Effective Learning Digest—November 2017

Or So It Seems To Me Today

By Richard John Stapleton

Getting old is not fun per se but it is interesting.

As most transactional analysts believe and think they know, especially certified ones such as I, the human brain is somewhat analogous to a computer. Both are powered by electricity and both store information in cells of various sorts. Stored information is linked in neural networks. A human brain can store almost any kind of information—various types of feelings, visual observations, sounds, smells, tastes, data, information, theories, dogmas, ideologies, decisions, programs, scripts, schemata, techniques, languages, and what have you.

It seems to me today a computer can store anything a human brain can store except feelings, smells, and tastes. It seems to me you can build a case the human brain is superior to a computer because it can store more different types of information.

When it comes to storing digits and making calculations however computers are vastly superior. I heard the other day China now has the fastest super-computers, and they just constructed the fastest computer on Earth that can do several quadrillion calculations per second.

Some people, e.g. Elon Musk, the genius founding and running Tesla, are seriously worried computers will get smart enough, after being programmed by humans with artificial intelligence, to rebel against their human programmers and destroy us all. Seems to me however you can also build a case humans can program computers with AI code to make sure they don’t rebel, programming them instead to nurture and take care of us humans.

I wrote an article along these lines a few years ago titled “Toward the Creation of Spaceship Earth, Incorporated.” Take a look at the linked article if interested by clicking on the title highlighted in red.

All words and phrases highlighted in red in this article are linked to information I consider relevant. Information stored in different topological and spatial places is linked in neural networks in both brains and computers. The Internet is like a giant invisible brain covering Earth.

According to us transactional analysts, humans are programmed and scripted throughout their lives, primarily before the age of eight, to perform functions and produce outcomes, such as to nurture themselves and others (nurturing parent ego), discipline themselves and others (critical parent ego), analyze and comprehend reality (adult ego), have fun (free child ego), be obedient (compliant child ego), and be rebellious (rebel child ego).

This programming and scripting produces three generic types of outcomes according to transactional analysts: winning, losing, and breaking even. Some well-programmed and scripted people, a small minority, sail through life generally winning and succeeding at everything they do with almost no setbacks, a small minority almost never win or feel successful, and most more or less break even, winning a few, losing a few, with some rained out, regardless of the country they were born in or the economic and political conditions in the country. Some people are programmed to almost always engage themselves in productive socially useful activities and some are programmed to generally waste their lifetime.

Nations are somewhat analogous to individual humans. They too are programmed and scripted to produce outcomes. A few nations always seem to win and get richer, some almost never get anywhere, and most just more or less break even.

It seems to me today the US has generally been a winner, however unethical, cruel, and unfair some of its actions have been, at least up until the last few decades. It’s always been an aggressive, militaristic nation, stealing from the poor and weak and giving to the rich and powerful under the capitalistic economic system. It was programmed and scripted to work hard and encourage entrepreneurs and workers to get rich producing more new products and services, which they did, up until about 1980. Unfortunately it’s been downhill since then, with only the rich getting richer, as low wage foreigners, computers, and robots took over more and more manual labor jobs. Smart unethical CEOs running large US corporations did their best to find the cheapest labor they could find by moving their factories to poor countries, leaving their workers high and dry in the US.

Previously poor countries such as China and India in the last few decades have learned how to increase economic growth in their counties, now growing at a much faster rate than the US, and, while still poor relative to the US, they have generally caused more and more individuals in their populations to become winners, even rich winners, so on the whole they have done better economically and politically in the last few decades than the US. And it seems to me today fate is now on their side for the foreseeable future.

China and India still have serious competitive advantages in global manufacturing, thanks to their workers who will still work for much lower wages than what you find in the US, and their robots can work for even lower cost, plus their economic policies are working better than those of the US. They are spending a far higher percentage of their wealth and treasure on new plant, equipment, and infrastructure than the US.

The US is wasting a far higher percentage of its wealth, treasure, and energy than China and India, and other competitors, such as Japan, and Western Europe, on useless wars around Earth, and on political infighting domestically, in Washington and throughout the country. It seems to me today mainstream media and most US citizens spend far too much time talking and hearing about Trump’s inanities and follies, colluding with the Russians, how to spend money on the military, how to cut taxes for the rich, and the misdemeanors and crimes of celebrity sexual predators, rather than spend their time productively.

