Globalization

Corporations and the wealthy have spent years removing all barriers to imports and offshore manufacturing. Many imported goods aren't manufactured to the same legal standards as domestic goods, which is unfair competition. 

Even wage standards for workers are not the same, and most foreign companies do not have to provide health care coverage for their employees. Either they don't bother, or their countries (like most western industrialized nations) have some form of universal healthcare.

The cheap extraction by US companies of foreign resources often leaves behind huge messes.

The US no longer protects most domestic production from unfair competition, and corporations reap huge profits from this. 

Good luck with leveling the playing field in this era of globalization. We have become an oligarchy (control is exercised by a small group of individuals whose authority is generally based on wealth or power), resulting in unfettered capitalism. 

The GOP mostly achieved their goal of destroying unions, and now Democrats and Republicans both rely mainly on corporate and wealthy donors.

It's a mad, mad world.

Of course, this is just my opinion. 😥

Weaponizing the Filibuster

Mitch McConnell weaponized the filibuster. Now he just has to declare one to require 60 votes for passage of any bill rather than a majority.

It used to be that a filibuster actually required speaking on the floor of the Senate, which is why so many Senators would read things aloud such as Green Eggs and Ham.

At some prior point in its history, the rules were changed so that Senators could conduct other business while the filibuster was active.

The filibuster has gone from being a delaying tactic to an effective veto.

Not only did McConnell weaponize the filibuster, but he also changed SCOTUS nomination confirmations to require only 51 votes. And he invented the Scheduling Veto.

That veto power used the Right of First Recognition when a bill was introduced. That right gives the first person recognized by the President of the Senate (usually the VP) to offer amendments, substitutes, and motions to reconsider before any other senator.

And, more importantly, to schedule a debate. By precedence since 1937, that first person is the majority leader, and it's not in The Constitution nor in the Senate rules.

McConnell's solution was to never schedule debate, no matter how popular a bill is. So the Senate is where House bills go to die, and it's more effective than a presidential veto since voting on a bill never takes place.

The Scheduling Veto was also used to deny Merrick Garland a confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court seat, enabling him to pack the Supreme Court more effectively with conservative justices.

Stop Changing the Windows 10 User Interface

 I have had the line I was typing in your feedback erased 5 times by your stupid X. I am now typing this in Notepad.

I am so sick of t

Oh my God. Even in Notepad, my lines are being erased. What the. Am I hitting the damn keys too hard?

One more time.

Stop changing the UI without my express permission. 

Do I like the Windows 8 menu in my Windows 10 computer with its stupid clunky boxes and bizarre start menu and dysfunctional right-mouse-button (a la MAC)? No. I hate it. I loathe it. It's why I stayed far, far away from Windows 8. And every time I have to reinstall Windows 10 the smell of your new start menu comes back like a toxic fart.

I hate grouping in Windows Explorer. Did you ask if I wanted grouping? No.

Are you giving me easy ways to change back to what I was used to? To what I liked? So I didn't have to stare at your latest "improvement"? No.

Oh, sorry, that will require you to obtain 3rd party software to fix our new and improved feature to something that lets you access your information without a computer science degree. Or to try right-clicking in white spaces to find choices that are not there in order to change the way every other window works. Or to edit the Registry with its many programs and modules and data stored in one file (a single failure point) that if you screw it up, you are screwed so many different ways if you can't find your backup.

Oh, wait. I have a BS in computer science. And a BS in Math. And I have programmed in Ada, MSDos, Assembly, BASIC, COBOL, SNOBOL, Fortran, Forth, SAS, C, C#, C++, F, Pascal, Delphi, Visual Basic, HTML, SQL, and others that I don't even remember.

I used BBSs and a 150 baud modem before there was a World Wide Web. I used AOL and collected their CDs to make art. I wrote a whole assembly terminal program to use my TRS-80 Model III to hook up to a University's IBM 360. All because I needed to insert a delay after a CRLF, otherwise characters that had been echoed back as received disappeared. I've used paper tape from TTYs to store programs on. I've carted around boxes of punched cards of data and statistical analysis programs. I've used magnetic tapes that had to be mounted and unmounted on mainframes. Graphics terminals. Keypunch machines. Mainframes. Graphic plotters. Home computers that didn't have hard drives. MicroPCs. Laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones. I have used cassette tapes for storage. I've used 5-inch and 3.5-inch floppies and numerous USB sticks along with SD and microSD memory cards and HDDs and SSDs and clouds.

I've repaired people's PCs, both hardware and software.

I'm not stupid. But I am so tired of speed bumps added to the UIs on your OSs. It's like you are programming for nerds while your target market is people who are not very computer literate. 

If I wanted obscure UIs I would be using LINUX. For some tasks, it uses a stupid 30- or 40- or 50-year-old command-line interface that for simple tasks requires looking up every single obscure procedure, as if higher programming languages were never invented. But I am reconsidering my hate relationship with Linux.

Did my significant other like it when the UI on her tablet changed? No. She threw it back at me with some choice words and gave up on the idea of ever using a tablet again. Not when she had struggled to understand how to use it and it morphed into something she was not familiar with. Without her permission.

This is my feedback. Now pardon me while I once again try to become an alcoholic.