On The Verge Of 78

I'll be 78 years old next month.

Is it enough to become aware of yourself? Must you share all such awarenesses with others?

What's the point of memory?

No matter where I go or what I do, it's me. It's always ever me.

What's insight? Is insight different than memory?

What is acceptance of self? What do you do once you've accepted yourself? Is there anything beyond acceptance of self?

Can you reject yourself? I imagine rejecting yourself would be hell - literally.

What's conscience? If you're an old agnostic, what's conscience beyond conclusions you've drawn about what you will and won't do?

What's consciousness?

Kathy, Zoey, Zach and I all live together. We're a family. We're a family that exists solely because we choose to be a family.

This is my only family - my intimate family - my nuclear family.

Did Zoey and Zach really choose to be part of a family with Kathy and me?

Zoey and Zach are my constant companions. They're with me all the time. They're ever vigilant. Their vigilance is clearly a matter of choice.

Kathy and I own roughly 1.5 acres of land. We designed and oversaw the building of a house on it. The house is our home on our island.

We maintain our home and our island. Maintaining is a daily process. Our maintenance actions are our daily chores. Some days we have more to do than others.

I love Kathy. I love Zoey. I love Zach. I want to be with them. Wanting to be with them is love.

I believe each of us will eventually die - cease to be. I accept our finiteness. It doesn't prevent me from loving each of them.

Loving is about being in the moment. Loving is always a matter of choice - a matter of freewill.

Loving is a choice I make every moment of everyday.

Life is being in the midst of chaos. Chaos is beyond definition. Chaos is infinite. Chaos is all there is.

Life is choosing to survive every moment of everyday. Life is love.

Kathy, Zoey, Zach and I are Earthlings. Earth is the source of our lives. Earth is our Mother.

Mother is the source of ever so many lives. I have many siblings. Everything I see, hear, experience is a sibling.

Some of my siblings would end my life if they had the chance.

Mother is beyond me. I don't get to question Mother. Mother owes me nothing. I owe everything I have to Mother. I owe my being to Mother.

I don't know if Mother is conscious. I don't know if Mother knows I exist. It's truly not important.

I'm thankful. At this moment, I'm totally thankful. I love.

Love is all you need ...

Holy Moly!

It's Either The Empire Or It's Us/U.S.

I just finished Chalmers Johnson's "Dismantling The Empire". It was written in 2010 and it's more relevant now than it was then.

I'd never heard of Chalmers Johnson until a few weeks ago. Someone on Twitter recommended I read his works. She suggested I start with this book.

I will now be looking to read 3 other of his books: "Blowback"; "The Sorrows of Empire"; and "Nemesis; The Last Days of the American Republic". These books are known as "The Blowback Trilogy" despite the fact they weren't written as a trilogy.

Chalmers is to non-fiction what Aldus Huxley is to fiction. For me that's saying a mouthful - high praise indeed.

The dystopian society Chalmers is writing about is the United States. It's real. It's showing signs of wear. It's on the verge of bankruptcy. It's descending into fascism.

I can reduce this book to a simple message. That being, Imperialism and Democracy are mutually exclusive.

I believe this. It may seem obvious, but the truth of it was never as clear to me as it is now. Chalmers presents facts - powerful facts.

The United States emerged from the Cold War as the planet's only superpower. We did that by shifting our manufacturing from one supporting a peace time economy to one based upon producing military goods while politically supporting our own global military expansion.

President Eisenhower tried to warn us about this in his farewell address.

Our military bases now form a web around the planet. Building, sustaining and supporting them requires us to go into more and more debt.

We spend more on our military than any other country. In fact, we now spend more that the next nine countries spending the most on their militaries combined.

The post World War II rise of our intelligence gathering agency - the CIA - coupled with the increasing privatization of our military and intelligence gathering services has weakened our Legislative branch while strengthening our Executive branch.

By spreading our military manufacturing across our states, we have created a national workforce dependent upon manufacturing for the military.

By spreading our network of bases around the world, we have caused mortal harm to many peoples. We are reaping, and will continue to reap, "blowback" - the unintended consequences of our military expansion and aggression.

It's clear to me, as a result of reading this book, that we're headed toward economic collapse and authoritarian government - a government that has no alternative but to fail.

