Episodes

  • The U.S. Capitol Riot Began Years Ago. Let’s Understand Why America Is So Divided.

    The U.S. Capitol Riot Began Years Ago. Let’s Understand Why America Is So Divided.
    Mar 12 2022

    House Founder Johnny Hill discusses the current issue of division in our American society.
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    20 mins
  • Until the oligarchs lose power, there will be no reform in Ukraine!

    Until the oligarchs lose power, there will be no reform in Ukraine!
    Mar 4 2022
      Discontent is looming in Ukraine this winter. Following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, the country's political climate has changed dramatically after six years of imperfect progress. In recent months, the government has abandoned reforms and reverted to the worst practices of the toxic past. Ukraine is now in danger of descending into the same kind of corrupt chaos that characterized its first two decades as an independent nation.   As one of the reformers who entered government in the tumultuous period after the traumatic events of early 2014, I recognize that now we are at an ominous crossroads in Ukraine's nation-building journey. Indeed, we haven't lost the war yet, but we've lost a significant battle.   Over the past six years, thousands of young Ukrainians have interrupted their careers to contribute to the transformation of their country. In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity, some took up public office. Volodymyr Groysman and Oleksiy Honcharuk both did so during their later governments. This period of optimism and idealism has ended.   Their place has been taken by officials whose values are completely different from their own. Advocates of reform and supporters of liberal, pro-Western views have been forced out of public service altogether. They are now being illegally targeted by the security services.   Young Ukrainians' enthusiasm for public service in recent years is unlikely to be repeated. Despite the patriotic sentiment in the private sector, the government has done everything it can to discourage its top talent from joining the government.   In addition to intentionally low wages, bogus criminal charges, and the near-certainty of persistent attacks by Ukraine's oligarch-controlled mainstream media, there are other deterrents. Few people find this appealing, as it is understandable.   The most tragic aspect of the current situation is that President Zelenskyy had the opportunity to fundamentally change this country a little over one year ago. Following his unexpected victory in Ukraine's presidential election in April 2019, coupled with the Servant of the People party's equally impressive victory in parliamentary elections three months later, he had an unprecedented opportunity to push through a program of potentially tough reforms.   Ukraine, on the other hand, has shifted in the opposite direction. Ukraine's president has now undone most of the modest progress that came before him, despite running on a vague but broadly reformist platform. Eight years have passed subsequently Ukraine has regressed.   What has led to this dramatic reversal of Ukraine's national trajectory?   Insert Photo    It has been the country's oligarchs who have played the decisive role so often in its history as an independent state. Due to their near-total control over the Ukrainian media, democratic forces have been marginalized and discredited. Through their widespread influence in the civil service, law enforcement, business, and particularly the judiciary, they have sabotaged, blocked, stifled, and ultimately reversed reform after reform.   This oligarch-led counter-revolution is evident. Now that Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration isn't a foregone conclusion, the country's pro-Russian lobby is once again gaining confidence and raising its voice. The West is gradually lessening its support for Ukraine as formerly dependable allies begin to doubt the direction it is taking under President Zelenskyy. What better way to change that than war?   Ukraine's future trajectory is a subject of doubt among the domestic audience. Millions of Ukrainians have watched bewildered and angry in recent weeks as the Constitutional Court casually annulled some of the most significant reforms of the past six years.   Zelenskyy's blustering response to the crisis has become bogged down in parliament, so there are concerns that the Constitutional Court will now follow the same course. There is widespread expectation that the court will reverse even more of the post-2014 legislation that briefly brought Ukraine closer to the dream of a European future.   Zelenskyy's first eighteen months as president have had little in common with the ideals that he claimed to represent throughout his campaign. On top of that, they directly contradict the will of the Ukrainian people, who have made it clear that they wish to see the country pursue radical reforms.   Unrest and instability are a result of this disconnect between policy and promises. Ukraine's underlying problems need to be resolved before mass protests can succeed.   It has now become painfully clear that efforts to transform Ukraine since 2014 have not succeeded in changing the state's foundation or ushering in a truly new era. As long as we continue to play by the rules of the oligarchic system, Ukraine will remain destined to repeat its mistakes.   Ukrainian popular uprisings have achieved some important gains such as the right to free and...
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    26 mins
  • Neoliberalism has basically cannibalized our Heartland and Rural America!

