Saturday, September 24, 2016

9/24/16 Where We Are Headed

The Washington Post - The GOP has become a pity party for white males.  The wealthy have always considered the working class to be reprehensible and dirty, the unwashed masses is how they used to refer to them. Now the establishment and corporate media have a new way of saying it. If you are working class then you are hateful, scared, stupid and just don't understand that you have to be in high tech to be successful. The vilification of Trump supporters is very much akin to how the French monarchy dealt with their citizens until the whole system was taken down. Democracy means being concerned about all citizens and not just your betters. Many Republicans did not vote for Romney because he disregarded half of our citizens. Hillary's mistake and the corporate media is in thinking that working class Democratic voters do not know that she considers them deplorables and useless too.

The Washington Post - At U.N., Obama offers a defense of a liberal world order under siege.  Obama will be gone soon; but, you should remember that Obama did not create multinational corporations or globalization, he is just another proponent of it.

Bloomberg - Get Ready for Freeways That Ban Human Drivers.  Here is one of the most important paragraphs from the post. "This week, technology industry veterans proposed a ban on human drivers on a 150-mile (241-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 5 from Seattle to Vancouver. Within five years, human driving could be outlawed in congested city centers like London, on college campuses and at airports, said Kristin Schondorf, executive director of automotive transportation at consultant EY." This is the second most important paragraph in the post, "To speed the transition, governments may give drivers financial incentives to replace their cars with autonomous vehicles, similar to the Cash for Clunkers program offered in 2009 to get gas guzzlers off the road, Google’s Medford said. Insurance companies also could nudge people out of the driver’s seat by charging a higher premium to operate a car manually, Schondorf said."

Yahoo - How the government plans to make your self-driving car safer.  Yes, the Federal government will get involved in making rules regarding self-driving cars. In the end it will be done with a carrot more than a stick. States will only be given money from the Federal Transportation Fund if they follow the same rules for self driving vehicles.

Federal Department of Transportation - Federal Automated Vehicle Policy. If nothing else, go to page 37 and read how the Federal government views the relationship between the fed and states when regulating driving. About 3 or 4 years ago I pointed out that City streets were now being considered as part of the national highway system. That was an unusual step historically; but, as I pointed out at the time was part of a longer term plan.  

Where are we headed? We are being led to a place where only the entranced win and where being born means not having a chance, no medical care, no real education and being born into a world where you agree that someone else already owns everything. If you are born today you cannot just go into the wilderness and take unused land and work it, you have to buy that land from someone else. You start out with less and have to pay to even compete whereas they start with the advantage. That is what we are leaving our children, the illusion that you can inherit by right more than the other guy, that you can inherit advantage.