The title for this book is derived from the "10 Steps Toward Liquidating The Empire" that Chalmers outlines at the end of the book in Chapter 15, "Dismantling The Empire" an essay he wrote on 7/30/2009.

The book is actually a compendium of Chalmers' essays - each chapter being one essay - 15 in all.

During the 13 years since this book was published, our politicians have clearly ignored the perils Chalmers has been ever so eloquently, for ever so long, trying to warn us about.

We have clearly not heeded his message and the consequences are all too apparent now.

Chalmers died on November 20, 2010. He didn't live to see Donald Trump assume the Presidency. He didn't live to see the degree to which our people have become politically polarized. He didn't live to see the January 6th Insurrection, but he did his darndest to warn us of where we were headed.

Chalmers writings are not driven by partisan political concerns. He's uniquely apolitical. His concern is for us/U.S.

Holy Moly!

Makers And Takers

Mitt Romney, a child of privilege, divided our people into "makers" and "takers". In 2012, Mitt ran for President against Barack Obama. Mitt said this about voters who would vote for Obama, "My job is not to worry about those people."

Mitt was simply channeling our founding fathers, the framers of our Constitution, when he said this. Like Mitt, the framers were all white men who owned property.

Did you know 12 of our Presidents owned slaves? Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd President, the man who wrote "The Declaration Of Independence", owned over 300 slaves. George Washington, our very 1st President owned 317 slaves.

Mitt is a religious man. He's a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. His forefathers were polygamists. His great-grandfather had 5 wives and one of his great-great-grandfathers had 12.

When our Constitution was ratified slavery was legal, women were not allowed to vote or own property and only property owners were allowed to vote.

Our Constitution created an oligarchy. I describe an oligarchy as an aristocracy without a king. Southern slave owners were the wealthiest people in the country at the time our Constitution was ratified - they were true American oligarchs.

 

The 13 original colonies became the United States. Each state was a separate country with its own Constitution. The states were only "united" to protect themselves from invasion from foreign countries. They were afraid England might make a serious attempt to come back and put an end to their revolution.

So what has this all got to do with Heather Cox Richardson's "How The South Won The Civil War"? 

Heather is an historian, and her book is about United States history - our real history - our true history - white, male property owner (oligarch) history. 

I started out talking about Mitt Romney because Mitt is a modern-day American oligarch. He was accurate in dividing our population up into 2 classes - the wealthy ruling class and the rest of us.

Mitt just got his wires crossed as to who the "makers" and "takers" are. Mitt engaged in what Orwell described as "doublespeak".

The true "makers" are the actual people who do all the work - the workers - the vast majority of us.

The "takers" are the tiny percent of wealthy, white male "elites" who believe they are superior to the rest of us - the people who have "profited" from our labors - those who take the lion's share of everything we earn and leave us to divide up what's left - the crumbs.

The "takers" are those who want to oppress women and suppress democracy - they're against universal suffrage. The "takers" don't like minority and indigenous peoples. The "takers" want to prevent most of us from voting.

The "takers" buy politicians. They want to make sure our Constitution protects them as opposed to us.

"How The South Won The Civil War" documents how the oligarchs who wrote and ratified our Constitution have maintained power - right on through the Civil War - right on through various civil rights' movements - right on through election cycles - right on to today.

The "takers" manipulate and divide us. The "takers" turned a blind eye to violence against women and minorities in the past and they're continuing to do so today as well.

If we're not very careful, the "takers" are going to take us back to a feudal state. The "takers" are going to make us into serfs.

***

If you want to learn more about the "takers", try these books.

Holy Moly!

From Suffolk County to Sussex County - The More Things Change The More They Remain The Same

Kathy and I both migrated to Long Island with our parents - it was their decision. We found each other in Suffolk County, we went to school there, we got married there, we started our family there and then we left there in 1980.

Our parents migrated from New York City. When they moved to the Island, the Island was referred to as the "country". They were moving to escape urban congestion. They wanted a wholesome place for their families.

Ironically, Kathy and I left the Island for the same reason - we wanted to live in a rural area that wasn't drowning in congestion.

Prior to leaving the Island, I spent over a decade as an advocate while working for both county and state agencies. I didn't aspire to advocacy. My advocacy arose as a response to the corruption I found in both the community and my workplaces.

