NPR had a report discussing the new term “rigged game” as a description of the middle-class-destroying effects of Campaign finance on Congress. Billionaires are able to set the rules of the game so that only they can make money not by the value they produce and offer in the free market, but by controlling the market itself, so that it is no longer free. And everyone finds they have agreed to this by signing those consent forms no one reads but are required in order to communicate or do anything. Congress is supposed to regulate interstate commerce, and the Constitution explicitly gives Congress this power. If two factories are competing, and one can gain an advantage by poisoning a river, at the expense of the commons (as Garret Hardin discusses what he calls the tragedy of the commons), then Congress can regulate the factories on the issue, so that neither may poison for their own profit. Hence, neither can or must maximize “shareholder value” by poisoning the river for everyone, or setting a drag on the whole economy, the way extortion does. But now, if one factory thinks it is profiting greatly by poisoning the river, their lobbyists can just contribute to some campaign funds, and presto! The issue appears in a different light, and the poison is not so bad after all. And who is funding those expensive studies, say, regarding the Enbridge pipeline, while our Governor cannot receive free thoughts from citizens though the office phone? The playing field is tilted toward the unscrupulous because Congress is doing something other than its job.
When the internet companies wanted to whore the privacy of every last person on the globe, Congress was easily persuaded to ignore the Fourth Amendment and allow this incredibly profitable and, we argue dangerous pandering.
But back to the “rigged game.” Bernie Sanders was the first among the politicians to use the phrase, as he was the first to discuss the prescription drug abuse epidemic as a campaign issue. In a letter on the horrors of the tax process, about Christmas eve two years ago, I wrote to my representative Tim Walberg and described the economy as a rigged game because the attempt of the Billionaire interests to use the power of their wealth to set the rules of the economy in their favor. His office does read his constituent’s letters, and that was a very good letter, about how an accountant is needed to fill out the simplest tax form, but the poor cannot afford an accountant, creating an infinite obligation (contrary to due process). I often write about issues to them long before setting these things on the internet, as with the teaching regarding how dolphins do fishing, o the issue of property seizures. I may have picked the phase up somewhere too, as these things occur, but I think I know what studies led me to say this. I imagined Rand Paul and maybe Barak himself seeing that letter, then heard Bernie Sanders say “rigged game,” and recognized it. Someone, by word-of-mouth press, does seem to read the bloggers on the internet, and the CLC invites both parties to com “policy shopping,” as this is the purpose of the McDonald website, and as we do on the issues of both parties. But the phrase comes from having thee times done all that one would think needed to make a living and pay back loans, and come up completely empty. But especially, we were watching that Mob or Russian business model take over among the Googles and Microsofts, where for example payoffs ae required to publish a book, and access to the internet can be withheld for extortion fees, all made legal for a mere few million in “campaign contributions,” otherwise known as bribes. I have watched the prescription drug industry take three of my mother’s ten grandchildren, thirty percent of the next generation, so that they could make money off heroin and oxy. I have watched the press stammering and just unable to comprehend the issue of psychiatric prescription drug abuse, while public shootings now occur weekly, all done by people on antidepressants, people who were under the careful care of the mental health industry, and congress, like the press, is unable to respond.
If Congress does not regulate according to the common good, the free market itself will be destroyed by power. This is perhaps what the Koch brothers and Republican economists did not realize from their principles, how oligarchy slides into tyranny. Free market libertarianism assumes a free government, or, it assumes that the market and private property will be defended from thievery and tyranny. But if companies can profit by destroying the GNP for their own interest, just by tricking and paying off Congress, then any companies that do not do these things cannot compete with those that do, and the whole quickly gets out of hand, as has been occurring. Business presupposes ethics, without thinking, since what is most profitable in the short term can always appear to be tyranny. The economy is then rigged against lower class attempts to rise by genuinely producing value, say, with new inventions. It is like going to Vegas and tying to win at a rigged black jack table, and these too are the studies from which the phase arises. So, ok America, do we really think that worldly success is the measure of a man and the ability to govern in a free nation? Does Trump think it wrong to rig the game if it is rigged to his advantage? Or is this not how the game came to be rigged in the first place?
NPR was describing how the phrase is being used now, according to every partisan position, these guys saying this or that that they are against is “rigged,” or that the Washington insiders are the riggers, while these silver tongued money men, who even teach how to deceive for ones own profit, the very ones who have rigged the system by influencing both parties, plan to slide right to the side, the way the prescription drug industry evades responsibility.
Say Hillary, if you are listening, we invented the idea of putting solar collectors into roof shingles, as potentially cheaper than solar panels, but do not even try to work on the idea, as inventions are impossible for the poor to produce.
mmcdonald77 