    Neoliberalism has basically cannibalized our Heartland and Rural America!
    Dec 18 2021
    The Script Neoliberalism has badly damaged the economy in half of America in order to make a very small percentage of Americans much better off than they once were. Neoliberalism has basically cannibalized our Heartland and rural economy in order to concentrate our economy into a couple dozen hot desirable urban areas and several dozen upscale resort towns. Hot desirable high tech urban areas are doing fairly well though rapidly rising housing costs there are making it impossible for many young people to buy homes without lots of down-payment assistance. High rapidly-rising housing costs are also driving low-income and even lower-middle-income residents out of high-cost cities and resort towns. Metro-Denver where my wife and I live is a good example. Here our non-tipped minimum wage is $12.32/hour and our tipped minimum is $9.30/hour. Both rates will rise in January by 2.5%. Our median household income is $87K. However, our median home sales price has risen to $704K and our median rent to $1825/month. Our current jobless rate is only 4.6%. Retail price inflation here in housing, healthcare, grocery costs, and utility bills is up by about 40% since 2018. Housing cost here is up by close to double since 2012 and by 550% since 1991. (St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's MSPUS chart). In 1991 the Federal non-tipped minimum wage was $4.25/hour. Healthcare costs here including the rise in out-of-pocket costs is up by close to triple since 2014 and by close to 1000% since 2000. Utility costs and numerous other costs are up by 250% since 2000 also. In 2000 the Federal minimum wage was $5.25/hour. I can see why older married homeowners are much more supportive of Biden than younger mainly renters are. Young people have never seen the kind of inflation we are seeing now even though inflation was in the 6-7% annual range from 1987-1991 and even higher in the 1970s. Rents and home prices are skyrocketing in most of America as new housing construction has greatly lagged demand in most of America. A recent real estate industry study found that new housing construction has been about 5 million units less than demand since 2000. Our hottest most-desirable cities and towns are out of land and nothing short of declaring eminent domain over entire suburbs of single-family housing, some of it nearly new, will fix the problem in our most-desirable urban areas, which also have our highest median incomes. Cost-driven outmigration from high-cost cities is driving housing and other living costs up in nearby lower-cost cities too. There are several articles in Kansas City media, the Kansas City Star and others, going back several years, decrying the Denverization of Kansas City. Outmigration from our even higher-cost West Coast cities has been driving home prices up in Boise, Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Portland, and Salt Lake City too. There are still bargain cities in our Heartland such as most Southern Great Lakes cities, or many cities in the Deep South, but wages there are a lot lower too. Our older son lives in Valdosta, GA, where the median home sales price was $133K just a year ago, but don't plan on making more than $40K to $50K there either. Tallahassee is almost as affordable. In Metro-Detroit and the Cleveland, OH area there is plenty of affordable housing but both cities suffer high violent crime rates and a paucity of good-paying employment too. Numerous other Southern Great Lakes cities are affordable too. Obviously with Red Joe Manchin and his sidekick from Arizona relentlessly blocking the Democrat agenda on-behalf of Republicans Joe Biden's agenda is going nowhere. It is too bad that liberals and progressives didn't hold out on passing the infrastructure bill until the Build Back Better Act passed, as now Red Joe has reneged on his tacit agreement to the BBB Act before the infrastructure bill passed. Lots of average Americans are hurting but Red Joe like Republicans only cares about rich Americans and about maintaining his coal-fueled lifestyle. Likely absolutely no change is possible on climate change policy with Red Joe blocking every Democrat initiative. So we are in a stalemate hoping to break the logjam in the 2022 election. Republicans are going to vote in force so Democrats had better be ready to vote as close as possible to 100% of the electorate too. We really need at least 55 votes in the US Senate and control of the US House to have any chance of overcoming Red Joe and the other Blue Dogs and passing any of the Democrat agenda. Otherwise, we are going to lose our democracy to the Republican goal of a brutal right-wing rich makes right faux-Christian police and prison state banana republic dictatorship that liberals and progressives should seriously consider migrating away from. Mark Richardson- House of Public Discourse Member  