My family left Brooklyn in 1959 to move to Suffolk County. We traveled the Belt Parkway to get there. When you go East on the Belt from Brooklyn, you go through Nassau County and from there you cross the county line into Suffolk County.

The first memory I have of taking that ride is vivid. We left urban blight and the more we drove, the more we found ourselves in progressively more rural territory.

Suffolk County used to have large farms. It had a shellfish industry. It had pristine beaches. It was affordable. The air and land and water were all clean.

My father paid the price for our move to the country. He had to commute daily to Manhattan for work. My father was not unique in that regard. Lots of Suffolk's new residents were "commuters". My father took the Long Island Railroad - others drove.

Initially, my father's commute was over an hour each way - over time, that increased. People driving could easily spend hours going each way. The Long Island Expressway was one giant parking lot during commuting hours.

When I was in early 20s, I spent two summer's clamming. My friend Joe had a small runabout with an outboard motor and we would go out to the flats, jump into chest high water with bushel baskets floating inside inner tubes. When we got in the water we would shuffle backwards with our feet feeling for clams. When we felt one, we would go under to retrieve them and put them in the bushel basket. 

We were treaders. We wore Keds. We would take everything out of the inside of our new Keds so all there was between our feet and the sand beneath us was a thin rubber membrane - a membrane that saved our feet from being sliced up as we shuffled.

We got out to the flats at sunrise and left to go to the markets in midafternoon. We put in a long hard day, but we were each making about $50 a day and that was big money - some days we could each make $100.

We didn't work on weekends. We didn't work on bad days - rainy, cold, etc.

It wasn't until after I graduated college that I began to get an inkling of what the adults who were commuting were facing - there was a scarcity of paying jobs on the Island. If you didn't want to commute, you took tests and hoped for a civil service job.

I started what became my first career as a caseworker for the Family Services Division of the Suffolk County Department of Social Services in Bay Shore. I left after a year. I left after trying to organize the caseworkers - not in terms of wages and benefits - in terms of client advocacy - in terms of agency accountability.

I took a job as a social worker assistant at Northeast Nassau Psychiatric Center on the grounds of Kings Park State Hospital - I was working for the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene. I worked at various NYSDMH facilities in Suffolk County for over 10 years. I had escaped the county frying pan and jumped into a much worse state fire.

I met Kathy when I attended the School of Social Welfare at Stony Brook. I was pursuing an MSW and she was pursuing a BS in social work.

I built a tiny house on 1/16th of an acre after graduation. The property taxes were just over $2,000 a year. I couldn't afford to do anything after becoming a homeowner - my mortgage and taxes ate up most of my pay each month.

When Kathy and I married it was with the understanding that we would leave New York for the "country" when I finished my pension requirements with NYS - by that time we had an infant daughter, Jessica. We moved to Virginia.

Ten years prior to our fleeing the Island for greener pastures, I worked hard with others to prevent Suffolk County from being destroyed and rendered unlivable. We put up a great fight. We failed.

Suffolk Country was killed by many things, but they were all the result of greed and inhumanity. The county was being overdeveloped with houses and shopping malls. The land, the sea and the air were all contaminated. Property taxes went through the roof, inflation (?) was out of control.

The house we sold in 1980 for under $30,000 would sell for about $500,000 now. The property taxes are close to $10,000 a year.

Before we left the Island, we were fighting over development. We tried to get the county to require at least one acre per single family home - the exact acreage might be higher depending upon the ability of the ground to process waste - septic system.

The developers fought back. You could easily put 4 or more houses on an acre if there were sewers.

We fought against sewers based upon quality of life, pollution and attending consequences - like desalinating the bay and killing the shellfish industry.

The sewers went in, property taxes rose and the shellfish industry went down the tubes.

We also fought against nuclear power plants. We won half that battle - one plant went in, the second one was stopped. There was an increase in birth defects and cancer among those living nearer to the power plant.

Suffolk County had another unique problem. Over half of the institutionalized mental patients in NYS were housed in the world's 3 largest mental hospitals in Suffolk County - NYS housed over 50% of all the institutionalized mental patients in the world - a good deal of those were the result of urban living - they came from NYC - there are consequences to poverty, unemployment and crime.

When NYS decided to "deinstitutionalize", tens of thousands of people were dumped from state mental institutions into the community without proper resources - homeless former patients became a new problem.

