Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump is the Least Important Choice on Your Ballot

Somehow we got to use this picture again.

Who is ready to do some voting?

At long last, the greatest election in American history is coming to an end. Jay Z has sung, Ted Nugent has grabbed his crotch, the most important voices have told you who to vote for. It is now the general public's turn. On election day, less than two thirds of eligible voters will make their choice. Hillary or Donald will emerge victorious in the days after the election, and America will enter a new era. The choice of the people will be ready to lead.

Unfortunately we are all already know what will come after the election. Trump will lose, and he will throw a temper tantrum. If in some weird way Trump does win, the Clinton supporters will lose their minds and accuse people of election fraud. The new President will be deligitimized immediately by the opponent's partisans in the media. The idea of respecting the outcome of an election is long gone. The new President will have an incompetent group of partisan hacks in the US Congress who will do everything in their power to stop any meaningful idea from the executive branch. The millions of people who vote for the loser between Clinton and Trump will feel left out of this new America, and they will react poorly.

The thing is, we have ourselves to blame for this dangerous division. The supporters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have made the election only about themselves. Clinton does not do rallies with down ticket Democrats, and Donald Trump has flat out refused to endorse some very powerful congressional GOPers. The media, national and local, spends 99% of its time on Trump and Clinton, and the other 1% on other races. The public is uninformed, and not curious, about any thing outside of the freakshow that has been the 2016 Presidential campaign. That attitude has created a broken America.

This is a huge problem. Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012 by a wide margin. He is the first President since Eisenhower in 1956 to win over 51% of popular vote twice. What do we remember from Obama's eight years? We have the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare if your nasty. We also have a ton of Republican obstructionism. That is pretty much it. There was the increase in LGBTQ rights, but that came from the courts. Obamacare and Republican obstructionism is pretty much what we saw over eight years. There has been a record number of votes to overturn Obamacare, all failed. We have now long past the record for the most amount of time a Supreme Court appointment has gone without a hearing. If Obama is so popular, how can Congress keep being do nothing obstructionists and get away with it?

Obama, like Clinton and Trump today, never made their supporters care for the down ticket races. It takes a whole lot of money, and personpower, to run for President. The hording of resources is what we have called the Ohio Problem (you can read all about on this fine website). The general electorate, or less than two thirds of it, get excited to vote for President, and forget everything else. Midterm elections struggle to get half the amount of voters in Presidential elections. There is very rarely times where people are excited to vote for the Senator, or school board member. That lack of excitement has given us a popular President, and a Congress more concerned with partisanship than with doing actual work. The most important races, the people running who can actual affect your life, are being pushed to the side for the dog and pony show of modern Presidential campaigns. 

In 2000 many people thought George W Bush was way less qualified to be President than Al Gore. In 2008 Hillary Clinton and John McCain made the case that Barack Obama was a celebrity, not a seasoned politician. The press liked the camera friendly Bush, and the dynamic Obama. The people followed the press. The American people elected the popular kids over the hard working salutatorians. The idea of celebrity was overshadowing the solid resumes of the DC lifers. People wanted to be part of a movement, they wanted to join the cult of personality. The experienced workers were squares who most of the electorate ignored.

While these media friendly neophytes were winning, the public forgot about the people who actually make laws. In the last two decades, a freshman member of the US Congress has more power than the President. Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have stopped legislation supported by both parties. Members of the House of Representatives you have never heard of are currently blocking vital federal funds from solving the water crisis in Flint, Michigan and containing the Zika virus outbreak in Florida. The most powerful members of our government were being reelected with no competition from the opposing party. Even in the swing state of Ohio, the Democratic party has ceded the election to a man who was once the Budget Director and trade representative to George W Bush. Hillary Clinton is working hard to expand the Democratic Party's electoral college map, but her hording of state resources are allowing the GOP to keep a stranglehold on Capitol Hill. Her supporters believe electing Hillary will be enough. It won't be.

