The Days After: I Give Up

In the beginning I had a plan to look at every single Presidential primary / caucus result and try to use my education and work experience to give the good people out there on the internet my own personal views of what the results meant. Things were going well for a while, and then the mid-March primaries made me lose interest in the whole process. Why? Because it is an incredibly undemocratic, hateful, and pointless exercise. So today I decided that the primaries do not deserve any more of my attention, because they do not respect the will of the people. Recapping the days after countless show elections, I give up. 

Elections are incredibly important. When people do not show up to vote, the results can be disastrous. No matter how toxic the process has become, we must get out and vote. Your town council decides how safe, clean, and valuable your neighborhood is. Many neighborhoods do not even offer recycling because their local officials would rather not deal with the expense and hassle of trying to clean up the planet. Your school board is directly responsible for determining how your children, and all of their friends, will be educated. Science teachers around the country are being forced to give lip service to non-science because of uninformed religious zealots being elected to the school board. Most of our judges are elected and not appointed. These judges are being swayed by private interest to send more people to jail. These jails are constantly being sold off to private companies because the governors we elect need to plug gaps in their respective state budgets. Access to good healthcare is being dictated by members of your state legislature. Most of these state lawmakers have more extreme views than anyone we see on the Sunday morning political shows. What I am saying is that elections are extremely important. You should always get out and vote.

The highest voter turnout is always during the US Presidential election. I have personally never thought the election of the President of the United States is that big of a deal. My ambivalence to the Presidency is probably directly related to the men who have held the office in my lifetime. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush I, Bill Clinton, George Bush II, and Barack Obama - that is a pretty mediocre run of Presidents. Ford pardoned Nixon and told America that the President is above the law. Carter was listless and allowed his opposition to weaken his Presidency, Reagan destroyed the economy, bankrupted social security, ignored the AIDS crisis, and represented only the rich and religious interests in the country. Bush I started the destabilization of the Middle East. Clinton embraced republican economic ideals and weakened the social safety net for our most vulnerable citizens. Bush II was one of the top five worst presidents in US history represented by his disastrous foreign and economic policy decisions. Obama has been filled with empty promises and policies that only go half way in addressing our true problems. This run of Presidents is comparable to the weak, ineffectual, and political hacks that occupied the White House during Reconstruction (without looking it up on the internet, try and name three Presidents in order between Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, not a memorable group). Why should I care about who is the President, when ever single man who has been in office the last forty years has been there to represent a very small group of rich political donors. Every four years I vote for the President, and it is the least important vote I cast.

The 2016 election has already been one for the history books. We may have the first woman to sit on top of the ticket for one of the two major political parties (we will). The first candidate of Hispanic descent could be the nominee for the Republican party. The first Jewish presidential nominee. The first brokered convention in generations. There is a lot of history being made, too bad the people making the history are uninspiring and self serving. The modern media, and the two major political parties, have given the American people the most deplorable slate of Presidential candidates.

The Republican Party has little to no chance to ever win another national election with the current state of their party. Decades after Richard Nixon's southern strategy, the Republican Party has enhanced their platform of fear and hatred. Anytime there is a push to suppress voter turnout, it is the Republicans. Any effort to redraw congressional district lines into a gerrymandered atrocity, it is always the republicans. Blame the poor or a minority group for all of America's problems, you better believe the Republican Party is creating the talking points. The modern Republican Party has been built to not grow voters, and to make sure that voting is as undemocratic as possible. The nation has taken notice of how unamerican the Republican Party has been when it comes to elections.

The three remaining Republican Presidential candidates perfectly represent a party of feudal lords. Ohio Governor John Kasich, the moderate according to the national press, embraces all the bad ideas of the GOP. Under his leadership Ohio has added a lot of low paying jobs, and lost a whole lot of jobs with good pay and benefits. The religious right, with the help of Kasich, has put Ohio near the bottom of the country when it comes to women's health. The public education system is being gutted by "moderate" Kasich so his charter school donors can get rich off of the taxpayers. Bad businessman Donald Trump is filled with hate and has no meaningful ideas to actually make America great again. His campaign has been an embarrassment to the entire country. The press keeps egging Trump on because they care about money and have killed the concept of journalism. Texas Senator Ted Cruz is a crazy person, surrounded by crazy people, and has some very antiquated crazy ideas. People like Glenn Beck paint Cruz as some kind of religious savior, and Cruz plays the part. The Texas Senator is so ineffectual and unpopular that a large majority of his own colleagues refuse to endorse Cruz for the Republican nomination. All three of these bozos can not win a national election, no matter how bad the Democratic nominee is.

