How to end poverty and disrupt a corrupt U.S. Congress

Poverty exists because too many workers aren't paid equitably by corporate American capitalists for the fruits of their labor, limiting consumer spending, which hurts the economy, which kills jobs, creating high unemployment, which creates the need for a compulsory levy on other people's earnings to pay into the welfare system.

The business model of corporate America is to keep labor costs as low as possible, but if small businesses on Main Street shared in that kind of greed (essentially pocketing more than their fair share of the profits, which they enjoy thanks in large measure to their labor force), they’d be run out of town.

In recent years, corporate America has been able to get away with paying low wages precisely because of the high unemployment they caused in the first place; more workers competing for fewer jobs facilitates a low-wage climate.

A lot of the job loss in this country is permanent because U.S. companies have been pushing production offshore, exacerbating an already poor economy.

It is the proliferation of big business and their political campaign funding that has hurt the U.S. economy.

The only way to fix the problem is by creating a system that doesn’t provide financial rewards for the current business model.

1. The first step is to eliminate the giant teat of the individual taxpaying collective by constitutional amendment. In other words, end individual income taxes. (Not including capital gains and Wall Street speculation.) In this way, campaign contributions would go to shrinking government spending, since all tax revenues would come directly out of corporations’ pockets instead of the low hanging fruit of the weaker class: the worker, lobbies would have incentive to do only that.

2. The second step is to tax commerce where it occurs, not where the corporation happens to be headquartered. It’s not fair for a company to be penalized by virtue of the geography of their home office when its success comes from the markets it serves well.

3. Eliminate compulsory contracts, both directly by mandate and those indirectly by necessity. This stops insurance companies from amassing fortunes on the back of the free market system, allowing prices for services to soar unchecked. This will also dissolve large pools of capital, which are sitting targets for frivolous litigation.

4. Shift all sales taxes to the seller and require that all advertised consumer prices are the actual, total, final prices … after all taxes, fees and surcharges. This puts integrity back in consumer-business dealings and provides price transparency and eliminates obscuring actual costs behind hidden additional costs to consumers, restoring consumer trust.

Top five reasons radio advertising is better than television advertising ... and YouTube isn't one of them!

If having the more persuasive pitch in a competition between radio and television is considered stealing, then guilty as charged. Many people operate on the full faith and credit of bad information in perpetuity, and the conventional wisdom on Madison Avenue is no exception.

Here are my top five reasons radio advertising is better than television advertising:

5) TV advertising is overpriced chiefly because it's easily disrupted by technology and a general collective attention deficit in the real world.

4) One doesn't require a study to prove that images are nearly superfluous in marketing; most people know innately that the most significant, powerful and lasting impressions in our memories are made by audio input to the brain.

3) The best marketing value in radio and social media is derived from the power of a personal recommendation from familiar, credible people; you don't need pictures for that, but sound is our most penetrating cue.

2) Without an intuitive presumption, reinforced by the ad industry, that television is just better because it delivers motion and color, we can all understand on a primal level how disinterested people are in what we have to show. It's hard not to notice that you can't sit in the same room with a person and keep their eyes on you for very long?

1) The most significant reason people get your message is because they have no earlids.

I had a weird dream last night

I was in the empty lobby of a police precinct, unwittingly there just to rest a moment, to calm my anxiety and collect my thoughts.

There was a faint sound of conversation in an adjacent office. "He was a white, middle-aged man on a bicycle..." were the first words I heard plainly. And it was a familiar female voice.

It's true. Minutes earlier it had been me that was flying my bike down a crowded city street, possibly causing alarm and panic, whizzing past a lady that looked a lot like a blonde TV-cop -- who, in a predictably commanding tone, screamed out, "Stop and get back here right now!"

She might not have been a cop, I thought. And even if she was who knows who she was screaming at? It felt like I was evading a cop.

Things are moving fast. Time to get out of the area. Time to assess the situation, I thought, turning a corner, ditching the bike, and stepping into the first public building I came to.

Alarmed myself now, realizing I was the subject of this field report to the authorities, I swiftly ducked away through a corridor, where I stumbled on a somewhat interesting shipping tube laying atop a trash bin. Inexplicably I swept it up to have a closer examination while on my brisk walk. But the sound of a conversation between Patricia Arquette, the actual actress, and two men I presume were a pair of detectives, caught me off guard. "That guy," Patricia said assuredly. I slowly looked up as I paused.

They gave me a silent stare that felt like minutes. I returned a look, vowing to myself not to say a word while they analyzed me. As I began to realize just how virtuous silence can be, I confidently and calmly turned and continued down the corridor. No one stopped me. I'd managed to flee the scene without incident or objection.

"Clever," I heard one of the men say as I stepped out of sight. "The only evidence is sealed by federal postal law." They must have thought I'd hidden something in the shipping tube I merely thought looked cool ... as if I'd have had the wherewithal to contemplate such a calculated maneuver. A parcel is safe harbor from search & seizure, I imagined. That, along with my instinctive silence, saved the day.