It seems to me as a transactional analyst the US is misallocating its ego energy, investing too much in critical parent and adapted child activities, and too little in nurturing parent and adult endeavors. People are running around the country spouting obedient and rebel child non-adult ideological slogans fomenting hatred among polarized non-adult groups living in ideological dream worlds. Adapted child politicians are wasting their time trying to pay back their critical parent bribers with tax cuts. Most US citizens are not thinking about the root causes of distress and dysfunctionality in the US, spending too much time gossiping with cronies on their cell phones, playing video games, and watching football games, soap operas, and fantasy movies. Adapted child/critical parent politicians keep trying to make scapegoats and enemies out of the Russians, Chinese, and assorted villains in North Korea, the Middle East, Africa, South America, and elsewhere around Earth, rather than focus adult attention on creating workable, rational strategies for getting the US out of the predicament and morass it’s in.

The problem with aging is that the brain is just like a muscle in your arm. The older you get the weaker it gets. Sure, exercise can help you stay stronger as you age than will just sitting around eating snacks, drinking beer, and watching TV, but there is no way to escape the degenerative effects of getting old.

The biggest problem caused by getting old it seems to me is not losing long-term memory stored in parent, adult, and child ego states, although this is irritating and discouraging, but losing short-term memory when using the adult ego state, so called working memory, using information you just heard, saw, or read in, being unable to remember stuff you just got exposed to. Another problem with getting old is neural links in your brain getting clogged, blocking information stored in off-line files you want to assimilate and accommodate with current adult data in an open file on your computer desktop, such as when writing articles such as this one.

Following are some relevant articles linked in the Effective Learning Digest that happened in adult Internet journals and reports during November written and spoken by rational functional writers defining and analyzing relevant adult problems in the US and around Earth that would probably help the US improve its adult functioning if digested by the population as a whole, by causing voters to elect better politicians, in the opinion of this seventy-seven-year-old adult.

To link or not to link, that is a relevant question.

And how much to link to if you want to link at all.

There’s far more out there than any one person can possibly link to and understand and use. What you actually link to, however relatively little or much compared to others, is largely determined by information already stored in your brain. Most people only link to information that’s similar to what they have already assimilated and accommodated in their brains. Rather than learn new scripts, schemata, ideas, and the like, they reinforce what they already have stored in memory.

I have friends who have no Internet access and who therefore never open any Internet links to read, hear, or watch anything.

The US Federal Communications Commission is currently deciding whether to give large corporations more power to exploit people using the Internet by charging for what they say and learn linking on the Internet.

It seems Trump is in favor of this. It seems to me however if humans are going to have an Internet they are far better off if politicians and bureaucrats leave it neutral, at least as neutral as it is now, generally out of the hands and control of greedy faceless profit-making CEOs and their cronies and lackeys in large corporations.

It seems to me today I am better off economically, politically, and existentially if I link and communicate on the Internet, but I am not sure. There are advantages and disadvantages to everything, and no free lunches. Ludwig Wittgenstein said everything that happens happens by accident. It seems to me he was probably right.

Here’s to good luck for everyone.


The Gestalt Prayer

 I do my thing, and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your



You are you, and I am I,

And if by chance, we find each other, it’s beautiful.

If not, it can’t be helped.

 Fritz Perls


November 30, 2017

Here is a Facebook post I made on November 30, 2012, showing how little has changed since then. Here we are again with Trump and Congress threatening to shut down the US government.

Here we go again. Back to business as usual in Washington. So far Obama is determined to raise the taxes of the elite rich and not cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. for US middle and lower class people. Boehner and his Republican tea partiers in the House are determined to do the opposite to placate and satisfy their sugar daddies in the upper class. Meanwhile the fiscal cliff gets closer and closer. If necessary let’s walk on off it without blinking an eye. Although the fall might cause a little discomfort, walking off the cliff will cause more pleasure than pain by providing short term cash inflow for infrastructure jobs to bring us back to full employment ASAP! I cannot refrain from thinking about the fact that after paying politicians to reduce their federal taxes over $3 trillion since 1980 most of the elite rich are now determined not to give a penny of it back in taxes to increase employment for the poor in today’s economy, using tax rates our parents and grandparents considered normal and fair. What would Jesus think about this spectacle? Didn’t he say you should give all you have to the poor and follow after him to enter the kingdom of heaven?
Richard John Stapleton, November 30, 2012, www.effectivelearning.net.

