By Richard John Stapleton

Recommendations For Waking Up From The American Nightmare is my ebook showing how to attack the root causes of economic troubles in the US using a dialectical democratic case method discussion process I used 35 years as a business professor.

Take a look at the book by clicking here:

https://www.amazon.com/Recommendations-American-Nightmare-Business-Voyages-ebook/dp/B009TOJVPI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481483884&sr=8-1&keywords=recommendations+for+waking+up+from+the+american+nightmare+++++stapleton.

Better yet buy it and read it. It only costs two dollars and ninety-nine cents, less than a six pack of beer.

I am convinced the root cause of American economic troubles is political, economic, religious and social polarization among US voters who since 1980 have voted into office polarized politicians out to feather their own nests and promote idiosyncratic economic interests, beliefs, values, dogmas, doctrines and ideologies. These politicians have been bought and paid for by the elite rich and large corporations who funded their political campaigns who require lower taxes and other favors in return, regardless of what is best for voters not having the sense to vote in their own interests.

Polarized politicians since 1980 voted for or against legislation based on their predetermined economic interests, ideologies, dogmas and doctrines, not the facts of cases, resulting in the deadlocked dysfunctional government we have today.

Recommendations For Waking Up From the American Nightmare advocates more dialectical democratic case method discussions among people from all walks of life in more and more Town Hall Meetings to foster more discussion of facts of cases and their logical solutions, resulting in more voters concerned about the facts of cases and inducing logical conclusions, resulting in the election of rational politicians voting to do the right thing for we the people based on the facts of cases, not predetermined idiosyncratic ideologies, economic interests, beliefs, values, dogmas, doctrines, etc.

In order for this to happen some process must be devised to bring polarized US citizens together to discuss face-to-face in a serious civil manner relevant political, economic, and environmental problems.

The book describes and explains a recommended dialectical democratic case method process and offers policies I have recommended in published writings for managing the US economy in the short and long run, based on the facts of the case since 1980. These policies are offered as a basis for discussion, not as absolute truth, to foster the creation of better policies acceptable to a majority of US citizens.

I am convinced Republican neoconservative and Democratic neoliberal ideologies inflicted on the US economy since 1980 are major causes of the economic problems we have today; and, while I am not overly impressed with the Obama administration since 2009 I think this administration has been less harmful than Reagan and Bush II.

I recommended reelecting the neoliberal Obama administration in 2012, being convinced they charted and piloted better policies and courses than those applied and recommended by Republican neoconservatives, such as Reagan, Bush II, Romney and Ryan.

I thought electing Romney-Ryan would be disastrous, leading to a federal debt explosion within three years similar to the debt explosion the US experienced when Ronald Regan started his “voodoo”, deficits-do-not-matter economics, in 1980, and Bush II invaded Iraq in 2003, a debt explosion possibly causing this time federal debt defaults and/or repudiations within ten years, creating chaos and abject depression, possibly culminating over time in a civil war between the US upper class and what used to be the US middle class, in a war reminiscent of the French Revolution of 1789 and the Spanish Civil War of 1936.

Recommendations for Waking Up From the American Nightmare was published on October 19, 2012.

I recommended amending the US Constitution as soon as possible to eradicate Citizens United of 2010, the absurd and abominable 5-4 Supreme Court case in which five predetermined Republican judges ruled corporations are people with free speech, entitled to spend as much money as they wish buying propaganda in mainstream media to influence federal elections in their favor, at the expense of we the people.

I recommend the proposed United States Voters’ Rights Amendment (USVRA) at http://usvra.us, asking readers to sign up as a supporter to get in the habit of doing democratic things to help foster an American awakening.

The Obama administration has been a disappointment, having done little to correct the basic financial and fiscal problems of the US, reduce the global military activities of the military-industrial complex, and create good jobs for the middle and lower classes.

I was a strong advocate of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries until he dropped out, at which time I switched to Jill Stein of the Green Party. Stein’s platform agrees with my Recommendations more than any politician I have found.

Assuming Trump gets inaugurated as president after winning the 2016 election thanks to the obsolete Electoral College, all bets are off for the future.

Interestingly, Trump has recommended one of my major recommendations in my Recommendations ebook: creating infrastructure jobs to create livable jobs for the lower and middle classes. Good luck on getting this implemented. Obama also recommended this, but he did not strike while the iron was hot soon after he got in office when Democrats had a majority in both houses of Congress. After nihilist Repubs got control of the House and Senate they sabotaged any hope for real improvement in the economy. Whether they will go along with Trump on infrastructure jobs now remains to be seen.

