We have twice as many gun shops as McDonald’s and Starbucks
We are the richest country in the world and some of that wealth has been created by the gun culture. Why don’t other countries follow our lead? Why don’t they open thousands of gun stores to get rich? Why aren’t they sending trade missions to the Divided States of America to study the firearm markets so they can get rich like us? We have more than 8,000 licensed federal gun dealers on 1,800 miles of the Mexican border in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. 

Well, to each his own.
 

Our 2024 election is about differences. One issue is about economic inequality and the fact the only difference between the poor and rich is the amount of money possessed. 
Another difference is between the main candidates – an insane White man is challenging a sane Black woman for the presidency. 

Another difference: will we end up with a democracy or dictatorship? At long last, will our 164-year-old racial civil war finally end?

I always watch Meet the Press on Sunday mornings, and I was somewhat surprised to see Governor Burgum lead it off. Why was he sitting there? After listening to him using his political skills compounded with arrogance and sycophancy to avoid answering every question about his support of Trump, I thought: “This guy is running for president all the time.” 

He quickly reminded me of Uriah Heep, the obsequious clerk in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, who is often described as “the greatest villain to ever stalk the pages of a book.” 

Literary critic Sam Jordison writes: “Heep’s infamy is undoubted. He says one thing and means another. He eats humble pie with an appetite. He doesn’t mind feeling superior to other people. He’s our guilty conscience.”  

I previously thought Burgum as a billionaire knew what character was worth. Because of his toadying “relationship” with the psychopathic Trump, I have changed my mind. 

Twenty-seven psychiatrists and mental health specialists have published The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, “diagnosing” that The Donald is a psychopathic-sociopathic malignant narcissist. After studying his words and actions, according to the criteria listed in the Manual of Mental Disabilities published by the American Psychiatric Association, Donald J. Trump has only one love: Donald J. Trump. 

Both are interesting reads, Governor.

All a good journalist has to do to understand Minnesota governor and Vice-Presidential Candidate Tim Walz’s relationship with China is to read The New York Times article “Tim Walz’s Long Relationship With China Defies Easy Stereotypes” by Amy Qin in Washington and Keith Bradsher stationed in Foshan, China. 

It is a long, inclusive article which defies everything said and written by Trumpers. Have you Trumpers no sense of truth, decency and shame? Good, honest journalism requires homework. We should recognize Walz is one of our experts on China and is a resource for a democracy. 

To sum up, the two China experts Qin and Bradsher write: “His (Walz) relationship is too critically important; it’s too critically important on trade; it’s too critically important on climate change, it’s too critically important on national security, issues of containment of terrorism and everything else that’s involved. In 2017, Walz posted on X a photo with prominent student activist Joshua Wong, who had been repeatedly imprisoned in Hong Kong because of his anti-communist activism. Walz said: ‘Hong Kong and the basic rule of law that was drawn out is under assault. Political prosecutions can’t silence the spirit of self-determination’.” 

The article contains a history of Walz’s interest in China – starting with an exchange teaching program with China sponsored by Harvard University. Walz was in Hong Kong when thousands of pro-democracy Chinese protesters were killed in Tiananmen Square. 

Walz’s observation: “The opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important.”

Billionaires and the battle of the largest and most expensive bunkers
I’m currently entranced by a book I found in a thrift store titled Letters from a Slave Girl, based on the letters written by Harriet Jacobs, a slave owned by a North Carolina family in the 19th century. 
Published in 1992 by Mary Lyons, she used historical material from many sources – and the actual letters of Harriet with the unique spelling of an unschooled 12-year-old. I’m using a short excerpt to show how far we have come – and how far we have to go to live in harmony. 
The scene is the Market House with the sign: PUBLIC SALE OF NEGROES AND HORSES. Harriet writes: “When the hammer came down, Uncle Mark had been sold to Norcom for 298 dollar and 50 cent. Hannah don’t read or write, and sign the bill of sale with an X. I say a prayer of thanks when her palsy hand makes that shaky mark. We were lucky. A very old man went for 1 dollar and an old cook for 17. Another Woman been offer for 20 dollar to anyone willing to take her away. These poor souls be treated like work horses, all broke down.”

