Who Benefits, Who?

Ask the question.  Ask as you observe the continual assault on things that actually work, even things that work relatively cheaply.  Assaults by those who, despite all the demonstrated mess of contractors and privatization, want to continue to privatize more.  People like to deceive themselves that privatizing brings so many more efficiencies and cost savings.  It usually doesn’t, and any comparisons are usually slanted anyway.  For instance, the assault on the USPS.  W and his ilk passed the Postal Act of 2006 which mandated that USPS prefund 100 percent of future retirees’ health benefits.  No other government or quasi-govt agency has to do this, nor any publicly traded corporation.  This was just an obvious attempt to first weaken the USPS, so that it could be carved to pieces.  If this law were lifted, USPS would be turning a profit.  And this bellowing about how the USPS retirement system is dramatically underfunded is agenda-driven too: One has to compare both the FERS and CSRS systems of the USPS, and in the net accounting, it’s pretty favorable (and certainly so in comparison to a lot of other places).  And one more thing: USPS employees are not making a killing.  Sure, a few supervisors and management types are doing well, maybe excessively so.  But the rank and file are just that, pretty average for the most part.  And if you had to do their job, you wouldn’t be so envious.

Government and Society Are, Directly Or Indirectly, Our Reflections

One of the clearest things that poll after poll reveals is the profound civic, political, and historical ignorance and apathy of most Americans.

In The Daily Struggle for "Advantage"...

Issues get shoved aside.  While corporations and the top 1% swim in more and more money, there is none for the pressing needs of everyone else.  Those wealthy not only refuse to contribute what they USED to contribute, they actually want to contribute LESS than what they do now.  They have decoupled themselves, just like the wealthy of ancient Rome.

History can’t scream. It is a silent pointer.  But we have to look.

A Noble Character in Fantasy Fiction With Instruction For Us

“Guilt resembles a sword with two edges.  On the one hand it cuts for justice, imposing practical morality upon those who fear it.  Guilt, the consequence of conscience, is what separates the goodly persons from the evil.  Given a situation that promises gain, most drow can kill another, kin or otherwise, and walk away carrying no emotional burden at all.  The drow assassin might fear retribution but will shed no tears for his victim.  To humans—and to surface elves, and to all of the other goodly races—the suffering imposed by conscience will usually far outweigh any external threats.” Drizzt Do’Urden, pp. 63-64 of Sojourn.

The Hegemon US in Slow Decline Is Like a Frog in Heating Water

Being in a slow decline is like a frog in slowly heating water.  If the water was hot immediately, it would jump out.  But gradually?  It will allow itself to be boiled to death.