How the Democratic Party keeps missing the lessons of 2012 are baffling. Hillary will probably win, and the Republican party will still control Congress. Senators John McCain, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee have promised not to hold hearings for any Supreme Court appointments for the next four years. That is unconstitutional and anti-American. Nationwide, people running for office as Republicans have promised to waste more taxpayer money by have a thousand more showboat votes to defund Obamacare. By ignoring down ballot races, the Democratic Party is embracing gridlock and giving up any chance of change until the next election.

This needs to be the next election. We have made the case for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but their victory is unimportant. Many people have expressed their frustration that both candidates are terrible. Then don't vote for the President, or vote third party. Who cares? Trump will not have the power to do what he wants to, and he will act the child he has been his whole life. Clinton will not have a Congress that will work with her, and she will use the office to enrich her family and her donors. Ok, they stink, but there are other people on the ballot. The person you elect to the US House, the Senate, your state legislature, town council, school board, they have real power. Your taxes are decided by these people. The education your child receives is in these peoples hands. Feel like you do not know who these people are, check out your local ballot. Think you don't know these people, Google them. If you plan on going to vote for Hillary or Donald anyway, it doesn't hurt to take time and vote for the people who really matter.

We get our chance to end this nightmare tomorrow. Clinton V Trump will not be listed as one of the more inspiring Presidential campaigns in US history. The good thing is we have a moment to take power back. Sure there all third party candidates like Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Evan McMullin, and Cthulhu, but we should focus on the not as well known names lower on the ballot. When we focus on getting a working Congress, a school board who thinks of children over partisan interests, and judges who focus on the law over special interests, then we will have a government who has real hope and change. 

Go out and vote.

RD  

RD Kulik is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Be a thought leader of tomorrow and write for SeedSing. 

SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are not Equally Terrible

Politics is all about bad math

Have you been checking out your Facebook feed lately? There is a lot of insightful political talk going on? Too many people use their social networks not to try and gain support for their given political candidate, but they want to trash the other side. With every new hiccup coming from their chosen political campaign, people rush to the internet and let the world know that the other side is filled with brain eating monsters. This behavior is not just living in the world of amateur want to be political minds of social media, the national press engages in the same tactics. If one candidate does something terrible, the press balances it with an attack on the other candidate. Even worse, the opinion shows go all in and defend their chosen candidate, no matter what their talking heads have been preaching for years. It does not matter what a candidate does, it only matters that the other one is equally as bad. Democracy in action.

The latest round of memes making there way around the world wide web concerns the fact that no one likes the binary choice of Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump. Yes there are other candidates, but let's be grownups and understand that only Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have a real, not imaginary, chance of winning the presidency. The political discourse has devolved into the engaged internet political pundits wanting a do over. They do not like Trump, and they really do not like Clinton. The latest infection of not so clever memes has come up after the Trump "Grab them by the pussy" tapes and all the new allegations of sexual abuse being levied towards the Republican nominee. Fox News has predictably used their most un-American pundits, people like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, the Fox and Friends jamokes, to go all out and attack the alleged history of corruption and sexual assault from Bill and Hillary Clinton. The supposed news anchors of Fox News just try to set up an equivalency of terribleness between Hillary and Donald. If Trump says / does something bad, the Clinton campaign has also done something not similar but still really bad. Other media outlets like the network news, Sunday political shows, and cable follow the Fox News ratings grab formula and report on the same equivalency of terribleness. The message is clear, if Donald Trump is bad, Hillary Clinton must be at least as terrible.

Hillary Clinton has a long, rocky, history in the public arena. There are many scandals she is either directly, or indirectly, been a part of for nearly thirty years. Things like Bill Clinton's history of sexual indiscretions, Whitewater, the private email server used during Hillary's tenure as Secretary of State, have been gleefully investigated again and again by Republicans in congress. These defenders of fiscal restraint have no problem using millions of taxpayers dollars to litigate the same issue again and again. Their lack of concern for saving the taxpayers is equal only to their abuse of power in going after the Clintons. We can thank the GOP for thirty years of pointless, and wasteful, investigations that have produced nothing but failure. Hillary's scandals have been kept alive due to Republican impotence.