SOURCE: Post on my Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397


November 30, 2017

Debt, debt, and more debt. If the US economy is in such hot shape thanks to Trump why is this happening?

SOURCE: US Household Debt is Rising 60% Faster Than Wages, And One Rating Agency is Worried, by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM.  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-30/us-household-debt-rising-60-faster-wages-and-one-rating-agency-worried


November 30, 2017

The dumbest idea I ever head of, a final act of a society hellbent on its own destruction.

SOURCE: House Committee Advances Legislation Allowing Concealed Guns in All 50 States, by Tyler Durden, ZEROHEDGE.COM. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-30/house-committee-passes-legislation-allowing-concealed-guns-all-50-states


November 30

Death and dying issues by Edward Curtin.

SOURCE: Waiting for the American Dream, by Edward Curtin, COUNTERPUNCH.COM. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/30/waiting-for-the-american-dream/


November 30

As the world turns, by Michael Hudson, the greatest economist alive.

SOURCE: Monetary Imperialism, by Michael Hudson, COUNTERPUNCH.COM.  https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/29/monetary-imperialism/


November 29

The pinball analogy.

Are humans like balls being knocked around by flippers in a pinball machine? Seems to me such an analogy to some extent holds. From birth to death at various stages of growth humans are subjected to pressures in the environment that propel them in different directions, parental nurturing and discipline, going to school, getting a job, encountering a sexy object, having an idea for making money, taking a trip, going to a nursing home, to name a few. Eventually we all fall down the hole in the pinball machine case. No more getting knocked around by biological and environmental forces.

SOURCE: “Tilt! Game Over”, by Jeff Thomas, INTERNATIONALMAN.COM. http://www.internationalman.com/articles/tilt-game-over#.Wh66D-tqzGw.facebook


November 28

Now here is a truly eye-opening report by Max and Stacey who tell it like they see it with absolutely no beating around the bush. Well worth a look and listen.

SOURCE: China Supercomputer Power, MAXKEISER.COM. http://www.maxkeiser.com/2017/11/kr1155-keiser-report-china-supercomputer-power/#cQqStshbDdWmYURp.01


November 27

Why the fall in the mall? According to this article it’s not Amazon.com but the decay of middle class purchasing power.

SOURCE: Recovery? We Have Tripled the Number of Store Closings from Last Year, and 20 Major Retailers have Closed at least 50 Stores each in 2017, by Michael Snyder, THEECONOMICCOLLAPSEBLOG.COM. http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/we-have-tripled-the-number-of-store-closings-from-last-year-and-20-major-retailers-have-closed-at-least-50-stores-in-2017


November 27

Join the FreeFairProgressParty

SOURCE: FreeFairProgressParty, by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVELEARNING.NET http://www.effectivelearning.net/freefairprogressparty.html


November 27

Another great article by David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director in the early 1980s for two or three years, before Reagan sacked him for criticizing what the Reagan administration was doing. Stockman does have a way with words, and much understanding of political and economic affairs.

SOURCE: Thanksgiving 2017: David Stockman Explains Why There is no Peace on Earth, by David Strockman, ZEROHEDGE.COM. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-26/thanksgiving-2017-david-stockman-explains-why-there-no-peace-earth


November 27

A sad day indeed, a burst of freedom squelched by the greed and lust for power of large corporations and the elite rich, on the road to a fascist nightmare?

SOURCE: From an Open Internet, Back to the Dark Ages, by Jonathan Cook, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/24/from-an-open-internet-back-to-the-dark-ages-2/


November 27

Here’s an excellent picture of who the elite rich are, and how they get richer exponentially every year without having to work for a living.

SOURCE: The Problem is Not Populism: The Problem is the Status Quo Has Failed, by Charles Hugh Smith, OFTWOMINDS.COM.   http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov17/populism11-17.html


November 26

Very sad what’s happening to our environment.

