Happy Holidays from People Politico

people-politico-belief-acceptanceHere at peoplepolitico.com I would like to wish you all a happy and safe holiday season. Yes, you read that right, Happy Holidays.

Not:

  • Felices Las Posadas
  • Happy Channukkah
  • Happy Day of Ashura
  • Happy Eid-al-Adha
  • Happy Hogmanay
  • Happy Kwanzaa
  • Happy St. Lucia’s Day
  • Happy St. Nicholas Day
  • Happy Wintertime
  • Happy Yule
  • Meri Tennō tanjōbi
  • Merry Bodhi Day
  • Merry Christmas
  • Merry Midwinter
  • Or any other of the many seasonal greetings.

There seems to be a common misconception that if you do not wish people a Merry Christmas during the month of December, you are somehow demeaning or slighting Christians and their particular holiday of Christmas. However, saying “Happy Holidays” has nothing to do with slighting Christians. Instead, it easily includes more of our fellows, Christians and beyond, offering a more rounded and universal holiday greeting. It is a sign of respect to everyone, including Christians, acknowledging the wide and varied beliefs of those around you. This country might be predominantly Christian, but there is no reason to exclude those that are not.

A Succinct Account Of All The Religions

A Succinct Account Of All The Religions

Saying “Happy Holidays” shows respect for neighbors, children, grandparents, co-workers, and all the other various people that surround us in our everyday lives. We all have different backgrounds, different beliefs, and different ideas about the world.

This greeting is meant to be a warm, friendly saying to wish people a happy season, regardless of a person’s individual beliefs.

So the next time you want to wish someone well during the holiday season, remember if you are not sure of a person’s beliefs, saying “Happy Holidays” should be a welcomed greeting. Those who insist on using one particular greeting may be causing those who do not celebrate that particular holiday to feel excluded.  We live in a country whose main tenet is inclusion of people from many different cultures. Our country was founded by people who wanted to exercise religious freedom, and be free from religious persecution.

The intent of a more inclusive greeting is to hopefully make someone else’s day better, and show that you accept those around you for who they are. Offering those around you goodwill and acceptance makes the world a better place. Isn’t that what the holiday season is all about?

Happy Holidays from People Politico

 

Politics of Regulation on Retirement

people-politico-penny-pileRegulations: Ask different people what this word means to them and you will get a lot of different answers. Some will say regulations are an absolute necessity in our society, and some will treat the word like a swear word, saying regulation ruins innovation and stymies growth. However, those views may change drastically when the topic is drilled down to certain kinds of regulations. So instead of trying to talk about all regulations, it’s best to narrow the subject down to regulation of a specific type. Only then can we have an intellectual discussion about the topic.

Today we are going to look into regulations surrounding retirement funds and pensions in private companies. These benefits are often seen as one of the best benefits in privately owned companies. However, retirement and pensions are more and more often being sacrificed in tough economic times. But the upper management and CEOs of some private corporations may be using the recession as an excuse to force workers to give up their retirement benefits and pensions in order to pad their own retirement savings and company profits.

We have to remember that much of the purpose of a corporation is to make money, so it isn’t surprising, but it is appalling, to think that these private corporations can so easily take money from the retirement funds of their most loyal workers and use it for their own gain. This is a benefit that was promised to workers at the prime of their careers to help them plan for a time when they would retire after putting in many long years with a company. Corporations take advantage of a series of loopholes that are little known to the public to pull this money, meant for their work force, and convert it into “profit” for themselves. We don’t say bank robbers are not stealing, they are profiting by seizing the money of a bank, so why can these companies get away with it? Even when they cannot directly shovel cash out of your retirement, there are other means for them to force you to freeze or reduce your benefits while increasing their own benefits dramatically.

 

Retirement Heist

Stop the plunder of American hard work.

The WorldCom and Enron scandals both come immediately to mind with this type of action. However, there are thousands of other corporations that have done the same thing. Apparently after WorldCom and Enron, the media has decided “this is just how things are”. This is insane! “This is how it is” never, ever, justifies inaction to change. These types of horrible injustices will continue if we allow them to continue because of our own apathy.

