https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/russia-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news


this is a test to see if people find my blog through these two links to New York Times news articles


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/us/politics/campus-rape-betsy-devos-title-iv-education-trump-candice-jackson.html?ribbon-ad-idx=5&src=trending&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Trending&pgtype=article

poem: A Hard Spirit

seeking grace on a spine on a cactus
a shrike put me here and I am animated
alive as a thousand legger
crudely hairy as the silverfish
my books spindled chock-a-block up the cactus shaft
vinyl fashion garments on this coat rack
a collection of hats on the arms of the agave
alive and watching approaching dune buggies
the family approaching 

Free Market Economics blithering...belching up thoughts

Damn straight Milton Friedman was a peach of a free market economist, and I'm preaching the gospel of his mostly unworkable yet purposeful philosophy.  I'm also pitching my own philosophy, which is heavily spiked with Milton's intoxicating contributions to the law of supply and demand.

Milton earned his place in socio/political discourse (a dark, dusty corner) by connecting the rudiments of supply and demand to the supposed Constitutional freedoms.   At the top of my list of relevant thoughts here, Friedman argued that free speech was  protected to allow individuals to conduct business and protect private property.  The right to privacy pertained to proprietary information.   At the time the Constitution was written, the fuzz could enter your house without a warrant.  Constitutional privacy didn't pertain to cops enforcing the law.  It protected farmers and business owners from oppression and piracy by government or others.  Friedman discussed the principle of independence as being independent of government.  Most important, Milton was all about the simple fact that people are  responsive to money and to assets of all kinds.   People may cite ideals all they want, when the blue light special goes on at Kmart, shoppers buy crap in response to the price of goods.  

Returning to a philosophy kind to independence, free market economists, or libertarians, if I may take liberty here, tend to believe that an individual's ability and freedom to earn through production of goods and services enables him/her to live independent of government.  Conversely, socialists believe the government controls production and distribution,  and, supposedly, through dreadfully rose glasses, comrades (peons) enjoy freedom from capitalist exploitation.   Libertarians regard that socialist model as 'slavery.'   While socialists refer to workers in the free market economy as 'slaves.'  This may raise an outside thought, 'does the Constitution really guarantee us (peons) freedom, as in 'free society?'  

Libertarians lean toward a philosophy of financial strength, and of bargaining position.  While we all enjoy constitutional free speech, the dude with the fatter attorney will probably win the case.  People may be, supposedly, equal under the law, but bargaining positions are relative to wealth, status and access to resources.   People on welfare are limited in life to what the government affords them, and they must cooperate with the government to receive benefits.   A business owner can sell anything he is able to procure, profit from so doing, and use the proceeds to fly his fat ass to the moon.  Few welfare recipients can afford to join the fat fuck. Burp.  I sick of talking.  I will think up more shit on this subject.  Look for it here. 

 

I'm a writer, too, you swine

I wish I was a lesbian.  If, and then, I'd partner up with significant others, write about experiences, and  share it with my women's writing group. 

I'm a guy, and there aren't any men's writing groups.  The only thing secondary to a women's studies program is both genders (both and more) simpering and bickering in a mixed writer's workshop.  As the plot worsens, I'm hetero.   

Gay men also don't care if I jump off the Tenth Street Bridge.   I could write about how the Pittsburgh gay community is doing a bang up job of squeezing people like me out of the big picture.  A pervasive no-fraternizing policy is clearly in place.   For those of us who call ourselves 'poets,' it's like dealing with a hostile and discriminatory environment, as defined in affirmative action guidelines.

There are some activists on the political right barking, on the Web, of 'white genocide.'   Icky, I shall concur, but it's not completely BS.  There are agendas at large to harm male milk-heads.  Sounds crazy.  So does bipolar illness.   It exists and it's pernicious.  There is a formal agenda, at large, to establish the importance of women writers, and I sure as fuck don't begrudge this.  Wish they would share the glory.   They think all white (and off-white) men are assholes.    Many are.  But consider the lily-white politically correct horse-whispering types who are supportive of feminist goals.  Try not to fuck us good guys over. 

 I don't wish to repeal  the feminist-gained  right to vote.  Some honky breeder stud-cakes  actually want to engage in positive social interaction, also business relationships, among people of all preferences and genders, all six or eight of them, now that 'transgender' means polymorphous more so than yesteryear.  There is advocacy for people who used to be men.  It would be real sweet if there was advocacy for guys who still are.  Poets.  In a hostile shit-storm of gender politics.