Then we have the crackpot conspiracy theories that the GOP refuses to give up on. Since the Clinton's famous 60 minutes interview that aired immediately after the 1992 Super Bowl, Republican opinion leaders (i.e. Rush Limbaugh) have been going after Hillary Clinton about every trivial thing. She is ugly, she is a bitch, she is a lesbian, she is a woman who does not respect her place in society, all of these hateful, and non-important, character traits have been used against Hillary by the fringes and mainstream media. The are still being used today. Embarrassingly, the details surrounding the suicide of Hillary's former law partner Vince Foster are still being discussed all over the internet. The fact that the Clinton's took furniture and other items from the White House after President Bill Clinton's Presidency is still treated like one of the worst things any former first family has ever done. Most people still do not the truth about what happened. Many of the self righteous media types slamming the Clinton's conveniently forget about all the freebies that Ronald and Nancy Reagan received while at the White House. What the Clinton's did was wrong, just as wrong as what the Reagan's did. In the petty act of using the White House as a gift giving apparatus, the Clinton's and Reagan's are equally terrible.

This leads us to Donald Trump. With all the Clinton problems, the public wants to equate the Trump problems as part of the same culture. Just recently Donald Trump was hit with the damning off record tape of he and Billy Bush casually talking about sexual assault. That was excused as boy's locker room talk. Since then, and for decades before, women have come out to accuse Trump of sexual assault. This is excused as being no worse than what was alleged about Bill Clinton. Trump has used a tax code that favors the rich to fail upwards whenever another one of business ventures fails. This is excused by saying that Trump is a great business man. Trump's long, proven, history of infidelity and ugly divorces has been part of the Donald's story since his separation from first wife Ivana Trump. This is excused by his acolytes by saying it is all ok because Donald Trump is now a good christian man and should be forgiven. Trump uses cheap, unregulated, overseas labor for many of his projects, and regularly does not pay his contracts to american workers. This is excused again by saying that Trump is a smart business man. There is also the racism, hate, and hints of wanting violence on display in Donald Trump's rallies. This is excused by saying Trump is just speaking for a "silent" majority who have no voice. Cracked.com has even more, true and proven, terrible things that Donald Trump has done. Donald Trump is responsible for things we would not let a candidate for school board to get away with, much less a major party candidate for President.

With the two candidates history, how in the world can one say that Clinton and Trump are equally terrible? What Hillary Clinton has been accused of, and litigated by the court of public opinion, is what we can connect to any politician who is been in power for a long time. That does not make it right, but that is the current reality of American politics. We treat these elected officials like royalty, so they act like royalty. Did Hillary Clinton knowingly hide things from the American people? Probably. Has she used public service to increase her families wealth? Definitely. Does she say one thing to her donors in private and something contradictory to the voters. Absolutely, that is how are political system works today.

Do you know who else has done what Hillary Clinton does? Every single person elected to public office. Tea party heroes like Jim Jordan still forces  the government to buy tanks the US Army says are a waste of taxpayer money. He does it because of powerful political donors who make the tanks. President George W Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales deliberately did not turn over millions of emails subpoenaed by the US Congress  because the emails were on a private server run by the RNC. The Chief of Staff to sitting Vice President Dick Cheney was convicted of outing a CIA agent because the agent's husband was a political enemy. Scooter Libby made America weaker and spent time in prison. President George W Bush pardoned Libby as a political favor. Did the press feel the need to balance Hillary Clinton's history with these cases of political greed and pettiness?

