Tidbits

. . . And, sorry to say, not exactly the juicy, tasty kind. Simply food for thought that will, sooner or later, affect you and me – if it isn’t already. So, here’s my first tidbit: I was entering a retail store a while back when I saw a nicely dressed couple walking by me, she clutching a big box.

“They didn’t even look at us,” she says snickering.

“We sure got away with it.” He responds as they walked towards their car.

From their demeanor and words, I could only presume that they had just stolen a box which, from the looks of it, contained a dinner set. It was not the first time that I had witnessed retail theft, because in that same store I always find packages of stockings emptied of their contents and returned to the shelf. This incident, like many others, reminds me that there are many rotten people out there who are stealing, murdering, lying and being totally immoral and unethical. Ingrates like these are despicable!

Walmart loses about 3 billion dollars a year due to theft (a mere 1% of their profits, but still it’s awful, because we consumers end up paying for it, not Walmart). The US retail industry loses 50 billion due to mismanagement of inventory technologies, food waste, employee theft and shoplifting. We have always known that there is retail theft, however, seeing this figure left me absolutely open-mouthed!

Speaking of Walmart, and according to The Wall Street Journal, the corporation just settled a six-year long investigation by the US Government into how some of their managers bribed individuals in places like Mexico, India, China and Brazil in order to – as one example of their corruption – obtain permits for opening stores. US corporations abetting corruption, while having the temerity to speak in derision about corruption elsewhere in the world? Really? I am absolutely certain that they are not the only corporation indulging in corruption. Recent reports from Democracy Now regarding the inferior and tainted medications being manufactured in China, Vietnam and India which are then sold in our markets, and ingested by us, are absolutely horrific, pretty depraved and another example of how greed and corruption end up affecting all of us. Add to this, and as per The Intercept in an expose about Maine farms – surely not the only ones – that spread sludge as a fertilizer which is found to contain high levels of PFAs, PFOs, PFOAs, PFBs all of which are a toxic/carcinogenic class of compounds that corporations such as DuPont and 3M use plenty of, and which eventually find their way into many of the food products that we all buy from our grocery stores and end up eating, as well as seeping into breast milk. Horrors! And then we all wonder why some of us are getting sick, and why there is something wrong with our babies? All these horrid things going on as the Trump Administration is reducing the oversight by the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and reversing all the regulations that have to do with clean air, water, etc. Yes, we are merely Collateral Damage to the whims of Runaway Capitalism that are bringing us closer to Extinction!

On another note, and another tidbit: as per an expose by Reveal News, 72 police officers in Philadelphia are on administrative leave while under investigation for belonging to a closed social media platform where they aired out their racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and other supremacist extremist views. Police Officers! The Law! Apparently, this is not only going on in Philadelphia, but across the country (recently there is an ongoing terrible case in South Bend, Indiana) and involving Prison Wardens, Sheriffs, Detectives and other law enforcement members. So it’s not untrue, or surprising, what minority communities have been saying about being unjustly targeted by corrupt police officers on a constant basis, nor is it shocking that the numbers of jailed, framed and murdered minorities, especially in the black community, is so much higher than those of white people. Incidentally, the police are even more savage in some other countries where torture, rape and extreme conditions are normal! This is pretty dismal and another manifestation of pervasive Planetary Injustice!

Moreover, I don’t care what the arguments or nonsensical justifications for our immigrant crisis are. I just know they’re wrong – very wrong. Politicizing this issue by Both political parties, as has been happening in this nation for decades, is absolutely and without question inhumane and immoral. Case in point, and one of the consequences of the politicization of this issue by Both parties, is the whole debacle that has brought us up to this disgraceful point of jailing little children and wresting them away from their parents as we throw them in slovenly cages! Barbaric, to say the least! A pox on Both Parties!

As for more on a corrupt political class that displays its dishonesty daily, Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, is requesting approval for a cost-of-living pay raise for members of Congress – who make 174,000 dollar salaries per annum – in the amount of 4,500 dollars per Congress person. All this aside from all the perks they receive and the best Health Insurance Plan in the nation, plus all the millions in lobbyist bribes that they take in for their reelection campaigns. The Least that the Honorable and Wretched Hoyer could have done is insist on a similar cost-of-living pay increase for the millions of people who are working two jobs, have dismal health insurance, if any at all, and who can barely pay for their rent and groceries! Talk about how Privilege pampers itself, while debating a minimum wage increase for the millions! Corruption! Again, it is worldwide!

Last tidbit: I watched the Democratic Party Debates for two nights this past week, and here’s my prediction: if the Democrats continue expounding their sorry views on Immigration and Impeachment the way that they have been, they are going to lose the election, and they will have nobody to blame but their sorry selves!

This is just a sampling of disgraceful tidbits I thought of today.! There are stories like these, and much worse, going on every hour of every day executed by corrupt and greedy politicians, corporate honchos and powerful lobbyists all over the Planet. We are, indeed, doomed unless we boot out all this corruption and get involved with the courageous organizations and honest politicians who are trying to reverse these depraved doings! This will not happen overnight, nor by this coming election. This is a long process that has already begun and that should only be gaining momentum from now on.

Finally, there is no way to eradicate wickedness from our world. After all, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad and all the other Prophets failed miserably in this mission. I don’t know how we are going to fix this very broken world, but I recall these Words of Wisdom from abolitionist Harriett Tubman: “I could have freed thousands more, if they knew that they were slaves.”  Do we realize that this is exactly what we are when we continue to accept the unacceptable? A more just world has to apply the same standards of justice to everyone and across the board, whether it is justice towards the planet, or to humans whether they are friends, or enemies. The same old politicians, same old systems, same old methods, same old lies, hypocrisy and palliatives are not, and will not, work anymore. And, when you and I sit back and do nothing we are aiding and abetting that obsolete matrix which got us here to begin with!