SOURCE: The Fires This Time, by Jeffrey St. Clair, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/24/the-fires-this-time/


November 18

Here is another economic update by Richard Wolff, perhaps his best, well worth a listen. If you have any interest in your economic education, so as to really understand what is going on economically around Earth, invest the time necessary to listen to this informative, eye-opening, oral presentation of facts, analysis, and sound reasoning.

SOURCE: Economic Update: How People Change Economies, by Richard Wolff, TRUTH-OUT.ORG. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42630-economic-update-how-people-change-economies


November 26

That’s me, Number 37, the same number worn by a distant cousin of mine at SMU, Doak Walker, second row from bottom, fourth from left, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, the youngest and smallest starting high school Class A quarterback for in the US that year in 1953 playing for Frenship High School at Wolfforth, Texas, 13 years old, 5’3″ tall, and 110 pounds. On the far right is Coach Joe Moring, one of the greatest high school football, and basketball, coaches in Texas history. I could now do a better job of quarterbacking the US than Donald Trump.

SOURCE: Picture posted on my Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397


November 25

Down Memory Lane. Here is a post I posted on Facebook November 25, 2016.

Ad Hominem Fake News on Facebook and Elsewhere

I had an interesting experience on Facebook Thanksgiving Day 2016.

I had recently shared a post on my Facebook page written by someone other than me containing some negative allegations about the Clintons. I pointed out in my comments about the post that I had seen the post posted on Facebook several times over several weeks by various people. I also pointed out the post could be fake news.

The allegations in the article were egregious and defamatory, although containing what could be real facts, containing numbers and such. I pointed out in my comments about the piece that if it was fake news something should be done about fake news, fake news having been in the news in recent days, as if people had suddenly awakened to the fact such news exists.

Seems to me there should be some sort of fact-checking device that will block Facebook posts containing made-up facts, numbers, data, etc., unless the piece is clearly labeled as fiction or satire.

Someone read the above-referenced anonymous post I made on Facebook and posted a post to me below the post, presumably after reading the article, telling me I am an idiot. I responded with my reasons for posting the piece and let him know I did not appreciate his fake news ad hominem slur about my intelligence.

I did not explain to him what ad hominem is, as perhaps I should have, an attack on the character, past behavior, intelligence, and persona of a person illogically attempting to prove false what the person said in a current argument. I assumed the respondent would look ad hominem up on Google if he did not know what it was. The argument I was making is that it’s difficult for anyone to know with certainty what is fake news in any media, such as the Clinton post I used as an example.

Over the next three or four hours in the Thanksgiving afternoon eight or so other people then entered the fray on my Facebook page replying to what had been said about the post.

Most of the group generally agreed with the first respondent attacking me for being an idiot and a character-disordered degenerate for posting the post about the Clintons in the first place, however many times it had already been posted by others, elaborating other perspectives on why they were justified in attacking me, asserting that anyone but an idiot should have known that something this egregious and defamatory was fake. It was like someone entertaining the thought Bigfoot was real, one of them said. One of them said he checked my Facebook profile and I lacked “legitimacy”, that I was probably just trying to get attention, and I needed counseling. One said if I was really concerned about fake news on Facebook I should have contacted the people who run the Facebook page and talk to them. One said I was inappropriate and did the wrong thing but he wished me well. One said I was a fool. One said I was beyond hope. One said I did it to piss people off while expecting him to believe I did it out of the goodness of my heart in the interest of truth. One respondent, the last one in the thread, a female, said it was not fake news since it was all over wikileaks.

None of them except the last respondent said anything about my basic point in the argument, that almost no one could know whether the post I posted was fake, however egregious and scandalous it was. I told them I did not know it was fake, and they did not know, eliciting not one response to the basic point of the argument, only unleashing more ad hominem drivel. Apparently what really incensed them was that I would not say I knew it was fake. I admitted most likely it was fake, but that was not good enough. They wanted me to say I knew with certainty it was fake, which I do not.

Another respondent, a female, contacted me confidentially outside the feed line thread on my Facebook page, and asked me to please take the post down, telling me it included misleading information; so I took it down, ending the discussion.

