Ed Kalski

Retired. I believe TOTALLY in a free market economy. Get the government, the politicians, out of the economy. I am a proud owner of a new Model 3 Tesla. No DMs.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

That needs to be stressed.

"The only way to get money out of politics is to get politics out of money."

Yes. Take politics out of the economy. Don't let the politicians play favorites.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

The rich are part of the public.

Public funding just means forcing everyone to fund politics.

And if billionaires spending money is "buying democracy," what do we call politicians spending trillions of taxpayer dollars to buy votes?

The only way to get money out of politics is to get politics out of money, and Bernie is the last person who'd make that argument.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

When Western communists praise "communism with Chinese characteristics," those "characteristics" look a lot like corporatism, political favoritism, extensive state direction of the economy, and just enough market activity to keep the lights on.

[SparksN123 @SparksN123]

This.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

I asked Google: Did Stalin order the murder of soviet people?

The answer: "Yes, Joseph Stalin directly ordered the mass execution, imprisonment, and forced relocation of millions of Soviet citizens through state policies, secret police directives, and quotas approved by the ruling Politburo."

Google even gave me the following:

Documented Orders and Policies

NKVD Order No. 00447: Signed in 1937, this explicit secret police directive targeted "socially harmful elements", former kulaks, and suspected dissidents, setting strict regional quotas for executions and labor camp sentences.

The Great Purge: Stalin and the Politburo directed systematic political campaigns resulting in the execution or death in the Gulag of 700,000 to over a million Soviet citizens between 1936 and 1938.

Class and Ethnic Repression: Government-engineered policies, including the decossackization and the destruction of the kulaks as a social class, led to massive man-made famines and deadly forced deportations of entire ethnic minority groups

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Not for Soviets

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

I asked Google: Did Stalin order the murder of soviet people?

The answer: "Yes, Joseph Stalin directly ordered the mass execution, imprisonment, and forced relocation of millions of Soviet citizens through state policies, secret police directives, and quotas approved by the ruling Politburo."

Google even gave me the following:

Documented Orders and Policies

NKVD Order No. 00447: Signed in 1937, this explicit secret police directive targeted "socially harmful elements", former kulaks, and suspected dissidents, setting strict regional quotas for executions and labor camp sentences.

The Great Purge: Stalin and the Politburo directed systematic political campaigns resulting in the execution or death in the Gulag of 700,000 to over a million Soviet citizens between 1936 and 1938.

Class and Ethnic Repression: Government-engineered policies, including the decossackization and the destruction of the kulaks as a social class, led to massive man-made famines and deadly forced deportations of entire ethnic minority groups

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

@FKooser007 @RockChartrand Me too.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

You are exposing the con of socialism, Rock. Thank you.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

It's funny how the same people who insist humanity "thrived" before capitalism also claim modern life is unbearable.

Short, brutal lives filled with poverty, disease, hunger, and child mortality = thriving.

Longer lives with unprecedented wealth, comfort, medicine, technology, and opportunities that kings couldn't imagine = oppression.

Their standard seems less about human flourishing and more about resentment.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

@CarlCastro_USC I disagree. One has freedom of individuals as its base (Capitalism) and the other one has central planning for its base (Socialism).

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

The con of Socialism is shown by Bernie Sanders who talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk.

He owns 3 houses when there are lots of homeless. That is not Socialism. If he was a believer, he would give two of them to the homeless.

He's a millionaire at a time there are poor people. That is not Socialism. If he was a believer, he would give up a good bit of that money to help the poor.

Socialism is the biggest con of mankind. History has shown it doesn't work. It is perpetuated on the young and the gullible.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

@Michael78378298 I was just showing how Bernie Sanders talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk. According to Socialism, it is unfair for Bernie to have 3 houses, don't you think, when there are homeless people? Isn't he taking advantage of one or more systematic situations in Capitalism?

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

Governments cause inflation. Politicians spend far more than comes in and that means they have to borrow which means more money is created. Then, also, the FED prints money. Again, more money is created.

When there is more money for the same or fewer goods inflation is created.

This makes the rich richer. Inflation increases the prices of assets (stocks, land, gold, etc.). It also makes the poor and the middle class poorer because their money cannot buy as much.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Socialism doesn't solve affordability crises, it creates them. The usual result is higher prices, shortages, or both.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

Governments cause inflation. Politicians spend far more than comes in and that means they have to borrow which means more money is created. Then, also, the FED prints money. Again, more money is created.

When there is more money for the same or fewer goods inflation is created.

This makes the rich richer. Inflation increases the prices of assets (stocks, land, gold, etc.). It also makes the poor and the middle class poorer because their money cannot buy as much.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

Freedom of speech does not mean you have the right to cause havoc with other people's rights. You have a Masque to pray in. Use it.

[𝔉🅰𝒏 Karoline Leavitt @WHLeavitt]

Muslims block streets chanting “Allahu Akbar,” forcing school buses to detour.

Deport Islamists, ban their immigration, and reject all Muslim refugees?

A. Yes 
B. No

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

@WHLeavitt Freedom of speech does not mean you have the right to cause havoc with other people's rights. You have a Masque to pray in. Use it.

[The Rational Animal 🤔 @theobjectivist]

I know who needs to hear this. Everyone!

This country was created based on the recognition of property rights which means:

- The man who built or bought a building owns it.
- The rent is his to set, and yours to accept or decline.
- A lease is a voluntary agreement between equals, enforceable against either party.
- No mayor, board, or mob gets a vote on the terms two free people agree to.

Now set that against Mamdani's record. He handpicked the Rent Guidelines Board, by his own words: "I name the members... I instructed the Rent Guidelines Board", and it's now being sued after freezing rents on a million apartments while owners' costs climb with inflation. He's moving to ban credit checks, so an owner may not even judge who can pay for what he's offering. Small landlords say they're at their breaking point, and tens of thousands of stabilized units sit empty because the rent laws he champions make repairing them a guaranteed loss.

His list makes the landlord a suspect class with obligations and no rights, and the tenant a protected class with rights and no obligations. The contract disappears, replaced by whatever City Hall decrees, and the owner becomes a criminal-in-waiting on his own property.

You want to talk about people being forced out of what's theirs, Mayor? Ask the owners. You're the one doing it, by law, and the empty buildings are the evidence.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

The students would learn that socialism does not allow the freedoms they are use to. It would be a rude awakening.

They think socialist theory matches reality. It doesn't. Socialism is a theory that is anti human nature. People have self-interest built into them. Socialism doesn't care about the self-interest of anyone.

Instead, socialism looks at people as resources to be used in any way the elite of the party decide. That, too, will be a rude awakening to the students.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

The people insisting the rich don't pay their fair share are often the same people paying the least while demanding the most.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

That certainly shows how strong communism was. I'm 77 so I remember it.

I still think that self-interest is built into human nature. That's why there was so much joy in Germany when the wall came down. The populace was able to release what was bottled up for so many years.

Of course there were people in Germany who believed in communism, just like there were average people who earlier believed in Hitler and Nazism. But that doesn't deny what human nature is.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

Do you think having their life on the line makes a difference? Scared to open up about their economic circumstance.

I'm thinking, for instance, of Jack Ma, in China, who disappeared for months. He didn't die, but he has been much quieter about things compared to before disappearing.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

Well, Bernie does own 3 houses while there are a lot of homeless people. Hmm...what would Socialism say about that? It would say, it is unfair.

Bernie talks the talk of Socialism and Communism, but he does not walk the walk. From the beginning he was a power-seeker and nothing more.

[Ed Kalski @EKalski]

@SparksN123 Obama is Mamdani at a higher level. Oh, and far less open about who he really is.