     
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    6 mins
  • Have We Adapted to an Illusion That is Non-Survivable?

    Have We Adapted to an Illusion That is Non-Survivable?
    Dec 11 2021
    The Script Definition of evolution: From the Collins Dictionary, Evolution is a process of gradual change that takes place over many generations, during which species of animals, plants, or insects slowly change some of their physical characteristics. . For the past 40 plus years the evolution of this nation has been driven by the stimulus of the Cons (Rich Ultra Conservative Authoritarians). We have in truth adapted to them, evolved to their stimulus, and now have we become unsustainable, as we have adapted to their illusion. After 40 plus years have we adapted to them, have become a kind of Karen? What does it mean to be a Karin? Karen is a pejorative slang term for an obnoxious, angry, entitled, and often racist middle-aged white woman who uses her privilege to get her way or police other people's behaviors. . We feel there is nothing we can do? Except to cry and shake and look pathetic. I am being unfair, I know, but the political process has become a trap, and so many simply cannot see that. There is an illogic in trying to beat the game while the people that run the game change the rules to suit their advantage. That is the state of American politics and the media is there on all levels to support that. So the question, that begs to be answered is have we adapted ourselves to the Cons to a point where we have become non-survivable? That, I think is the key question that we must all ask ourselves. . Have we become self-correcting to the whims of the Cons? Do we give in or do what they think we should before they even ask? When our democracy is threatened do we think of our 401k and shut up? Do we automatically discount the incredible achievements of the “New Deal” when economics are talked about? Do you know the media is lying but don’t care? Have the idiots in the Republican Party yelled and screamed your higher functioning brain into neutral? When progressives are on television do you see a radical that wants to raise your taxes? Have we forgotten what a nation trying to be better is who we were and now we just want to make money and the rest be damned? . Remember the “Purity” tests of not too long ago? How there were always those that would tear you apart for not toeing their line as to what you should believe. What we didn’t know at the time but I’m sure many suspected was that there were Con trolls, looking to make sure the wounds inflicted were deep. The Cons paid for troll schools to give them the best of tools to make your life online as miserable as possible. To keep us divided as possible and cut each other’s social media threats. And we followed right along with their claims of “Freedom.” . We have adjusted to them in every way possible. There is a pile of bullshit on television daily, the biggest lies given the same weight as truth. We live in a time of control and yet fight for imaginary freedoms long gone. We have literally sold our freedoms for the warmth and faux success of a norm that squeezes everything but orthodoxy out of us. Your job demands orthodoxy, your television tells you what to think, replaces it with what the owners want, and tells you that is all normal. Entertainment tells the story the backers want to be told, the government is the best that money can buy, and our lives feel more and more helpless and hopeless. That protections we once considered secure are now relative to the norms the rich Cons and the angry Regressives pass into law, whenever they are in power. . Have we evolved into a nation of Karen’s, I guess for men Teds? How many times on Yahoo News do we see how someone “Owned” somebody else in the Con or Regressive ranks? That’s what a “Karen or Ted” does! We have become so helpless that that’s all we do!! Who cares? The Cons and Regressives have coopted patriotism and effectiveness. But it was always the “New Dealers” that won World War Two, beat Grandpa’s Cons great depression, went to the moon, built the one time greatest infrastructure in the world, and had a nation of mostly happy people. That was what Progressives can do! What happened to those Progressives? Dissolved into purity contests and watching our nation turn into Russia. Substituting a fight against vaccines for one of white power of listening to Russian agents and some idiot dance troupe owner spewing lies and more lies. . There is only one way out because they have closed the trap tighter and tighter while we have listened to ground game and $15 dollars an hour as the fix for everything. We support a party that has only one real option, promising economic betterment as opposed to anything real. And when they can’t deliver…Getting out of this will require a real evolution, not some fake bullshit! An evolution based on owning ourselves, setting our own norms, building ourselves and others, basing our lives in truth as reality, logic, ethics, and honesty of intent. To understand the Foundations Process is to simply own yourself. To enable the giant...
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    7 mins
  • The Very Things We See as “Normal” are the Same Things that are Killing Us!