The problem is Trump advocates significantly cutting taxes again for the rich, just like Reagan and Bush II did, while borrowing and creating more digital money to finance the increased spending for infrastructure jobs, making another futile attempt at “trickle-down” economics. I advocated significantly raising the after loophole tax rate of the elite rich, the upper one percent, back to where our wisest ancestors set it before 1980, to seventy percent or so, and using the proceeds for funding infrastructure projects. Our wisest ancestors knew we have to have progressive income tax rates to prevent income inequality from destroying the economy.

Most likely Trump will increase military spending while I recommended seriously cutting military expenses.

While the Obama administration increased the federal debt about nine trillion dollars over eight years (which is a lot of so-called money, if you stop to think about it), they reduced the yearly deficit by about fifty percent, a bad enough record, but a vast improvement from Bush II.

Trump’s recommendations, assuming he does what he said he wanted to do, will significantly increase the yearly budget deficit and significantly increase the rate of increase of the total debt, causing the deficit and debt to explode astronomically, most likely enough to seriously jeopardize the fiscal viability of the government, probably causing the rate of increase in the US federal debt to accelerate as much as Reagan and Bush II did.

Obama significantly lowered the rate of deficit and debt increase, as bad as his overall record was dealing with the money and banking system and the fiscal affairs of the US government, leaving the US in what appears to be decent financial and economic shape in 2016 after eight years, when it reality in many ways it is in worse shape now than when he took over. The US economy is now built on and fueled by debt, not real economic growth in terms of real production, and it could fall off an economic cliff at any time. More and more US citizens have fallen prey to parasitical money and banking policies and practices.

Thanks to Trump’s “victory” the US now faces more threats than ever.

Take a look at Recommendations for Waking Up From the American Nightmare by clicking here:

https://www.amazon.com/Recommendations-American-Nightmare-Business-Voyages-ebook/dp/B009TOJVPI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481483884&sr=8-1&keywords=recommendations+for+waking+up+from+the+american+nightmare+++++stapleton.

by Richard John Stapleton

This past summer my son Jonathan and his wife Renee made a swing trough Statesboro and stayed a few days for the first time in a year or so. My wife Debbye and I and took them out to eat several times while they were here, along with their three children, Walker, Emmy, and Orion.

Friends of ours who saw them in restaurants with us were impressed with them, especially the grandchildren. One lady told me as I was walking back to our table after going to the restroom, “You marked every one of them,” which was a high compliment.

A few weeks ago Debbye and I were having dinner at the Forrest Heights Country Club here in Statesboro with our friends Beth Hardy and Lon Carnes. A lady whom I have known for a long time from our days at Georgia Southern University, Mouse, stopped by our table to chat with Beth. She told Beth, a former mathematics professor at Georgia Southern, that she took a math course from her forty or so years ago, and she made a “B”, the only grade she made that was not an “A” at Georgia Southern.

Beth did not remember her in the course but as they were exchanging pleasantries Mouse noticed me sitting across the table, and as she was leaving she came around and told me, “I want you to know you have three great grandchildren.”

I told her I knew that but I appreciated her saying that. Mouse and her husband live near my former wife Ginny, the grandchildren’s birth grandmother, and her husband Bob. Mouse had seen and talked with the grandchildren during the summer when they stayed overnight with Ginny and Bob.

Jonathan graduated from Statesboro High School in 1990, the Star Student of our congressional district in Georgia that year, and went on to Rice University in Houston, Texas where he met his wife Renee, from Montana. Jonathan maxed the math part of the SAT and the GRE exams. They then went to Seattle, Washington where Renee got her MD and PhD degrees from the University of Washington. Jonathan taught school and invented things, such as his Reptangles toy, now marketed nationally and internationally by the Fat Brain Toy Company, an educational toy that can be assembled into geometric shapes.

Jonathan and Renee went on to Burlington, Vermont where Renee now researches, teaches, and practices pulmonary medicine at the University of Vermont. Jonathan teaches senior physics and earth sciences at Essex Junction High School, and invents things.

Their children have done well in school. Walker is now in the seventh grade, Emmy is in the fifth grade, and Orion is in kindergarten. Walker’s cross country team has won every track race they have raced in, including the state championship; Emmy is supposedly reading at an eighteen-year-old level; and Orion has already been identified as gifted in mathematics. Walker plays the piano, Emmy plays the violin, and Orion plays the violin.

I know it’s narcissistic but I could not resist posting this post.

by Richard John Stapleton

Editor’s note: It’s possible the Trump economic plan will add vitality to the US economy in the short run, adding real jobs through massive spending on infrastructure and through tax cuts for large corporations; increasing interest rates for savers, retirement plans, and banks; increasing sales and profits in heavy industry and transportation; maybe bringing back some US jobs from overseas, and preventing some from being sent overseas; maybe even boosting sales and profits in the small business sector.

Posted by Richard John Stapleton

This article tells us the US has been on the wrong path for a long time, at least since JFK’s time some fifty-six years ago. Whether it will ever get turned around remains to be seen.