Donald Trump's terrible ideas, and business struggles, are not part of a broken political culture. His terribleness is born in the fact that Donald Trump only cares about his own personal well being. There is nothing in his history that shows a man who is trying to help anyone out. He inherited a fortune and used an economic system built to protect the wealthy to protect his failures. He used his money to acquire, and eventually discard, women. He used his celebrity to take what he wants, forgetting that there are people he is actively hurting. Trump does not care about any of this, and many people cheer him on for this. Donald Trump is not trying to appease a political constituency. He is not trying to push a public agenda. Donald Trump is actively trying to keep a world alive where Donald Trump is the most important person. Trump is correct when he says that he is not a politician. Politicians have to care about others in order to win elected office. Trump does not cater to anyone, unless that person is Donald Trump.

That is what makes Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump different. Clinton has been trying to serve other people, and in the process has been part of a broken and corrupt political system. Hillary Clinton is no different than any other politician in the swamp of Washington D.C.. Trump is corrupt due to his own narcissism. He has no will to help anyone who is not Donald Trump. The system did not make Trump bad, he has been exhibiting this terrible behavior as long as the press has been covering him.

Many people use Clinton's scandals to dismiss her because she is the Democratic Party nominee. Voters who identify as Republicans do not want the Democrat to win, so her scandals are brought to the forefront like any other opposition candidate's scandals would be. You do not want the Democrat to win, then you need justification on why they are unworthy. The apprehension to Donald Trump has little to do with the fact of him being the Republican nominee. His terribleness is wholly his own and not part of a larger political culture. His scandals are not part of a D.C. culture. Donald Trump has personally created his own political struggles through his greed and immorality. Clinton is a politician, Trump is dangerously selfish. That is not different sides of the same terrible coins.

Stop with the equivalence of terribleness between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. They may both have things we do not like, but it is not even close to equal. If you do not like Hillary Clinton, don't vote for her. What you can not do is claim that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are equally flawed. Clinton is part of a system that has enlarged elected officials for a very long time. The system needs to be reformed. Donald Trump is part of a system that is anti-american and anti-progress. The system that helps Donald Trump to succeed needs to be discarded. There is no equivalence.

RD 

RD Kulik is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Listen to RD and Ty discuss the history of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on the newest X Millennial Man Podcast. What do you think of the current state of American politics? Tell us all about it. 

SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.

Stop Waiting for Congress to Pass Gun Laws

The Congress could not regulate this over 200 years ago. Why trust them now?

This week the Democrats in the United States House of Representatives, led by Georgia Congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis, did something amazing. They took a seat for the American people. On Wednesday, June 22nd, Representative Lewis gave a fiery speech lamenting the inaction of Congress on doing anything to help curb the epidemic of gun violence in the United States. After his speech, Lewis was joined by other Democratic party members of the House and they all took a seat. The sat right down on the floor of the US House of Representatives. The Republicans, led by Speaker Paul Ryan, ended the session and cut off the live video feed provided by the cameras of the Cable-Satellite Public Access Network (C-SPAN). The Republican party wanted to block the images of the Democratic sit in from the American people. Unfortunate for Speaker Ryan, 21st century technology allowed the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution to live on. Many House members used Twitter's Periscope live video app and started to stream the images out to the internet. C-SPAN started to air these Periscope streams out through their airwaves. Many more Democrats, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and current Presidential candidate (as of this writing he has not conceded) Bernie Sanders, joined their colleagues on the floor of the House of Representatives. The Democrats were finally fed up with Republican inaction on any meaningful firearm regulation, and all of America was able to see the spectacle going on in the nation's capital. Things were about to change in Washington DC.

Twenty five hours after Representative John Lewis's sit in started, it was over. The US House of Representatives adjourned for an extended break, and the American people were promised by the Democratic party that the fight for gun regulation would resume when everyone got back to Washington DC. Once again America had another gun massacre answered with anger, spectacle, and inaction. Our elected representatives, who make around $174,000 plus expenses paid by the taxpayers each year, left the nation's capitol to take another mandated break. Over the next two weeks there will be no chance of any reasonable firearms legislation. The current batch of firearm regulations will be forgotten. Inaction will once again rule the day.