It seems that these are no longer stories on the front page because this is how business is run in America. Business practices that involve taking from the workers and giving ridiculous amounts of money to the CEO is apparently what a small investment in elected officials will get you. The workers themselves have become a source of income for the upper tier of the corporation. Employees don’t get raises; they do not get more benefits and the benefits they do have already gained are being taken away. The workers get less and less while the upper tiers of these corporations get more and more. The employees have to take it because the job market is so terrible they know they have to be content with having steady employment.

 

But using people like this is amoral. This is ghastly. This is inexcusable.

This is why we need regulations regarding a company’s pension and retirement plans. These plans need to have protection and oversight or they will continue to be abused. Deregulation of pension and retirement plans was pitched as a benefit for the workers. Deregulation has been sold as a way to ensure the safety and security of the American people and the workforce. In fact, deregulation has destabilized the American work force, bringing uncertainty not only to those who are employed by companies that cannibalize their workers’ retirement funds, but to the majority of the American workforce. It has created a corporate environment where the American worker is forced to scrape by on stagnant wages, failing retirement and pension plans, and an unstable job market, while corporate coffers fill with the wages of American workers’ hard earned money. The upmost tiers of these corporations enjoy “profits” that are supposed to be our retirements while they themselves are being guaranteed ludicrously large sums of money in their retirement, and in some cases, even if they are fired for gross negligence!

If there is any hope to bring the American people back to a place where they can look forward to retirement, and can be assured of the pensions they have been promised for their entire lives, we must rip open this scandalous behavior and force regulations back into this area of business. We can no longer allow our hard earned money to be gambled away or stolen from us.

Share this with your friends, families and co-workers. You deserve to retire with your promised pension after a lifetime of hard work. You deserve to have the security that you will be taken care of when you most need it. You deserve confidence that a lifetime of work will be for your own prosperity, not another’s.

Do People Need to Reevaluate the American Dream?

people-politico-flag-cloudsI’m not talking ’bout rich, I’m talking ’bout wealth.
-Chris Rock

Average American people don’t understand the difference between being rich and being wealthy.

Rich is the guy who won the lotto. It happens. It could happen to you. It is not bloody likely, but it could. Wealth… doesn’t just happen to people. It almost impossible to create wealth. It is highly unlikely you will ever create a business that is so successful that you create wealth. The odds are worse than the lotto. Billions of times worse.

Bill Gates did it. He founded a company that revolutionized the business world. Sam Walton did it. He revolutionized the way we shop. Rockefeller did it. He revolutionized steel. Now, look at you. You aren’t going to revolutionize anything. You, Average Joe, are average. The wealthy are attending seminars on how to expand their wealth to take care of their 5th generation. Think about that. If the average person has two kids, then those kids have two kids, we are talking about people who are planning to have enough wealth to have their family of 64 live in lap of luxury for their entire lives. And guess what, these are not the first generation wealthy either. By the time you get that far down the line none of them have earned anything. The more you think about it the more the entire concept of a meritocracy loses water. And do not be fooled, that is exactly what people are being sold; the concept of meritocracy.

You are being sold the idea of “to each according to their merit”, and that is a false statement. That is like saying “everything in the world is fair”. It is just not true. You determine your own self worth, and that has little to no bearing on your financial status. In the grand scheme of things you are average. Most of us are. Billions of us are.

The thing is there is nothing wrong with being average. There is nothing wrong with striving to be better than average either, it is a noble goal. Most of the unwashed masses never even try. But it is a fascinating personality trait that would simultaneously make someone so arrogant that they believe they can break free of the pack, be that one in a billion, yet possess such low self esteem to believe that they deserve their lot in life no matter how bad that lot may be. And they will accept that lot in life no matter how easy it would be to improve. It is as simple as voting for the other guys. It is as easy as reevaluating what is important. But they will cling to the idea that they are exceptional no matter how statistically impossible that achievement may be.

The sooner Americans understand that rich happens by luck (like having some athletic, musical, or acting talent, or by winning the lotto) and that wealth is engineered through generation after generation of careful planning or by revolutionizing the world, the sooner Americans will do more to help each other. But I don’t see it happening because the lie is so entrenched.