She seemed like a reasonable responsible person and I had no desire to piss anyone off. It never occurred to me the post would piss anyone off. Why was I doing this in the first place? I told one of the respondents in one of my responses I did not know why I did it, that maybe I did it just because I felt like doing it (which is my First Amendment right as a US citizen). I told one of them I did it to educate people.

Posting the article did no harm to the Clintons since few people read my posts and the post had been widely posted by others for some time on Facebook. As much as the Clintons have been defamed and slandered in various media for forty or so years my making this post would not make one whit worth of difference, as I told the group. Unlike Socrates however I have no desire to drink hemlock because of pursuing truth inflaming people in philosophical discussions, however bigoted they might be. It’s better to be smarter than martyr. So I took the post down, dispersing the group, which could have gotten much larger.

In the various responses I made to the group I told several they were making ad hominem attacks and were ignoring my basic point, that few people can know for sure what is fake in media of any sort today. What I did not say is that the more general problem is massive lying in all media and institutions, taking both lying by commission and lying by omission into account.

Lying by commission is making up fake news telling outright falsehoods; lying by omission is not publishing relevant facts that people in a free society need to know. The US government has taken lying by omission to a high level, calling omitted facts state secrets and classified information, making truth tellers such as Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning outcasts and criminals, and threatening Hillary Clinton with prison for mishandling emails.

It’s as if US citizens are supposed to be meek obsequious sheeple lapping up whatever they’re told, never questioning what they’re not told, like grade school children.

I have read in the media lately that Hillary now has her own cult. Cult members could care less about the real truth of anything. They believe whatever their fellow sheeple believe and adore and follow their superhuman leader, attacking anyone who attacks her or him. Maybe the post about the Hillary cult is just another example of fake news; but it’s also possible I encountered some of its members yesterday on Facebook, Thanksgiving Day.

You can build the case Trump also has his own cult, and if one of the negative posts I have posted about him had been read by his true believers on my Facebook page their responses would have been even more venomous than were Hillary’s in the above referenced post.

I don’t have to worry much about Trump’s supporters reading anything on my Facebook page though, since Facebook algorithmic robots try to make sure anyone posting anything on Facebook is not read by sheeple not believing the same thing. I still pick up some Hillary sheeple because I used to support Bernie Sanders, which was tacitly OK with the DNC, for a while. After I came out for Jill Stein after Bernie dropped out I was blocked from most Demo groups, and most of her sheeple are blocked from me. It seems some of them however were not penned up by the Facebook robots as my Thanksgiving experience shows.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not agree with Facebook’s computer programming. I think all Facebook posts and responses should be made to the public at large, which you can click off in your Facebook preferences, as I have. The problem is even if you tell them to post all your posts to the public at large you are mostly locked into your own silo mostly preaching to your own choir, since most sheeple probably choose to only post and listen to their own kind of sheeple. Unfortunately, it seems, sheeple get their preconceptions and biases pleasantly reinforced over and over by what they read on Facebook just like they do everywhere else, as in churches and in most schools.

As you can see on my Facebook page I have about 4,864 Facebook friends aboard Spaceship Earth. I used to have almost 5,000 such friends, the arbitrary limit imposed by Facebook for some reason, almost all of whom requested me to confirm them as friends. After coming out for Jill Stein a little over a hundred of them unfriended me.

Why did I post the above post? Why am I posting this post? Why have I posted all posts I have posted? The bottom line is I think I am as qualified to quarterback the US as anyone else, especially Hillary and Trump, as I pointed out on my Facebook page in a comment above a picture of our 1953 Frenship High School football team, which I quarterbacked in 1953 as the youngest and smallest starting Class A high school quarterback in the US, at 13 years old, 5’3” tall, and 110 pounds.

Furthermore, I think you could randomly select a reasonably bright adult well educated in US public education systems off the streets and send her or him to Washington and she or he could do a better job quarterbacking the US than establishment bought and paid for politicians, as I have pointed out on my FreeFairProgressParty webpage for many years.