The next time the nation will see something like the Great Sit-In of June 2016 will be after the next horrible firearm massacre. Unfortunately the next massacre is more likely to occur within the next few months. The bodies will be dead, and the nation will once again cry out for answers to an all too common occurrence. The Republicans, backed by their NRA handlers, will ask for a moment of silence and not want to "politicize" the issue. The Democrats will look at the recent shooting, and try to build conversation about what could have prevented that one singular incident. Once a week has passed, the NRA will have helped sell thousands of more firearms, the Democrats will have forgotten about any meaningful legislation, and the dead will be forgotten. We will be witness to the whole process again once the next firearm massacre occurs. 

Why do we look to Washington DC to solve our gun violence problem? As more people die needlessly, the inept process never changes. Twelve dead at Columbine High School, no action. Thirty two dead at Virginia Tech, no action. Nine dead in Charleston South Carolina, no action. Twelve killed at the Navy yard in Washington DC, no action. Thirteen dead at Ft. Hood, no action. Three dead at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, no action. Twelve dead in Aurora Colorado, no action. Nine dead at Umpqua Community College, no action. Fourteen dead in San Bernardino California, no action. Twenty-six dead, twenty of them children, at Sandy Hook Elementary, no action. Forty-nine people dead in Orlando, no action. (ed note: these are the shootings I remembered off the top of my head. There are many, many more Here is an excellent look at the recent history of US mass shootings from the LA Times.) The killings continue, and the government does nothing.

In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting we are experiencing one of the rare instances when the national government does try to pass meaningful gun regulations. The law being proposed is so flawed it would be better if it never passed. The Great Sit-In was centered on two laws the Democrats were championing. One was to make all gun sales subject to a background check. There is currently no requirement to perform a back ground check on a private gun sale. That  type of law has never passed in the history of the United States. The other law would ban the sale of guns to anyone on the United States government's no fly list. This bit of new gun regulations was first brought to the nation's attention by presumptive Republican Party Presidential Candidate Donald Trump. The NRA at first seemed to be behind the law. A bill was introduced in the US Senate, one written by Republican Senator Susan Collins from Maine, that would ban people on the no fly list from purchasing firearms. The bill received 52 votes in the Senate, but since every controversial bill is threatened with a filibuster, the bill needed sixty to pass. The US House had yet to take up debate, or voted, on the no fly no buy bill. The Great Sit-In happened, and ended. Representative John Lewis has vowed that the House will take up the legislation when Congress gets back from their well deserved vacation.

The No Fly No Buy Bill has the best chance at being the first meaningfully firearm regulation to be enacted into law in over twenty years. Unfortunately it is a very bad law. Many Democrats just want a political victory, and they have rallied behind a bill that at best is ineffective and at worst is racist. The bill is one of the few laws in history to be opposed by both the NRA and the ACLU. The NRA just wants to sell guns, the ACLU is worried about people's actual freedom. The No Fly list is a secret list administered by unknown persons. The list became part of US policy after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Many non-terrorists, like children, former Senator Ted Kennedy, and sit-in leader Representative John Lewis, have had their names appear on the federal no fly list. No reason is given if one's name appears on the list, and there are no standards in place to have your name removed. The government claims that over 98% of the names on the no fly list are not American citizens. If you are a non-citizen, you cannot buy a guy already. Legal visa holders with proof of state residence (i.e. students) can purchase a firearm, with a background check. The No Fly No Buy bill is not only potentially racial profiling, it is utterly useless. There is no possibility for preventing any future massacre with the No Fly No Buy law. It is political theater being used to try and convince the American people that Congress is compassionate. It is worse than doing nothing.