This sale took place in North Carolina on January 1, 1828, when part of Harriet’s family was sold. 
At the end of this column, after a review of Republican Supreme Court decisions regarding laws against heterosexuals sleeping together (Roe V. Wade) or alone on park benches (Grants Pass homeless), while billionaires sleep well in McMansion bunkers hundreds of feet below floods, fires and civil war, please think about how far we have come from 1828, or if we have moved forward at all.

Cause: The greatest economic inequality effect: record homelessness
Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes served on the United States Supreme Court for 30 years (1902-1932) until the age of 90 and came up with the following truism after observing the development of one of the world’s greatest Depressions until dying at the age of 93: “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”  We still are not members of a civilized society a century after Holmes wrote that maxim. The Divided States of America is a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with 37 other countries that rank highest in the world in Gross National Product (GNP). 

We currently rank 32 out of 38 countries, with an average tax rate of 26.6% while the average rate for the 38 is 34.1%. Only Costa Rica, Turkey, Ireland, Columbia, and Mexico have lower tax rates. 
The countries selected as having the happiest citizens have tax rates between 42% and 48%. All of the major European countries except Ireland pay a higher rate. Ireland has a low rate because it has become a tax haven for wealthy corporations. 

I have to add that in 2023 individual Americans paid $1.1 trillion in income taxes, but we also spent $430 billion to cover interest on the national debt! This is why more than 50 of our wealthiest corporations paid no federal taxes at all, and 35 major companies in 2023 paid their top five executives more than they paid in federal income taxes! Greed is good and growing!

Attitudes about wealth and taxes have not changed in a thousand years. When William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel to conquer England in 1066, he and his second cousin Alan Rufus kept killing people and taking land until their personal revenue equaled 7% of England’s total.

While we are setting records for economic inequality, the homeless increase, the cost of the average home has risen to $412,300, fewer families live in single-family homes, and equity and hedge fund firms buy thousands of single-family homes and raise the rent. 

Forty-three million live in poverty and 18 million households don’t have enough to eat while hundreds of food banks run out of money and food. But the billionaires continue to play their own “wheel of fortune” by building or buying bigger and better bunkers until the end times come from climate change, not a Second Coming. 

A 2023 YouGov poll of 1,000 Americans reported that 66% worried we would be wiped out by nuclear weapons and a third world war, 53% thought the next pandemic would kill everybody, 52% thought climate change would do the same, 46% thought AI would do it, 42% said God would wipe us out, 37% said an asteroid would, 31% said people would no longer have children, and finally, 25% thought aliens from another planet might kill us all. 

A Minnetonka mansion and a Minneapolis homeless shelter collide
For $68 million you can buy a 28,000 sq. ft. “never-lived-in” mansion on famous Lake Minnetonka, complete with bowling alley and $4 million-worth of Italian bullet-proof windows and doors. It offers a bar, arcade, cigar lounge, wine lounge, movie theater, hair salon, spa, Himalayan salt cave, bunk room that sleeps 24, and two garages – one for six and one for eight cars. 

The mansion is on eight acres with 655 feet of shoreline. It took two years to plan and five years to build – and would be the most expensive home ever sold in Minnesota. It will certainly attract a competitive Monopoly billionaire.

Meanwhile, in downtown Minneapolis, which has an ever-increasing number of homeless, the Agate Housing shelter, which currently shelters 137 homeless a night, needs about $5 million to repair and update an old building. If it doesn’t get the money, the city will have to close 42 emergency beds, 95 transitional housing units, a number of free shower stations, a food shelf, and 23 employees will lose employment. 

The Minneapolis City Council is faced with providing “something” for the other 11,000 homeless in the city. It will be interesting to see if the mansion on Lake Minnetonka sells before $5 million appears to renovate just one shelter in the city that needs many.

While American billionaires battle for personal supremacy in space, land and water, whether in bunkers, on superyachts, on private jets and huge estates, more than 600,000 Americans are homeless, 60% live paycheck-to-paycheck, and nearly half of the 42.5 million renters spend more than 30% of their income on rent. 

If America’s billionaires do not restore the middle class, democracy will not survive. 
Greed is powerful. Hospitals on average charge $17,000 to perform C-sections and $11,500 for vaginal deliveries. If operating rooms are sitting empty, they don’t bring in any money, so many Black women are diagnosed to need C-sections and are sent to operating rooms for profit. Check New Jersey study. It’s shameful and disgusting.

By the way, former slave Harriet Jacobs died a free woman in 1897 at age 83 after working as a maid and matron in various public and private homes.