Suffolk County was a Republican County. The good old boy network controlled what happened in Suffolk County. There was no political solution to the County's problems, the problems only got worse.

I haven't been to Suffolk County in over a decade. The last time I went there was when my sister died. To get there I went North from Delaware, crossed into New Jersey and then crossed over onto Staten Island and eventually entered New York by taking the Verrazano Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn, NY and taking the Belt Parkway going East.

My last journey from Brooklyn to the Island via the Belt was nothing like my first. I could no longer tell where Brooklyn ended and the country began - the country was gone. When you got off the Belt, you could easily think yourself in Brooklyn - dense housing, congestion, filth.

On that trip I visited my old clamming partner. He lived in a house equivalent in size to the one we live in now. They're easily paying $20,000 a year in property taxes.

Suffolk County has a premier "beach" area - the Hamptons. There are multi-million-dollar homes on large acreage in the Hamptons.

Suffolk County also has a small native American reservation.

Like all of Long Island, Suffolk County is dealing with rising sea water and the consequences of global warming in addition to the consequences of over development.

I remember reading about Long Island years ago when medical waste started washing up on Jones Beach. I remember reading about landfills on Staten Island being maxed out and barges loaded with garbage unable to find a place to unload. I remember reading about homes on the Island starting to sink into the ground.

When we left Suffolk County we moved to Virginia, then to New Hampshire, then to Colorado, and finally to Delaware. We moved to Delaware in 1996. I've lived in Delaware for about a third of my life, Kathy has lived in Delaware for a little more than a third of her life. We initially bought a house in Magnolia - Kent County. We sold that and moved to Milton - Sussex County almost 10 years ago.

Our daughter graduated high school before we left Magnolia. She now lives in Middletown Delaware. She's married. She has 3 children. She has an excellent job - she has an actual career.

She lives across the river from a nuclear reactor. Our grandchildren attend charter schools.

Kathy and I designed our current home. It's not a large home. It's a ranch house. There's a barn next to our home that houses a private art gallery. Kathy is an artist.

I was the general contractor building our house and barn. We live on 1.5 acres. Our house is not part of a homeowner's association. We have our own septic and well water. We've installed solar panels and are almost self-sufficient in terms of energy use. We have a geo-thermal heat pump for heating and air conditioning. We have an on-demand hot water heater. The house is properly insulated and we are basically non-polluting.

Kathy and I are both retired, senior citizens. We paid less than a $1,000 in property taxes last year. We have a small vegetable garden and Kathy is a well known artist in this area. I make prints of Kathy's work and I do the same for other artists. We've finally made it to the country.

Worth mentioning - when we lived in Colorado we bought a house in a development in Louisville in Boulder County. The quality of construction of the homes in our massive, sprawling development cannot compare to what we have now. We bought that home new in 1992 - it's gone now - it burned down in a massive fire that destroyed almost all the homes in our development in December, 2021 - about 1,000 homes are no more.

So here we are in Sussex County, Delaware. We're nearing the end of our life cycle and I think we're ending off in a county facing similar problems to those we left when we left Suffolk County.

Developments are overtaking Sussex County - mostly here on the Eastern Side of the county. Development has overtaken infrastructure and traffic congestion goes from bad to worst as we approach Summer - the tourist season.

There's talk in Sussex County of sewers and failing sewers. There's talk of road construction strategies - roundabouts seem to be big at the moment.

As the farmland and forests in Sussex County disappear, so do the wild animals. Agricultural waste and animal waste is contaminating rivers and waterways and ground water. The sea is rising and the ground beneath us is actually sinking - double trouble.

Thousands of new residents require medical, educational, police, fire and emergency support. There's a growing demand for employment.

The homeless population in Sussex County is growing. Meanwhile, new houses are being built on flood plains and necessary buffers aren't being preserved - they're being diminished when they should be expanding.

For the record, Sussex County is a Republican County. We have a good old boy network. There's a lack of meaningful planning for growth and what planning there is is not backed up with enforceable legislation.

Sussex County includes Rehoboth Beach with its multi-million-dollar homes. It has a native American population as well.

Kent County has gotten worse since we left. Crime has definitely increased.

We use Route 1 (Coastal Highway) to go from South to North. They're now removing the traffic light at Route 16. When they do that there will be nothing to cause traffic to pause as people come South in the Summer. Route 1 will be a parking lot between Kent County and the 5 lights in Lewes.