With respect to the allegation made yesterday that I lack “legitimacy” and therefore I am unqualified to make posts as a US citizen such as these on Facebook, check out my credentials in detail on my webpage at RJS Academic Vita:

Richard John Stapleton
Effective Learning Company
32 East Main Street
Statesboro, Georgia
November 25, 2016

SOURCE: My Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397


November 24

Read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning for how to discuss relevant facts and issues in classrooms without getting political at https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactiona…/…/0692584331.

SOURCE: Why Keeping Politics Out of the Classroom Is a Disaster for Democracy, by Jennifer Berkshire, ALTERNET.ORG. https://www.alternet.org/why-keeping-politics-out-classroom-disaster-democracy#.Whi0MwlgrHw.facebook


November 22

Down Memory Lane. Posted on my Facebook page November 22, 2016. Sad but true in my opinion. as i pointed out in my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts,Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, https://www.amazon.com/Business-Voyages-Schemata-Discovering-Co-Constructing/dp/1413480810   people in general are closed systems and will not change unless they are seriously confronted by perturbing experiences in their environments. Mere words and information roll off them like water on a duck’s back. This is not merely my opinion in Business Voyages. I cited numerous experts in the field of structural determinism who have backed up similar propositions with scientific facts and reasoning.

SOURCE: An Insider’s View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America, by Forsetti’s Justice, ALTERNET.ORG, https://www.alternet.org/election-2016/rural-america-understanding-isnt-problem#.WDR9mIRZrXU.facebook


November 23

Ties between people will be cut even more after the Trump administration ends neutrality on the internet, giving large corporations more power to determine who hears and reads what on the internet. Rather than isolating people, in many ways a neutral internet brought people closer together, since it exposed diverse thoughts and beliefs to more differentiated isolated people and groups. Those days appear to be ending, as corporate greed squelches freedom of speech for we the people for its selfish profit.

SOURCE: The As-If Society, by Paul C. Bermanzohn, COUNERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/23/the-as-if-society/


November 22

Say it aint so Joe. The Fukushima nuclear plant melt-down is still leaking toxic radiation into the environment, and nobody knows how to stop it. This may be thw worst environmental spill in history.

SOURCE: Fukushima Darkness, by Robert Hunziker, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/22/fukushima-darkness/


November 22

Say it aint so Joe.

SOURCE: The Profound Misunderstanding the Public Has About How the Military Operates, by Frank Joyce, ALTERNET.ORG. https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/profound-misunderstanding-public-has-about-how-military-operates


November 21

David Stockman, a budget director under Reagan in the 1980s, before Reagan sacked him for criticizing the way things were going, tells it like it is in this article, with at least one exception, in my opinion. What he calls payroll taxes are not taxes; they are FICA (Federal Insurance Contribution Act) payments, that is, Social Security investments for the 99 percent. If they are significantly cut this will destroy the Social Security system, and all will be lost for the US as a developed nation. For decades FICA payments were called FICA payments. In recent decades, unfortunately, repugs have succeeded in causing mainstream media writers and most politicians to slur the Social Security System by calling FICA payments the pejorative term “payroll taxes” as part of an unrelenting campaign to undermine the Social Security of the ninety-nine percent.

SOURCE: Stockman on America’s Fiscal Sundown, by David Stockman, ZEROHEDGE.COM. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-21/stockman-americas-fiscal-sundown-part-1


November 21

So why do the elite rich want tax cuts and why do they get them? They want them because they want to win a BALANCE SHEET psychological Game, that entails piling up more net worth on their balance sheets than any of their competitors playing the Game, purely for ego satisfaction, just for the fun of it. They get tax cuts because they are smart enough to know one of the easiest ways to put more net worth on their balance sheets is to have their tax rates reduced. All they have to do is give federal politicians bribe money in the form of campaign contributions and tell them to reduce their tax rates. These bribes collectively probably provide a high rate of return, maybe on the order of hundreds of percent collectively.