No one won the 2016 US presidential election, including repubs jubilant their candidate “won” the election. We all lost, since we are all on the same downward slope; and there is almost no chance Trump will stop the slide.

The same goes for Hillary. There is no way to know which one would slow or accelerate the rate of descent the most, taking everything into account.

November 18, 2016

Death of the Liberal Class? Death to the Liberal Class!

written by Vincent Emanuele

For as long as I’ve been involved with progressive political movements, activists and organizers have been tryingtoreformthe Democratic Party with little to no success.

Unfortunately, none of this is new as activists have tried toreformthe Democratic Party since the 1960’s, only to see the Dems lurch further and further to the right over the past several decades.

In America, we don’t talk about history. If we do, it’s either a bunch of watered down bullshit, or outright myths and fallacies.That being said, it might be useful to talk to today’s young activists about the dark legacy of the Vietnam War, a war many consider to be the worst international crime of the second half of the 20th century.

According to military historian Nick Turse, over 4 million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians were killed as a result of Uncle Sam’s limitless aggression in the pursuit of power. Today, Agent Orange continues to ravage not only U.S. veterans, but most importantly the people in Southeast Asia.

In order to understand today’s Democratic Party, progressives and liberals must come to grips with the history of their party. Consequently, we should neverforget who got the U.S. into Vietnam in the first place: namely, JFK and LBJ, two Democratic-liberal heroes, of course.

Read the article in full in CounterPunch by clicking here http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/18/death-of-the-liberal-class-death-to-the-liberal-class/

by Richard John Stapleton

Here is the best thing to do about the economy now. Whether Trump and company have enough sense to see it remains to be seen.

November 16, 2016

The High Calling of Teaching

by Winslow Myers

Give The High Calling of Teaching a read by clicking here at http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/16/the-high-calling-of-teaching/.

Published in Counterpunch.

This is a great article on how to teach. Let students sit in circles and talk about the assigned content to be learned, be it mathematics, history, economics, stories, politics, religion, or physics, with themselves and the teacher, letting anyone in the class have a chance starting the discussion, by using a Classroom De-Gamer, explained in my books Business Voyages and Born to Learn by clicking here, https://www.amazon.com/Richard-John-Stapleton/e/B001KHS3P6.

We need millions of classrooms such as Winslow Myers describes here scattered around Spaceship Earth.

The major reason most people do not learn as much as they might is because they are rarely given a chance to discuss what they think they know and believe with people who think they know and believe different things, because of having been locked into learning experiences with people who are told the same things by teachers preaching to their choirs prescribing what they call holy writ, dogmas, doctrines, and the like.

If you hear, read, and see the same thing over and over again quite naturally you are not going to learn much about the whole system.

The danger, of course, if you do this you will begin to think you are not only right but morally superior to other people who have been taught different things in the same sort of educational processes, and you will probably eventually hate them.

And you and they may escalate the process to the next level, war and other catastrophes, as history has shown.

November 11, 2016

by Richard John Stapleton

Here is a poignant video emailed to me by William John Cox that deals with the aftermath of the Trump election. Wm and I sat in the same Methodist Sunday School class at Wolfforth, Texas in 1945.

This short video is an interview of college students, very bright and comprehending ones, who honestly say what they think and feel about the election. Well worth a look and listen. You won’t be disappointed.

Take a look and listen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLBGL1c6C5I.

William John Cox is the founder of the United States Voters Rights Amendment movement. I am honored to serve on his advisory board.

Check out the United States Voters Rights Amendment movement at USVRA.US.

by Richard John Stapleton

November 9, 2016

Here are some articles from readers and writers of the New York Times. I agree with most of them.

It’s hard to believe Trump won the election.

I had no idea Trump had this kind of support. I advocated and voted for Jill Stein. I thought she might get five percent or more of the vote. not so. She was nowhere on the map. Never saw what percent she got. Must have been less than two percent. I figured Hillary would win no matter what, since Trump had shot himself in his foot and stuck his foot in his mouth so many times.

Not so.

History repeated itself. It was almost a dead tie in the popular vote. A friend told me a few minutes ago Hillary actually won the popular vote, but they were still counting. If so the problem is our bloody Electoral College, and our voters that do not vote for the right thing, or who do not vote at all. Probably about fifty percent of possible voters did not vote.

As usual Trump and Hillary got about twenty-five percent of the possible vote each. We are being ruled by a tryanny of the minority, as i pointed out in my article on this blog, “Say it aint so, Joe: Why Jill Stein should be elected president of the US.”

Our system of voting for president, senators, and representatives is obsolete and corrupted. Surely a parliamentary system would be better.

Read about Trump’s election in the New York Times by clicking here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/the-unknown-country?smid=tw-share.

This post is an excellent service provided by the New York Times that includes many articles from various writers expressing various perspectives.