3.      Don’t deify – This ties closely to not demonizing and is the opposite side of the same coin.  When we deify our own views we assume perfection and the mantle of total goodness in oppositions to the evil of our opponents.  This will often lead to condoning the inexcusable in those who share our views and condemning the innocent mistakes of those who oppose us. We become blind to our own faults and those who agree with us, and paint everything we and ours do, regardless of intent or outcome, as something good that must be supported and cannot be criticized.

4.      No ad hominem attacks – Dictionary.com defines “ad hominem” as an adjective with two meanings:

1.       “appealing to one's prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one's intellect or reason.” 

2.       “attacking an opponent's character rather than answering his argument.”

The ad hominem is the most common tool of the Internet Troll, who, when confronted with inconvenient facts or an intractable opponent resorts to insults.  E.g., “you must be an idiot to believe that”, “looks like you drank the Kool-Aid for them.” As soon as you resort to insulting someone with a different view you have lost your argument and your credibility.

5.      Separate facts from belief or opinion - it is fine to include facts, beliefs and opinions. Just don’t put forward a belief or opinion as a fact.

6.      Take time to back-check your facts – no one wants to be guilty of spreading lies or presenting fake news.  Fake news seems to boil down to one of four types:

• 1.       Outright Lies (whoppers) – presenting as facts things which never happened.
• 2.       Soundbite Lies – twisting facts by ignoring or omitting the context.
• 3.       Defense Lies – twisting facts by ignoring facts which might not support your point.
• 4.       Presenting opinions and beliefs as facts.  Use reasonably vetted sources for your facts.   Just because Snopes.com says it is or isn’t so, doesn’t make it true or false.  Read your sources with a critical eye to see if they are playing to your own biases, or those of others.

7.      Apply the Golden Rule – Yes. It is old fashioned.  Regardless, it is tried and true that if you treat others with same level of respect you want from them, you will likely have a more pleasant interaction.

Some may argue that civil discourse is irrelevant and useless.  I disagree.  The reason we engage in discourse is to understand and to be understood.  Ultimately, we are hoping we can persuade others to our viewpoint.  Following the rules of civil discourse may not bring others to embrace our views, but failing to follow them ensures that they won’t even be listening to us.  Uncivil discourse poisons the well of communication and leaves us all deaf, dumb, ignorant, and stupid

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

(c) Copyright 2019 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Are You Too Selfish for Socialism?

Ocasio Cortez in Action

Tom Sheppard

3/22/2019

There are lots of folks today talking about the wonders of socialism.  OCA and Bernie Sanders are both promising free education and free healthcare.  There seems to be lots of support for their ideas from the so-called Millennials.  But, I am not sure the Millennials, or anyone else, is really selfless enough to live with real-world socialism.

FREE EDUCATION - NO STUDENT DEBT

You won't have to worry about student debt under socialism.  But, it isn't because the education is free.  It is because most people won't be allowed to go to College.  You will take tests along the way from your earliest years.  Based on the tests you will be assigned a job or allowed to further your education in the field that the tests indicate you will succeed at, if the government has need of people with that degree.

If you don't have good enough test scores to convince the government to send you to college, you won't be able to go work in your Uncle's business, because having a business is subversive and illegal.  You won't be able to start your own business either, so you can say goodbye to any dream you might ever had of living a life of abundance.  You will spend the rest of your life leaving the dream of Nietzsche, living a life of quiet desperation.

If you are one of the ones lucky enough to be selected to go to college, you can forget about taking a year off, or even a semester off.  If you don't get good enough grades, you will be removed from college and assigned a job.  Also, you can forget about frat-house parties and college pranks.

Education is a serious government business under socialism.  It is your civic duty to do your best, and to complete your college education as quickly as possible so that you can begin to contribute to the society that paid for your education.

College bacchanals WILL get your thrown out of college.  If you don't end up taking a detour through jail, you will count yourself lucky as you put your dreams of college in the trash and take the job the government assigns you to, even if it is working at a collective farm, picking potatoes in Idaho.

One last point.  As a college student, don't even think about staging a sit-in, or mounting any other kind of protest.  That will get you beaten, thrown out of school, and carted off to a re-education camp in North Dakota, or the Bering Straits of Alaska.  If you survive that, you will never the see the inside of a college again, unless you are assigned to be a janitor there.

Just to recap on the Free Education under socialism:

1. You won't get to go to college unless your test scores in high school were good enough.
2. You won't get to stay in college if your grades don't stay good enough.
3. There won't be any partying at college for you, or anyone else there.
4. If you are thrown out of college for bad behavior, you WILL go to jail.
5. If you flunk out of college, you will work at whatever job the government assigns you to, even if it is manual labor on a farm in Idaho.

Of course, you will be happy to accept all these conditions, because you believe everyone shouldn't be selfish, and you want to be a good citizen, doing your civic duty.

Zero Unemployment

If the socialist government hasn't quite progressed to the point where they assign your job (they haven't yet in Denmark), that is simply because the unemployment problem hasn't gotten bad enough yet.  When it does, they will fix unemployment by guaranteeing everyone a "good paying" government job.  You will take the job they assign you, or you be labeled a subversive and you will go to jail and get re-educated to quit your selfish ways, or it will kill you.

Live Rent Free

You won't have to worry about rent payments or house payments under socialism.  You will live in the apartment that a government official decides is appropriate for you.  Most of them will be very much like the public housing projects of the poverty stricken inner cities of the US today.  They will be cold, gray, lifeless buildings designed for their use, not wasting anything on pleasing aesthetics.