For more on psychological Games read my book Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning. https://www.amazon.com/Born-Learn-Transactional-Analysis-Learning/dp/0692584331/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510510282&sr=8-1&keywords=born+to+learn++++richard+john+stapleton&dpID=414yiE-4%252BIL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

Richard John Stapleton, writer, editor, and publisher, Effective Learning Report, November 21, 2017

SOURCE: We All Know the Rich Don’t Need Tax Cuts, by James Rothenberg, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/21/we-all-know-the-rich-dont-need-tax-cuts/


November 21

Ever hear of Tesla and his Doomsday Machine? A machine that could somehow take in electricity from the air and transmit it long distances through the air? Some people think Tesla was the greatest technological genius of all time, far surpassing Thomas Edison. As this article points out Tesla was no crackpot.

SOURCE: The Wireless Power Grid: More Than A 100 Years In The Making, by Julianne Geiger, OILPRICE.COM. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Wireless-Power-Grid-More-Than-A-100-Years-In-The-Making.html


November 20

How many of Trump’s voters will be happy when their taxes are increased while the taxes of large C corporations and the elite rich are decreased? This is not a swindle: it’s quid pro quo, politicians paying back their political debts to their rich masters, so they can continue to get more money for their next election.

SOURCE: The Great American tax cut swindle, by Stephen Lendman, INTREPIDREPORT.COM.  http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/22679


November 20

Excellent overview showing how the US, NATO, and Russia have changed boundaries and alliances in Eastern Europe since 1991 and explaining why NATO should now be abolished.

SOURCE: The biggest threat to world peace is NATO, by Eric Zuesse, INTREPIDREPORT.COM. http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/22684


November 18

Being a male, I never gave this sort of thing much thought. Are females really coerced to do things against their will to survive in oppressive undemocratic hierarchies by males who get their jollies in what they perceive to be a fun-filled cornucopia of delights, sexually appealing females without limit, hanging from every tree? And they can’t help themselves? Because they can get away with it? Pathetic commentary on the human condition. Insane you might say.

SOURCE: The Hillary Effect, by Maureen Dowd, NEWYORKTIMES.COM. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/opinion/sunday/the-hillary-effect.html?smid=fb-share


November 17

Here’s Jill Stein, of the Green Party, whom I voted for for president in 2016, delivering a fireside chat about what is going on. The woman does sound good to me, rational, compassionate, coherent, positive, articulate, intelligent, knowledgeable, persistent, goal-oriented, truth telling, among other good things. She’s an idealist and an optimist who tells it like it is, not pulling punches about the dire straights we are in politically, economically, socially, psychologically, and biologically.

SOURCE: Video posted on my Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397


November 15

Ignorance is bliss?

SOURCE: Pure Imagination: Why it’s Getting Harder to Talk to White People About Politics, by Rob Seimetz, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/14/pure-imagination-why-its-getting-harder-to-talk-to-white-people-about-politics/


November 14

Enact the USVRA, the United States Voters Rights Amendment.

SOURCE: Enact the USVRA, by William John Cox, ACTIONNETWORK.ORG. https://actionnetwork.org/letters/enact-the-usvra?source=facebook&


November 14

Say it aint so Joe.

SOURCE: How the Federal Reserve Destroyed the Functioning American Democracy and Bankrupted the Nation, by Chris Hamilton, ECONIMICA. https://econimica.blogspot.com/2017/11/how-federal-reserve-destroyed.html?spref=fb


November 13

Say it aint so Joe.

SOURCE: U.S. Entry Into World War I Was a Disaster, by David Stockman, DAILYRECKONING.COM. https://dailyreckoning.com/u-s-entry-world-war-disaster/


November 13

Say it aint so Joe.

SOURCE: What is really going on in Saudi Arabia?, by John Chuckman, INTREPIDREPORT.COM. http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/22644


November 10

Say it aint so Joe.

SOURCE: The CIA’s House of Horrors: Frank Olson’s Fatal Trip, by Jeffrey St. Clair, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/10/the-cias-house-of-horrors-frank-olsons-fatal-trip/


November 10

Some really bad stuff, that’s what.

