Let’s first eliminate the usual suspects. None of the above listed products was created or invented by a wealthy person or by any of the CEOs of the companies currently reaping huge profits from them.  In fact, a Google search of these terms shows that, by and large, nobody knows who invented most of them. But this much we know: Collectively, these products account for hundreds of billions of dollars in profits, and the lion’s share of those billions flows into the pockets of millionaires and billionaires who had nothing whatsoever to do with inventing or making any of them.   Nearly all have been and are still being made by creative innovative workers who earn between $50,000 and $150,000 per year.

 

Here is a short list of those who pocket huge profits but had little to nothing to do with the underlying products or services that they control or controlled: Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who signed on last year as CEO and was promptly handed $600 million in stock options for doing nothing; Michael Eisner was handed $750 million in a retirement package from the Disney corporation for…leaving?   Ditto for former Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond who was given a cool $450 million for making room there for another CEO with high aspirations for riding off into the sunset with other multimillions of dollars while watching the world price of oil rise and being richly rewarded for China and India’s demand for crude.

 

Why did I bring these conclusions up so early in this essay? The reason is because Rep. John Boehner, and Eric Clapton, and Paul Ryan along with a similar group of Right wingers in the Senate and on FOX- TV would like us all to believe that the rich are the makers of things, and they are the key players in creating jobs. That is presumably why they argue for more and more tax breaks to the wealthy. What evidence do they have for the accuracy of their statements? The answer is “None.” And what is the basis for their beliefs? They have merely asserted them. Indeed, that is the underlying premise behind their entire ideology:   Truth by assertion. This technique is used by those who are contemptuous of your intelligence, who are abusive of the authority that comes with their position, and who have no respect at all for facts that contradict their claims. Let’s put it this way: Ignorance + arrogance + contemptuousness + assertions = an absurd ideology. I won’t assert that Adolf Hitler was the originator of this stupid way of thinking, but he at least practiced it before today’s group of mental lightweights caught wind of it.

 

I could end this essay at this point with the observation that a bright 3^rd grade student would never accept such drivel. Still, it seems that a huge chunk of our population either accepts it, or they do not have the courage to call out the asserters as bald-faced liars who have no place in Congress or anywhere else where honesty is a necessity. And that brings me to my motivation for writing this essay: You and I, and millions more like us, need to band together in a coherent, united way to make our voices heard. We cannot forever let the puppets for the wealthy set the terms and the tone of the conversation that is intended only to take the profits that flow from our brainpower and direct it into the pockets of the rich. At the moment the one organization that best represents that point o view is the other98.com.

 

Behind the Right Wing ideology there is a band of n’ere-do-wells who are motivated by greed. They are all super rich with a simple agenda: They want to control all the wealth in the country with more and more laws on the books that favor them and their agenda.   To that end they intend to buy as many elections as they can with huge amounts of campaign money for their puppet candidates; defeat any and all other candidates who can’t be bought; install conservative judges at all levels; and the first target of their attacks is…truth.

 

There is strength in numbers. Once again, here is a good place to start in order to find a place to vent your outrage and to band with millions of others who are also fed up those who want it all: http://other98.com.