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.