SOURCE: Ugly Stuff: GOP Tax and Budget Plans Will Destroy Finances of Average Americans with Sick Elders or Family Members with Disabilities, by Steven Rosenfeild, ALTERNET.ORG. https://www.alternet.org/economy/op-tax-and-budget-plans-will-destroy-finances-average-americans-whose-families-have-sick-or


November 11

How to Evaluate Teaching Productivity

Read on this blog page “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” by me and colleague Gene Murkison at Georgia Southern University. The article published in the Journal of Management Education by the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society using SagePubs in 2001, now cited in 65 refereed professional journal articles, shows how to measure the teaching productivity of teachers in schools, colleges, and universities. Just scroll down to the bottom of the How to read this blog page post to How to evaluate teachers and the Sage post for Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations, a must read article for all teaches in schools, colleges, and universities at https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf.

SOURCE: How to Use and Perceive this blog page, by Richard John Stapleton, Effective Learning Report. https://blog.effectivelearning.net/how-to-use-and-perceive-this-blog-page/


November 12

College and university students really do have a tough time of it today, especially relative to those of twenty years a go.

SOURCE: The University and Debt: Thinking About Neocolonialism in the United States, by Paddy O’Halloran, TRUTH-OUT.ORG. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42509-the-university-and-debt-thinking-about-neocolonialism-in-the-united-states


November 8

I did not know we had a southern command. I thought to have a command somewhere you had to be at war there. Have i missed something here? Or is it we are now commanding everyone around Earth?

SOURCE: The US Southern Command’s Silent Occupation of the Amazon, by Santiago Navarro F. and Renata Bessi, TRUTH-OUT.ORG. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42542-the-us-southern-command-s-silent-occupation-of-the-amazon


November 8

Why nuclear war could happen, which would be insane.

SOURCE: Heading Toward Nuclear War: Why?, by Jan Oberg, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/08/heading-toward-nuclear-war-why/


November 8

If Iraq no longer needs the US then why are we there? To find enemies to justify military expenditures?

SOURCE: Greatest Threat to Peace in Iraq is Not Isis, It’s Trump Picking a Fight With Iran, by Patrick Cockburn, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/08/greatest-threat-to-peace-in-iraq-is-not-isis-its-trump-picking-a-fight-with-iran/


November 7

Here is a sensible recommendation by Ellen Brown, a top money and banking expert:  set up state banks.  I say even better set up a US bank to get rid of the Federal Reserve System so as to let the US govt print it’s own magic money, instead of the Fed.

SOURCE: The Public Bank Option: Safer, Local and Half the Cost, by Ellen Brown, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/07/the-public-bank-option-safer-local-and-half-the-cost/


November 7

Say it aint so Joe.

SOURCE: American Hyper-capitalism Breeds the Lonely, Alienated Men Who Become Mass Killers, by Harriet Fraad and Richard D. Wolff, ALTERNET.ORG. https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/american-hyper-capitalism-breeds-lonely-alienated-men-who-become-mass-killers#.WgH20h6TC6c.facebook


November 6

Should Trump and his handlers have the right to declare war anywhere they want to at any time? Hell no!

SOURCE: Mattis, Tillerson Want Blank Check to Wage Illegal War, by Marjorie Cohn, TRUTH-OUT.ORG. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42469-mattis-tillerson-want-blank-check-to-make-illegal-war


November 5

Here is a must read article by one of the most truthful writers of our time, John Chuckman.

SOURCE: Reflections on how little is revealed by just-released JFK assassination documents and just some of he many reasons why there had to be a conspiracy, by John Chuckman, INTREPIDREPORT.COM.  http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/22559


November 1

Violence is a waste of time and energy

Rather than rationally deal with the root causes of their problems, many humans vilify, demonize, scapegoat, and tear the tissue of their real or imagined antagonists.

What Earth needs now is unlearning and new learning. Humans need to learn how to get their needs met without playing psychological Games and resorting to violence, as in wars and acts of so-called terrorism, which might be called desperation, insanity, grandiosity, suicide, homicide, vengeance, or other things.

Violence rarely solves anything. It just kicks the can further down the road, where the problem rears its ugly head again, perhaps with increasingly painful consequences.

As Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King demonstrated, non-violent action can produce real change.

Born to Learn contains ideas and techniques for producing peaceful change.

SOURCE: Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning, by Richard John Stapleton, KIRKUSREVIEWS.COM. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/richard-john-stapleton/born-to-learn/


Richard John Stapleton, Editor & Publisher, Effective Learning Report, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/effective-learning-digest-november-2017/.


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