    The Very Things We See as “Normal” are the Same Things that are Killing Us!
    Nov 27 2021
    The United States of America has always been a dichotomy, wrapped in an enigma, covered by an illusion. I’m not saying that that is bad, just saying if you want to understand who we are and why things are happening, you have to begin there.

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    10 mins
  • Can Self-Defense Laws Survive in a Gun-Rich Country?

    Can Self-Defense Laws Survive in a Gun-Rich Country?
    Nov 26 2021
    Can Self-Defense Laws Survive in a Gun-Rich Country?   Taking the law into our own hands and claiming self-defense when someone is shot is the subject of the Kyle Rittenhouse and Ahmaud Arbery cases.   During two closely watched murder trials in two different states this past week, juries heard strikingly similar stories: men bought guns in the name of protecting the public and then told juries they killed unarmed people in self-defense.   In one case, Kyle Rittenhouse fatally shot two men and wounded a third in the unrest following a police shooting in Kenosha, Wis.    Another case involved Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, who was shot after being pursued by three white men suspected of breaking into a house in the neighborhood. In both cases, the defendants started shooting as the victims were trying to steal their guns.     In other words, their own decision to carry a gun became a justification to use it, lest it be wrested away from them,” said Eric Ruben, an expert on the Second Amendment at the S.M.U. Dedman School of Law in Dallas.   It is evident, from these two cases, that; our concept of self-defense has deep flaws that are treasured, but not prepared to deal with an era of gun rights expansion, political extremism, and rising violence in a situation where race is heavily influencing perceptions of threat.   A powerful vigilante strain.   As a result of the fact that our citizens have guns, every line has become blurred. The combination of "stand your ground" provisions and citizen's arrest laws has granted people license not only to defend themselves but to go after others as well.[See Source]   Defense is the act of defending. But what constitutes reasonableness? At what point must one retreat? And when is a citizen allowed to act as an aggressor on behalf of the state?   Rifts have appeared in several debates, starting with whether openly displaying firearms makes people feel safer at  the expense of everyone else, whether brandishing a gun constitutes a threat or self-defense, and whether people may benefit from self-defense claims if their actions contributed to the danger.   Migrant militia members accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer clashed with elected officials trying to make a so called  citizen’s arrest. It was argued in St. Louis whether white residents who aimed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters were assaulting them or defending their homes. They pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and harassment, then were pardoned by the governor.   Nine plaintiffs who were among those injured or traumatized by the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, are suing the rally's organizers, alleging a plan and intent to engage in violence, but the defendants claim that the violence, in which one counterprotester died, was justified by self-defense.   People have the right to self-defense when they reasonably believe there is an imminent threat of harm, whether or not they are right. It is possible to mistake a realistic prop gun for a real weapon, for instance.   Some statutes, however, stipulate that someone cannot claim self-defense if they were the "initial aggressor" - in other words if they provoked or were doing something wrong at the time of the use of force. If an initial aggressor withdraws or backs away from an encounter they may regain their self-defense claim. The aggressor must also pose a threat of imminent harm.   It is provocation if you assault someone without justification. If you ask for an explanation of offensive words, address a sensitive subject, engage in an inconsiderate act, or travel near someone, it does not constitute provoking an encounter.   In the Arbery case, According to defendants Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael and neighbor William Bryan, they were pursuing Mr. Arbery as part of a citizen's arrest, and he was shot after trying to grab one of their guns.   There is no mention of Mr. Arbery's voice in the proceedings, who may have had his self-defense claim.     What makes the perception that Ahmaud Arbery would have lived if he had complied instead of reaching for a gun, and hence it was his duty to comply. It would be good framing for Ahmaud Arbery if three guys rolled up on him with guns, he didn't know what their intentions were?   There has been a tendency in the United States to increase the right to self-defense rather than to protect those whose actions may harm others. As a result of "make my day" laws, people who harm intruders in their own homes are presumed to have acted in self-defense. Classic self-defense theory's "duty to retreat" has been undermined by laws requiring people who are in an area where they have a right to be to retreat, such as at a public protest, to retreat.   Most states require prosecutors to demonstrate that the defendant did not act in self defense, rather than requiring defendants to demonstrate that they did.   A new law in Utah, except ...
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    23 mins
  • Family Matterz Podcast — From the Black Perspective!