A palpable sense of relief washed over me as I climbed back onto my bike. I can only imagine the conversation that transpired amongst the trio after I'd left. Lacking a real crime, I bet the detectives dismissed Ms. Arquette with polite platitudes.

It seemed real.

Rep. Steve King and the SCOTUS gay marriage ruling

So Friday SCOTUS nixed states' arbitrary restrictions on marriage, restoring civil rights owed to couples of like gender. And before day's end, the always sensational Rep. Steve King (R-Ia.) predictably argued that decision is oustside the court's purview, calling it "judicial fiat."

Apparently they're members of the Grand Old Party, conservatives & libertarians, except when those principles conflict with a certain world view.

You may remember '09 when the King scare machine reacted to Iowa's top-court ruling striking down this state's restriction on gay marriage, fearing that decision "turns immediately Iowa into a Mecca for same-sex marriage." He warned of "weekend [travel] packages being planned right now." And the fear language didn't stop there. "We'll be the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage for America if the legislature doesn't act now," King asserted. At the time he called on the Iowa Assembly and then-Governor Chet Culver (D-Ia.) to move quickly to require residency for marriage ... "right now, before the planes start landing in Des Moines," as if they might be loaded with WMD.

Video: Rep. Steve King with radio host Jan Mickelson, April, 2009



Let's be clear. A fundamental duty of the high court is to hold states' authority in check, protecting individuals' Constitutional protections from Gestapo-style government imposition where ever necessary.

Instead King, applying a bizarre sort of acrobatics to language and logic that even a 5-year-old can see through, today claims this country "cannot tolerate a Supreme Court that would impose their will on the rest of this country."

Striking down same-sex marriage bans in no way creates a restrictive imposition on others. Efforts by Congressman King, right-wing religious lobbyists like Bob Vander Plaats and pundits like Jan Mickelson to paint certain kinds of marriages as "weakening the institution" are absurd, and their attempts to moore their false logic in mythology can't mask their scalding bigotry. They can only point to religious symbolism in order to criticize Friday's ruling. Must we remind him there are no references to "holy matrimony" in the Constitution?

America is not a compendium of special clubs who get to use government as a tool to impose their wants on the "those people" whose behavior they despise. Being an American means a lot of different things to different people, but it can never mean you have a right not to be offended.

Consensual and non-consensual police encounters

We've covered the levels of police encounters before and I don't like to spend too much time on covered ground, but I discovered a very nicely made instructional video with an excellent example of a non-consensual encounter without justification that quickly escalated to an arrest without any cause.

A promise broken

The Woodland Cemetery to the founders of Des Moines was seen as a promise of security for all time.

Located at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Woodland Avenue, Woodland Cemetery is an honored and revered resting place for the founders of our city and heroes of our nation.

The cemetery advisory board voted last night to strip the barrier between this revered site and vandals, the homeless, dog walkers.

There is simply no more historic place that is seeded so deeply the history of Polk County, aptly named for President James K. Polk. But among those interred at our cemetery is a different Polk. Jefferson Scott Polk (1831-1907) as a lawyer well educated, clear headed, deliberate, optimistic, positive, nervous, sanguine temperament, aggressive and plain of speech.

In 1859, J.S. Polk formed a partnership with Judge Casady and M.M. Crocker, making one of the strongest law firms in the district.

In 1861, when Mr. Crocker entered the military service, and the firm became Casady & Polk, which continued as such until 1864. At that time Casady retired and was succeeded by Fred M. Hubbell, as junior partner. For twenty-five years Polk & Hubbell thereafter became synonymous with push and enterprise in our town.

In 1867, Mr. Polk and others organized the Equitable Life Insurance Company. The following year, he was elected Secretary and held that office fourteen years.

In 1871, Mr. Polk organized the Des Moines Water Works Company.

August 29, 1866, Des Moines was finally treated to the iron horse with a line fully built from Keokuk along the Des Moines River, after a long and oft-fruitless battle to bring a rail line. On October 1st of that year, Mr. Polk, Fred M. Hubbell, Dr. M.P. Turner and U.B. White completed the first mile of street railway in the city as the Des Moines Street Railway Company. Now fully connected by rail, Des Moines enjoyed 38 daily rail connections and the beginnings of a world class mass transit system, thanks in no small measure to the work of Mr. Polk.

By 1888 Jefferson Polk procured a charter for the Rapid Transit Company, and in 1889 he purchased other competing Railways, and began installation of an entire new public transit system.

In 1874, he laid a narrow-gauge track to Ames, purchasing and laying out the town of Sheldahl.

Sources: Find A Grave/Katie Lou; History of Polk County, 1880

Humanity at its finest

It's easy to find character flaws in people, so it's refreshing to find and share stories about selflessness and compassion. What may have begun as a self-serving exercise, this generous individual turned his personal misfortune into life changing tools for children.