I'm not sure any of this can be avoided. I'm absolutely sure we won't be able to avoid it if we're fighting with each other over partisan political issues.

How many houses a given area of land can sustain is not a matter of politics, it's a matter of science - many different sciences. Sadly, science has been supplanted by opinion not only here is Sussex County, but in the country as a whole.

Our current experience with a pandemic demonstrates how partisan political issues take precedence over medical, health and scientific strategizing and problem solving.

We have no plans to leave Sussex County. When we go, our useful organs will be donated and our remains will be cremated - we will not be taking up further space. At 76 and having survived cancer twice, I'm not sure how long I have.

When we designed our house we made sure it would work for us should we become infirmed - one level, 3 foot wide doorways, easy access to everything.

We planned our home, we researched design and technology, we hired varied, competent, skilled local subcontractors to do the work. Planning was our responsibility and we did so in compliance with law and statutes.

Who's planning our county? What exactly are we developing? What are we leaving for our children and grandchildren?

Holy Moly!

The Right Paradigm

On October 23, 2008, Alan Greenspan testified before the House Oversight Committee. This is part of what he said - pay particular attention to what he says at about 5:36 til the end of the video - it only takes a minute for him to go to Wonderland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5lZPWNFizQ

In 2010, Alan Greenspan explained away the Great Recession of 2008 in his testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

This is part of what he said. It appears on page 7,

"For almost a half century, we have depended on our highly sophisticated system of financial risk management to contain such market breakdowns. That paradigm was so thoroughly embraced by academia, central banks, and regulators that by 2006 it became the core of global regulatory standards (Basel II).

The risk management paradigm nonetheless harbored a fatal flaw. In the growing state of euphoria, managers at financial institutions, along with regulators including but not limited to the Federal Reserve, failed to fully comprehend the underlying size, length, and potential impact of the so-called negative tail of the distribution of risk outcomes that was about to be revealed as the post-Lehman Brothers crisis played out. For decades, with little to no data, almost all analysts, in my experience, had conjectured a far more limited tail risk. That led to more than a half century of significantly and chronically undercapitalized financial intermediaries, arguably the major failure of the private risk management system."

Yes, Alan said that. He said a lot more as well. Here's the full text of his testimony.

https://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-testimony/2010-0407-Greenspan.pdf

Greenspan's 2008 testimony left me speechless. It basically boiled down to "We don't know what planet we're on."

Turns out, that's true. It's at the core of what Greenspan and all the rest of them got wrong.

We live on Earth. Earth is a wonderful planet with finite resources and we've been abusing it sorely and pretending its resources are infinite.

The other thing these boys got wrong is that they believe it's okay for a small percentage of wealthy people to amass all the wealth and forget about all the people who have nothing.

They simply ignore things like climate change, poverty, plague, global warming, trends toward fascism, etc.

I'm not an economist. I have nothing invested in the stock market. Having said that, I knew we were in big trouble in 2,000 and predicted economic disaster in some of my online posts and letters to the editor.

My favorite essay was titled, "Your House Isn't Worth More, Your Money Is Worth Less".

Since Trump was elected, I've been complaining about the banks and financial institutions whenever I get the chance - not that anybody is listening to me. I just like to go on record in an attempt to warn people when things are going bad.

I've had a slow, understated critique of the market and our economy going on Twitter for quite a long time. A few months ago, someone suggested I read "Doughnut Economics" by Kate Raworth.

I did. I will be forever grateful for the suggestion and to Kate Raworth.

For starters, Kate knows what planet we're on. She's aware of Earth and she's aware of what we've been doing to it.

Kate is also keenly aware of all the people on the planet and the consequences of writing anyone off.

She came up with an economic theory that takes it all into account. She even drew a picture so we could grasp it more easily. The picture looks like a doughnut - hence the title of her book and what she calls her theory.

*** Spoiler Alert *** There's none of Alan Greenspan's word salad in the book. Kate is very easy to understand. She explains things using everyday language.

For those who want a fuller explanation, Kate reviews economic theory from its origins to present day. Yeah, reading this book is like taking a Introduction To Economics course.

Kate explains things like GDP and growth and how we've been basing our political economic strategies on theories that are using the wrong paradigm.