No House Payments Either

Forget about needing to save up to buy a house.  You won't get a house.  Ever.  Unless you manage to become one of the very, very top 1/2 of 1% of government officials.  And when you get to that level, you not only have a house, but you can go to stores that are stocked like an average supermarket here in the US.  Below that level, you won't see anything that even vaguely resembles a Kroger, and certainly not a Wal Mart.

No Big Utility Bills

If the USSR (70+ years of socialism in practice) is a good indicator, although the costs for your electricity will be low, you won't want to leave the water running too long in the shower under socialism either.  No long-hot showers.  And make sure to turn off the lights when you leave your apartment.  Because the state is paying the hot water bill, if you use too much that makes you both selfish and a subversive.  And, if they label you a subversive, your life is pretty much over.  First you will go to jail.  When your trial comes up, they will find you guilty and sentence you to spend some time in a re-education camp where they will beat all the selfishness out of you, or you will die as they try it.

You may think I am painting an overly grim picture here.  However, I am actually doing two things.  First, I am carrying the tenets of socialism to their logic ends.  Second, I am looking at what has actually happened in socialist countries.
Read on for a few tidbits from history.

The Soviet Union was supposed to be “a society of true democracy,” but in many ways it was no less repressive than the czarist autocracy that preceded it. 

From The Fall of the Soviet Union, The History Channel

Housing in the USSR

Communist Era Housing in Russia

"Poverty and privation drove people from the countryside, while Soviet official industrialization campaigns encouraged (and sometimes forced) their movement to cities. From the 1920s into the 1950s, a significant number of Soviet families lived in communal apartments, while many lived in worse conditions in barracks or "dormitories" (mass housing for workers). For many families, gaining a room in a communal apartment represented a step up in their housing, especially if they found themselves in the most desirable cities of Moscow or Leningrad. Like Iraida Yakovlevna from "A Room for Her Daughter," many people without housing, especially people from the rural areas, tried to get work as janitors so as to gain a room in the city.

"In the Soviet Union, housing in cities belonged to the government. It was distributed by municipal authorities or by government departments based on an established number of square meters per person. As a rule, tenants had no choice in the housing they were offered. Rent and payment for communal services like water and electricity did not form a significant part of a family's budget. They did not cover the real costs, and were subsidized by the government.

From Communal Living in Russia

Free Education

"The goal of education policy was to teach the masses how or read and write, and channel talented young people into science and technology. It was oriented more towards meeting the needs of society and the state rather than fostering individual development. Schools were free, compulsory, universal and classless and were used disseminate Communist doctrine as well as educate children. The set of ethics stressed the primacy of the collective over the interests of the individual. Therefore, for both teachers and students, creativity and individualism were discouraged.[Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

"The Soviet system dictated what classes university students would take and decided what jobs they would take after they graduated.

From Education in the Soviet Era

Zero Unemployment

"the right and the duty to work were enshrined in the Constitution of the USSR"

From The Soviet Union Achieving Full Employment

• There were no unemployment benefits.
• If you were out of a job for more than four months you were legally labeled a "parasite" and could go to prison.

Millennials and Socialism

Jessica Litras, a self-confessed Millennial, notes five reasons Millennials are considered selfish.  Along the way, she notes a few points which, although not selfish, will definitely get you on the wrong side of a socialist government.  Her five points are:

1. Glued to their phones - we have adopted the innovative life.
2. Love social media - we like to promote our lives and our accomplishments.
3. Spend lots of money - we are more concerned about living in the present than denying ourselves something so we can have a better future.
4. No rush for marriage or kids - we don't want to share our lives with others or reproduce
5. Put themselves first  - we make decisions based on whether or not it will make us happy.

Here is the rub.  Each of these things won't play well in a socialist world where every act, every word, every thought, must first be about how does this make things better for everyone else?

The innovative life - Innovation is based on creativity and creativity is based on individuality and the opportunity to explore different ways of looking at things.  Looking at things in an unapproved way in a socialist country is how you get to be unemployed and unemployable, if not in jail.

Promoting yourself and your accomplishments is all about you, the individual.  That is about as anti-socialist as you can get.  There is no place in socialism for the needs, wants, or accomplishments of the individual, unless they are for the good of everyone.

Spending lots of money - good luck with that.  Money, as we know it, doesn't exist in socialism.

No rush for marriage or kids - "we don't want to share..."  That pretty much says it all.  Selfish behaviors are frowned on in socialism.

Will it make us happy? - Socialism is not about your individual happiness.  It is all about the happiness of the collective.  If you make decisions because they make you happy, eventually the socialists will throw you in jail for it.

Litras admits that "It’s made millennials open, outspoken and more comfortable with not only what they to say, but the person that they are."

All of this little jaunt through some historical facts entirely avoids the human costs of implementing socialism.  It doesn't speak to the millions who have died because they were 'too selfish' to live a life dedicated to the common good where even their thoughts and every word had to be unoffensive to the government and its officials.

The bottom line here is this.  The propaganda and misinformation about socialism is that it is all about doing what is good and right.  The reality is that socialism is all about doing and thinking what you are told to do.  No more, and no less.  So individualism, all those things that make you who you are, those things that make you standout, they are not tolerated in socialism.  

The only thing tolerated in socialism is blind obedience to the orders of those above you. 

Is that really what Millennials want?  I don't think so.  But, it is what they are working hard to get.

~

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

(c) Copyright 2019 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.