The United States government has proven absolutely incapable, and unwilling, of protecting the American people from firearm massacres. Decades of inaction has led to political stunts being carried out for the passage of ineffective and racist laws. We must accept that there will not be the passage of any meaningful gun laws by the US government. The faith of the American citizen needs to be put elsewhere. Congress is filled with failure, America should not continue to look towards failure. There needs to be a new way.

The state of Hawaii just recently became the first state to have gun owners registered in a federal database. The Aloha state is doing something to keep its 1.4 million residents a bit safer. The rest of the country does not have politicians with a will to protect their citizens like Hawaii does. What can be done by the American who is not represented by the thoughtful politicians of the Hawaiian Islands?

Only 1/3 of American households and 1/4 of individuals even own guns. Regardless of what the NRA, or the government says, gun ownership is not very popular in the United States. The number of smokers in the US is close to the number of gun owners. The large majority of non-smokers were able to make smoking an anomaly. The same can happen to gun ownership. Privately the nation sees owning a gun as an odd thing, publicly we can do the same. Having a firearm is not a normal thing, and gun owners should know that. If we want gun owners to responsible, the non-gun owners should demand it. There are plenty of non-smoking areas, there should be areas where we do not accept guns. Many public places have designated spots for the smokers to gather and poison each other. The same should happen for guns. Let all the gun owners gather in the spots designated for guns, and our society will know who these gun lovers are. Hunters are already well known as gun owners due to the season and attire required for their hobby. If one has a gun that is an antique, is unusable, and has no ammunition, they do not have to gather in the designated live gun zone. The professionals who require guns for their employment, i.e. police officers and military personal, they are already known by society as carrying a live firearm. A non-government registry of gun owners would quickly be created when everyone in their neighborhood knows whose house has all the guns. Knowing that one's guns are acknowledged by the public will make these gun owners a lot more responsible. It may even cause these gun owners to give up their mythical need to protect themselves with weapons designed for mass killing. The very small minority of gun owners would shrink to a much smaller, and manageable number. Owning firearms designed for killing a whole lot of people would not be an NRA marketing campaign, it would be a source of shame.

The Democrats who sat down this week deserve our admiration. They were trying to bring attention to the inaction that has plagued our nation for decades. Their intentions were good, their law is bad. The NRA has used the government to create a sense of gun ownership being vital and normal. It is not. Since the NRA has used money to buy most of Congress, the American people can not rely on the elected representatives to protect us. We must rely on ourselves. Stop waiting for Congress to act, they will not. Start creating a safer world in your neighborhood. Our actions will be stronger than the money, and ineptness, of Washington DC. We can stop gun violence today. Yes we can.

RD

RD Kulik is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.He wants to hear the counter opinion on owning guns. Write for us.  

Martin Shkreli is the Hero America Deserves

This is the normal physical reaction when one hears the words "Martin Shkreli"

The internet's latest ragefest is all about "pharma-bro" Martin Shkreli. According to the masses Mr. Shkreli is an abomination of a human being with no empathy and a total disregard for a civilized society. He is a spoiled punk brat who uses his influence to make money off of the backs of the less fortunate. He has no remorse. He has no compassion. He is a monster. Martin Shkreli is so bad, that our incompetent elected officials in Washington D.C. are being seen as the sympathetic party when it comes to Mr Shkreli's testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. When one person can make the idiots in Congress looks good, that person deserves to be demonized.

I am not here to demonize Martin Shkreli, I am here to praise him. I in no way support the idea of jacking up the price of a life saving drug in order to make another billion. That is monsterous. The question I have is what law did he break (there is the securities fraud issue, but he has not been convicted of anything)? The press likes to focus on the obscene mark-up on the life saving drug Daraprim. By raising the price 5556% ($13.50 a dose to $750.00 a dose) Mr. Shkreli put lives in danger. Daraprim is used to treat infections in HIV positive patients, and is used globally to treat and prevent malaria. The World Health Organization lists the drug as an essential medicine. This mark-up on a life saving drug, coupled with Martin Shkreli's arrogance, has made the former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO a popular target for people fed up with corporate greed. The problem is that by raising the price on Daraprim, Mr. Shkreli did not break the law. He embraced a culture that is encouraged by our government and society as a whole. Plus, Martin Shkreli is not the first person to do this.

