1. Your unemployment benefits come from money from your paycheck. It’s like insurance against losing your job. It’s not a gift from the government; you bought it, you paid for it.
2. If employers pay so little that your unemployment benefits are greater, that doesn’t mean the benefits YOU paid for should be lowered. It means employers are not paying enough.
3. A nationwide “strike” of minimum wage earners is the best way we can force these businesses to treat their employees with respect and with a living wage — especially since they all claimed these people were “essential workers” during a pandemic.
4. If you are upset that some worker will now make $15 an hour and that’s close to what you’re making, then the proper realization to you should be “Geez, I’M not being paid what I’m worth, either.”
Here’s this guy who lies constantly but became President despite a majority of Americans voting against him. He’s the only President who never even gained a 50% approval rating and the only one to be impeached twice. More people in his administration were indicted and convicted than any other President in history, including Richard Nixon. Thanks to his terrible leadership, we lost the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Presidency by a huge margin.
The values that liberals push are the values of America. The things we support are the same things a majority of Americans support: National health care, higher taxes on billionaires, free college, a higher minimum wage, legal abortion, gay marriage, legalization of marijuana, “Black Lives Matter”, gun control, vaccinations — all have the support of a majority of our fellow Americans, poll after poll shows.
So why are we always fighting for these things?
Some of it is just history: Those with power have always, since the dawn of time, cheated to make sure they keep that power. No advancement has come about because of the Powerful’s humane caring for those beneath them. Everything we have gained has had to be fought for.
So how did we get here?
Mostly it’s the result of our system of government, which is by its nature not very democratic.
The Electoral College. When you start with a system that allows people who lose the popular vote to become President against the will of the people, you know you’re not in a truly democratic country. Our artificial borders place an emphasis on land instead of people and we end up with a system where the population of a dozen or so very sparsely populated states have more power than even a city. (More on why we need to get rid of the Electoral College here.)
Each one of these states has a smaller population than Los Angeles
The Senate. Similarly, Senators represent land, not people. No matter how small the state, they get two Senators. This means a Senator from Wyoming represents 286,000 people while one from California represents 19,500,000. Many times we’ve seen how the Senators from these smaller states have held up legislation the majority of Americans want simply because of the undemocratic way Senators represent our country.
The Supreme Court. Right now, there are more people on the Supreme Court who were appointed by Presidents who lost the popular vote than justices who were appointed by those who won. (And once more let’s remind everyone that Democrats won the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 elections — spanning 32 years — but only won 5 of them, thanks to the Electoral College.) So when an issue about voting or gerrymandering or democracy comes before this undemocratically-appointed Court (approved by an undemocratic Senate), you can guess what their decision will be.
Gerrymandering. Admittedly, some Democrats have practiced this as well, where lines are drawn to benefit one party over another. This can be done in such a way that even though your party may be the minority one, if you get to draw the lines, you can make sure you get more of your party into power anyway.
Voter suppression. Republicans (who hold the minority viewpoint in America) know they will always lose if everyone votes, so their strategy has always been simple: Let’s change our views to appeal to a majority of Americans! I’m kidding, of course. Their strategy is instead: Let’s cheat to make sure we always win. That’s why they have spent 50 years
fighting against the Voting Rights Act
purging people from voting lists
closing precincts in minority neighborhoods
enacting restrictive voter ID laws
prohibiting felons from voting
stopping early voting and mail-in ballots
making sure election day isn’t a national holiday
killing any bill designed to prevent Russian interference
making sure no paper ballots are used
getting rid of election finance laws
making it illegal to even give drinks to people standing in line to vote
So yeah, those of us who represent the majority of Americans have huge hurdles to overcome to fight against the minority power controlling us. And that’s why it seems to many that our views are the unpopular ones, since we lose constantly.
But the real reason is much more complicated and much harder to resolve.
Remember: In order to get a search warrant, the police have to convince a judge, using evidence, that there is probably some incriminating evidence there. They can’t just go on a fishing expedition, hoping that maybe they’ll find something. They need probable cause to believe that there is evidence of a crime before a judge will grant the warrant.
And I would bet this is especially true when you’re going after a high-profile person who has resources and the ability to grab media attention. You don’t want to risk doing a search and finding nothing.
So when Guiliani and the right-wing media tells you this is some sort of political thing, keep in mind that some judge somewhere thought there was something there.
And if you want to talk politics, we now know that investigators had sufficient evidence last year to get the warrant, but the Trump administration prevented that from happening. There’s your politics affecting a judicial action.
I really couldn’t have someone else read my book — it’s just too personal and, let’s face it, parts are definitely written in first person.
So I bought a nice microphone and recorded in my room. The quality may not be as good as I would have liked, but it’s not bad and Amazon said it was good enough for them, so now my Constitution book is available for you to listen to!
This is not my first audio book — the Baker Street Irregulars anthologies (co-edited with NY Times Bestseller Jonathan Maberry) had wonderful actors reading the stories. However, that was all arranged by the publisher and I had no control over it. They did an excellent job!
But this is the first that I got to read my own work. And, if you know me, you know I’m a ham. Give me an audience and I’m happy. I hope I did a good job!
The advantage of this audio book is that you can listen in your car or while jogging or otherwise doing something else. You also have the advantage of an updated copy, since I added a few bits here and there as the law changed (such as discussing Trump’s two impeachments which occurred after the publication of the original book).
The disadvantage of this audio book is that you’ll miss all the great cartoons from Pulitzer-Prize-winning artist Darrin Bell. So clearly, you’ll need to buy a copy as well. (And if you want many of the cartoons in color, you’ll also have to get the ebook version).
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