Speaking of how bad the Democratic nominee will be, Senator Sanders and former Secretary of State Clinton have their own laundry basket full of issues. Bernie Sanders has captured a lot of the millennial imagination, but that really doesn't matter when half of the millennials will not even vote in the election. What really bothers me about Sanders is that the Vermont Senator is not even a member of the Democratic Party. It seems to me that Sanders is using the infrastructure of the Democratic Party for his own personal gain. With Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee has thrown all of their resources behind a candidate who has economic values equal to those in the Republican Party. Under a President Clinton, Wall Street will continue to run unregulated. When the big banks sink the economy again, Hillary Clinton will make sure that US taxpayers bail out the 1% again. It continues to trouble me that scandal and bad PR follows the Clinton's everywhere they go. Benghazi may be a show trial, but it never ends. Hillary's hubris keeps it around. Former President Bill Clinton whitesplaining his administrations horrible record on race and crime, that is another unfortunate event that seems to keep happening.  A Hillary Clinton Presidency would be a whole lot of the same we have seen the last 25 years. Endless war in the Middle East, Wall Street giveaways, and weakening of the social safety net. That sure looks like Democratic Party values.

In my eyes we have five self absorbed, power hungry rich people fighting with each other to win the pageant called the US Presidency. Like a beauty pageant, the US election is not be decided by the American people, it is being decided by a select group of judges. On the Democratic Party side we have the super delegates. Hillary Clinton only needs to win a few states, not even half, and the super delegates will giver her the Democratic Party nomination over Bernie Sanders. In Wyoming, Senator Sanders won over 50% of the popular vote and still only took under 40% of the states delegates. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has altered the rules constantly to only favor Clinton. The Democratic Party does not care at all about the voice of the people, they only care about the rich and connected. 

Somehow the Republican Party is a bigger undemocratic mess than the Democrats. Donald Trump is a horrible choice for President, but so is the rest of the field. RNC chairman Reince Priebus and the Tea Party created this fractured hateful Republican Party to win local races, and now their hate is on full display for the nation. By making your base feel like they are always under attack from terrorists, minorities, the poor, social justice warriors, children, martians, whoever, then your base will flock to biggest strongman. Kasich is not filled with enough pure hate, Cruz is a creepy fellow with very few friends, someone had to lead the angry white man. Trump is a master of marketing, and he knew that his hate filled rhetoric would inspire the very vocal persons who believe in white christian male victimhood. These people demand someone pay for their insecurities, Donald Trump has promised them restitution. No wonder they are so upset that the RNC has tried to remove Donald Trump from the Republican field. The Republican Party has been advocating Trumps positions on immigration and women's health for decades, they just soften the hate with terms like conservative principles. The base has rejected these code words and wants action. Trump promises action, and the establishment is now trying to silence the voice of the people. Trump is the reflection in the mirror of the modern Republican Party, and the party does not like what they see.

The candidates all stink. None of them care about actually fixing anything. Sanders may want to deregulate the big banks, but he still believes guns deserve more protection than people. Clinton could break the gender barrier, but she will bend over backwards to protect the richest Americans. Kasich may not seem crazy, but embraces all the same backward ideas of his colleagues. Trump may be a true outsider, but he wants to make sure we are a country of hate and fear. Cruz is, well there really is not anything nice I can say about Ted Cruz. His children are adorable, there I said something nice. The brokered Republican Convention may bring a new, or old, face to the race. It doesn't matter, the next President will be another in a long line of political hacks who care very little for the problems facing our nation.

So I give up. The Republican and Democratic Parties refuse to let the people have a say. The fact that we keep talking about super delegates and brokered conventions means that the primary elections of 2016 mean nothing to the political party elites. The election of our next President does not need the will of the people. Why should I care what the RNC and DNC think, they do not care about me. No more primary updates, it has been over a month since the last one. I have nothing more to say on a process that deserves no more words. We will continue to talk politics here at SeedSing. Our goal is to give the non wealthy and connected a voice. I am not going to waste time on the primary dog and pony show. I give up. We will talk about this electoral mess when the mud clears, or when the mud consumes us all. 

Please do not forget to vote. Our voices will only gain meaning, and the political parties will lose their power, if we ALL vote in EVERY election. Get out and vote.

RD Kulik

RD  is the Head editor at SeedSing and the host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He may think the US President is pointless, but every other race needs your attention. Donate to the National Campaign Training Committee today and support your local candidates.

 

 

 

Martin Shkreli is the Hero America Deserves

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

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.