The practice of pharma companies buying generic drugs and radically raising their prices is not new. Do you know anyone with asthma? There is a very good chance that the asthmatic person uses an inhaler with the drug Albuterol sulfate. This is a life saving medicine for a very treatable illness. In 2013 Albuterol sulfate was $11 a dose. Six months later the price had gone up to $434 a dose, an increase of 4014%. Where was the public outrage towards the pharma companies? The drug was another off patent drug, but the delivery system (inhaler) needed to be redesigned because of new government regulations. The Pharma companies knew the inhalers would be protected by patents, so they jacked up the price of Albuterol to make some extra money (Mother Jones has a nice article describing the situation). I never remember seeing congress scolding at the CEO responsible for this greed?

There are many more drugs, ones not owned by Turing Pharmaceuticals, that have had their prices skyrocket. In 2014 Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) and Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) launched a Congressional investigation into the skyrocketing cost of generic drugs. They put together a list of drugs that have recently seen a drastic increase in cost (see the list) and tried to get answers from the pharma companies. There were no answers, there was no public outcry, there was no congressional investigation, there was no prosecution, and there was no change in the laws to make this practice illegal.. These pharma companies were just doing what the United States government allows them to do. 

Now the government wants to get serious because Martin Shkreli is an unlikable fellow. The Republicans (you know the free market guys) and Democrats decide to use Mr. Shkreli as their scapegoat for their own incompetence. They have no case. Representative Cummings  stupidly decided to attack Mr. Shkreli because of the purchase by the former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO of the one of a kind Wu-Tang Clan album. If I had a few billion dollars I would have bought the Wu-Tang Clan album, they are one of the greatest american bands ever. What is the point of attacking the man for having great taste in music. That whole tirade by Representative Cummings proves that the government is showboating. Those Representatives created this America, Martin Shkreli is just getting rich off of their incompetence.

It is also amusing that all the supposed free market Republicans want to attack Mr. Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals for the price gouge. These bozos have been defending corporate greed for decades. Why are we not yelling at the health insurance companies who are making money off of people getting sick? They set arbitrary prices all the time just to make a few extra billion. The same charlatans in Congress who got mad at Mr. Shkreli will turn around and praise government welfare queens like Jamie Diamon and other business leaders who depend on bailouts. The only reason Congress decided to grill Martin Shkreli is because the internet is mad at him. There is nothing that can be done to stop him. Well the government could try to pass some laws to make this practice illegal, but that will never happen. The Republicans and Democrats alike would never upset their big money donors, no matter how many people need to suffer. 

Martin Shkreli is an american hero. He is the embodiment of the modern American dream. Born to immigrants who worked as janitors, Martin Shkreli made his way in the world be exploiting our inhumane economic culture. We celebrate these people as geniuses. America deserves Martin Shkreli. He is the hero we deserve. He got rich with shady legal practices, he increases his wealth with inhuman actions, and he smirks his way through life. He is a modern American creation. Plus he is also quite aware that Congress is full of imbeciles. While kids are getting poisoned in Flint, Michigan, through the direct fault of the government, the US Congress wants to scold a successful business man. That is the mark of a house led by imbeciles. Thanks you American hero Martin Shkreli for speaking the truth.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing. Do you want to sing the praises of the downtrodden? Come write for us.  

The Government is Keeping Us off of Mars

This is the only rocket NASA can afford.

Do you know who Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornieko are?

Do you know who Alan Shepard and Yuri Gagarin are? (I really hope you do.)

What about Neil Armstrong, does his name ring a bell?