She explains how exponential growth is impossible to sustain in a real world scenario - this pertains to those of us on Earth in 2021.

"It starts with recognizing that every economy - local to global - is embedded within society and within the living world." This appears on pg. 244.

If your tired of hearing the same old, regurgitated tripe that has gotten us to the brink of economic ruin several times and now has us on the brink of extinction and misery, read this book.

If you're studying economics you should already be reading it. If you're not you're in the wrong program. If you're thinking of studying economics, you might want to make sure you attend a school that understands what Kate is saying and includes it in the curriculum.

Here's an easy way to get acquainted with Kate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhcrbcg8HBw 

Holy Moly!

When Your House Is Being Burglarized, You Don't Call A Caterer

The Electoral Process was never meant to be a remedy for treason, Insurrection and civil war. There were no voting booths at Gettysburg.

Everybody elected to office, everybody working for government, everybody in the military, every police officer, every judge, every prosecutor, takes an oath of office.

There are many different oaths of office out there, but they all have one thing in common. All oath takers agree to obey the rules.

Outlaws break the rules. They disobey the law. When they do so, it's up to those in law enforcement who've taken an oath to uphold the law, to stop outlaws from continuing to break the law and arrest them and hold them pending trial.

It's up to those oath takers working in our various judicial systems to try those accused of crimes and hold them accountable for the crimes they've been found guilty of committing.

In all criminal cases the place the crime is committed and the nature of the crime determines who has jurisdiction in terms of arresting, detaining, trying and sentencing those involved with the crime.

The Constitution Of The United States Of America is the overriding law of the land. It takes precedence over all other laws, state and local, regardless of jurisdiction.

Treason is the ultimate crime. It's the only crime defined in our Constitution - Article III, Section 3.

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

All those involved in the January 6th Insurrection were involved in treason - those instigating it, encouraging it and storming our Capitol.

Incredibly, because of our technology, we have numerous videos of  the actual Insurrection.

Sadly, we see and hear Donald Trump, the then POTUS, instigate the assault on our Capitol.

Sadly, we have much more evidence of Trump and others in days both leading up to the Insurrection and since the Insurrection, further incriminating themselves.

Sadly, we have much more evidence of Trump and others perpetuating a coup to overturn our 2020 elections and deny our voters the outcome of our democratic process.

There has been an assault on our Democracy. We are in the midst of a civil war that continues to this day. There are federal and state legislators actively working to illegally overturn our electoral results and overthrow our government.

We cannot and must not try to end this civil war at the ballot box. This war must be ended on the battlefields and in the courts.

Jurisdiction in this matter rests within our Department of Justice. The FBI needs to round up all involved, charge them and arrest them.

The actual January 6th Insurrectionists must all be tried in our Federal Court - in Washington, DC.

Others involved in the coup must be arrested and charged by the FBI and tried in the Federal Court that has jurisdiction in the place in which they committed the crimes.

No, we cannot end a civil war through voting people in or out of office.

When your house is being burglarized or vandalized or burnt down or attacked, when you are being pursued or beaten or tortured or murdered, you don't call a caterer or an interior decorator to come in and solve the problem.

Holy Moly!

Our Duplicitous Federal Government

Disgraceful!

There seems to be a reluctance within our Justice Department to hold Donald Trump and other elected and appointed officials accountable for treason.

The DOJ has yet to arrest and charge Trump for his actions on January 6th.

The DOJ has a long standing policy when it comes to indicting a sitting President - it just ain't allowed. Sadly, that policy seems to be being applied to former Presidents as well.

The President of the United States is not above the law, either while in office or out. No one is.

Our House and Senate may have a similar problem when it comes to Impeachment and Trial.

Trump was never Impeached in the House for the crimes he committed that were well documented in "The Mueller Report".

When Trump was Impeached on two separate occasions for other crimes he committed while in office, the Senate failed to actually try him, much less convict him.

Our country is in peril today because of unbridled, unending corruption at all levels of our Federal Government.

This should come as no surprise when you consider the legal "bribes" given to candidates under the pretense of "campaign contributions".

When lawmakers are compromised the government rots. Our Constitution is meaningless when those sworn to uphold it are corrupted.

We must either demand legal action to hold all office holders and their appointees accountable or resign ourselves to fascism.

Holy Moly!