    Family Matterz Podcast — From the Black Perspective!
    Nov 24 2021
    Family Matterz Podcast — From the Black Perspective!

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    1 hr and 31 mins
  • The Monopoly Economy and The Choice Economy

    The Monopoly Economy and The Choice Economy
    Nov 10 2021

    Yesterday I reposted an article about how relatively well-paid pharmacists at CVS were rebelling over how they were treated. They were rebelling with their feet, as part of the “Great Resignation.

    ” As the Con dominated media portrays it as “People not wanting to work” It is anything but. It is within the ideology of the Cons and their Monopoly Economy. 

    That there is no choice. If you want the things of success then you have to play their game and there is no other choice. You must literally sell your soul to them, make a lifelong deal with the Devil to keep the car and mortgage payments being made. 

    There are no other options, but them. They own your retirement that you may or may not get, they own the desperation every month of paying the bills that continually go up while your pay does not. 

    There is a bottom-line truth here that they do better, while you do not. That is the equation of the “Trickle Down”, monopoly economy. You do as they tell you or it will all be taken away from you! . The core ideals of the Foundations are owning yourself and having choices your entire life. I know I repeat this too often but it is real at the core of how our society now works. 

    “Having access to capital can make a genius out of an idiot and not having it can make an idiot out of a genius.” 

    The Cons restrict capital and dole it out at a high cost. Hoping for a huge profit in either your success or your failure. The Foundation’s second economy is based on profit from the success of an individual. 

    It is a supplier of not only capital but also supports. In building an interwoven through success society, we go beyond what we are now. Not just in our technology as advancement is now measured, but also as an individual, society, and humanity. Those are the concepts behind the Foundation’s second economy. We build human beings first and then societies, then humanity as a whole. That is what human-centric capitalism is about or the Foundations Process. . I have been watching the Expanse on Prime for the last couple of days and it struck me as to how the expectations of humanity were so low and those of technology so high. 

    But that is the pattern of what we as Americans, at least expect. 

    And of course, there is the civilization-ending war, the deceptions and ploys, factional maneuvering, and the power to poverty equation we see every day, now. 

    There is never a good time to change things. There are always a million reasons to not. There is chaos and the breakdown of law and order as reasons to leave it all as it is.

     But I hope you will consider this, as technology improves and those that use it don’t, it becomes only a matter of time until ego and greed will use it to gain power. Then other egos and greed will use it to defend themselves and we in the end destroy all that they fight for. . There is no good time but there is a time when what we have is not worth saving. What if we allow ego and greed to control who and what we are, to shut off the giant thinking machine on our necks, then it is just a matter of time…The Foundations. RC Romine
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    4 mins