How about Mark Watney, I am going to assume you have heard of him?

According to my basic internet / personal polling research most people know that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Yuri Gagarin was the first person in space, Alan Shepard was the first American in space, and Mark Watney is a fictional character who is stranded on Mars. Most people have no idea who Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornieko are, and that is a huge shame. 

Astronaut Kelly and Cosmonaut Kornieko are just past the half way point of a year long mission on board the International Space Station. One of the goals of this mission is to determine what prolonged time in space does to the human body. Kelly and Kornieko volunteered to be human guinea pigs in our quest to travel farther into space, first stop Mars. Read all about their amazing mission here.

Andy Weir's sci-fi novel The Martian (and the recent Ridley Scott Film based on the book) tell the story of Mark Watney and how he survives on Mars when he is accidentally left behind (read this book, it is outstanding). The story is filled with real scientific scenarios based on the ideas we have about the hospitality of Mars.  The realism of the book help make it, and the movie, a huge hit. It is not out of the realm of possibility to think that we could make a manned mission to Mars in the near future. There are still some very large issues to figure out, like how are we going to stop our Mars explorers from being cooked alive by radiation. We are working to figure out these problems, and the first human steps on a different planet are forthcoming. Humanity is on the verge if interplanetary travel.

The biggest leap of faith in Weir's book is the idea that NASA is well funded enough to support the cost of manned Mars missions. Americans always seem excited about the possibility of space travel, yet our government never has the will to commit money to the endeavor. The budget to run all of NASA in 2015 was approximately $885 million. The US congress has spent $5 million (and counting) on their admitted politically motivated Benghazi committee.  The US house has spent northwards of $75 million trying to repeal Obamacare. The pointless never ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost at least $4 trillion, and that does not account for the medical care returning veterans will require. There have been billions of unaccounted for money the US has distributed all over Iraq and Afghanistan. A manned mission to Mars is estimated to cost around $100 billion. The point is that our government balks at the price tag for manned space exploration, yet they have no problem wasting money on politically motivated pet issues and other forms of fraud. The latest tea party hero, Jim Jordan of Ohio, costs the taxpayers around $120 million every year so his district can continue to manufacture tanks that the Army does not want. The fiscal conservatives halt NASA and our future, yet waste untold amounts of money on things that do not advance humanity.

Our government's lack of investment in space exploration contributes to the public's dismissive attitude about current space explorers. What Gagarin and Shepard did was dangerous and unknown. What Armstrong did was dangerous and inspiring. What Kelly, Kornieko, and all current space travelers do is dangerous and vital to our future. Mark Watney is more well known because The Martian is a great book, and the hero represents our hopes for what a future of interplanetary travel will look like. Weir's hero is dependent on what NASA has done, and will do. Our future on Mars has its genesis in what Kelly and Kornieko are doing on the International Space Station. We will get excited about Mars when we have heroes to root for. Our current astronauts are these heroes. They should be celebrated at least as much as a fictional character.

A manned mission to Mars is inspiring and necessary. People are flocking to read, and see, The Martian because it inspires hope and pride in humanity. The scientific discoveries made through the space programming are staggering. When President Kennedy told us we had ten years to land on the moon, the technology did not exist. Nine years later we landed on the moon and started a new computer revolution. We do not have the technology to walk on Mars, yet. When a strong leader emerges in our government, and we are challenged as a nation to rise up, we will see humans walk on Mars within our lifetimes. What great technical revolution will follow? Astronaut Mike Kelly and Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornieko are getting us ready to travel beyond the moon. Their work is paving the way for a future Mark Watney. We deserve to experience the awe and pride of interplanetary travel. We deserve a government that believes in the future.

Thanks to NASA.gov and Space.com for their help in my research. Seriously go read The Martian.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man podcast. He is wondering if Valentine Micheal Smith is waiting for us on Mars. Join the conversation by writing for SeedSing.