“What is that lie” you ask? The lie is American Exceptionalism. For generations we have been told that we are special just for being born in America. President Obama has even been widely criticized for not promoting the concept as broadly as previous presidents. But the concept is faulty. There was a time when America truly was exceptional. When anyone, no matter who you were, where you came from, or your family’s financial status, could and often would achieve the American Dream. But that time was long ago when the American Dream was as simple as owning a home, being your own person, and living a life better than the previous generation. The American Dream itself has been distorted to fit this view of American Exceptionalism. The new American Dream is to be a rock star or movie god. To live the life depicted on MTV Cribs, or Keeping up with the Kardashian’s. But that life is statistically unobtainable. If you return to what the American Dream once was and simply try to live a better life than you had growing up you will see how flawed the whole system really is.

What made American exceptional in the past was how we reacted in the worst of times. It is what we did for our fellow Americans, what we did for each other, that led us to win two World Wars. It was working together that got us through the Great Depression. It was the will to achieve together that put a man on the moon. It was never what we did in the best of times that defined us, but what we did in the worst of times. Now is one of those times, and everyone needs to reevaluate where they stand; with the rest of America, or alone trying to achieve the lie.

Democratic Dominos

voter-infoI don’t know about you, but seeing and hearing about the Domino Effect that has started through the Middle East, starting with Tunisia, is something amazing to behold. The power of technology is empowering those people. It has empowered many to make the world a better place for them and ultimately for everyone.

Most of us can agree that a free Democracy is the way for the populations of the world to find true prosperity. A free democracy gives all of its people the political power to forge the future for themselves. It is a powerful and empowering method of government in which I believe that all of the people of the world deserve.

So did many others, especially FOX news. Years ago they fought, and pushed, and said that democracy is something that everyone should have. That people all over the world have the right, as do we, to be free in a truly free democratic society. So now why is there a sudden backlash from the Right Wing headed by FOX news to downplay the amazing uprisings taking place in these areas? It seems their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Secret History of the Iraq War

Secret History of the Iraq War

We literally invaded a country without being provoked on the grounds of “defense” and later justified our misled invasion as spreading democracy throughout the world. When anyone questioned the actions or the motives of the Bush Administration and the Iraq War, they were attacked as traitors, unpatriotic and weak. Now there are countries that are trying to bring democracy into their own countries and they balk, sidestep and even question these other countries on their worthiness or ability to handle a free democracy. It’s absolutely crazy.

Are the American people’s memories so short that they cannot remember only a few short years ago? It’s not like we’re relying on history books or drawings on a cave wall. We KNOW what happened. We all lived through it. So why then is there such discourse in such a simple fact, that we were all supposed to agree on, that everyone, EVERYONE deserves a free democracy. In a free democracy the people have the power to make their country into what they want, what works best for them and will give everyone a say in how things are done.

Denial and Deception: A Study of the Bush Administration's Rhetorical Case for Invading Iraq

Denial and Deception: A Study of the Bush Administration's Rhetorical Case for Invading Iraq

I know, they talk about oil prices going up. They talk about trade changing and uncertainty. There is uncertainty because we have supported the regimes there for years. We’ve ignored the boot on the peoples’ backs as long as we can get cheap oil. Enough already. It’s time to stop greed from ruling our every decision. This newest argument, the one asking if they can “handle” democracy needs to stop. We need to support all people that are fighting and dying for human rights.

It’s also time to realize that whether we lose the oil today or in 50 years we will most certainly, and assuredly lose the oil. This is why we must act now to improve our own energy policies and move toward renewables. We must start to wean ourselves off oil. We must stop oil and gas subsidies and transfer these to renewable energies. The oil and gas companies really don’t need subsidies. They make billions of dollars in profit every month, and are so greedy they apparently can’t spend a small portion of that on decent blowout preventers on their oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Power of the Vote: Electing Presidents, Overthrowing Dictators, and Promoting Democracy Around the World

Power of the Vote: Electing Presidents, Overthrowing Dictators, and Promoting Democracy Around the World

So please take a step back and look at the big picture. We, as the flagship of freedom and democracy set the precedent and hold ourselves to the highest standard of these ideals. We must also support and foster these democratic ideals worldwide.

We must support human rights both here and abroad. We must push this country to a sustainable future, so we don’t have to support these horrible regimes which are antithesis to our very being. When we do what is right by us, we will do right by the world. When we do right by the world, we will then have the right kind of world for all of its people.

1 3 4 5