[ANALYSIS and OPINION]
Note: Unless otherwise expressly noted, all opinions in all videos and on this website are those of reasonandbalance.com and not any other person organization or political party.
Note 2: It is important to view later videos and blog posts on reasonandbalance.com to be sure that we have not amended or changed some of the facts and opinions expressed on this page or in the videos contained or linked herein.
IMPORTANT NOTE 3: Please check more recent blog posts and videos on this website and/or Youtube for updates to the videos and posts below. This page has been very successful at drawing visitors and viewers. What worries us is that the updates (on other pages on our site) get significantly fewer visitors and viewers. In essence this mean that, in a few instance, our viewers/visitors are getting older, and in some instances, slightly outdated information. However, even the posts. videos below that have been modified, they still contain highly relevant background information that was not repeated in the updated videos/posts.
In early August 2025 Tesla shareholders awarded Musk another bonus the value of which appears to range anywhere from $23 to $29 billion. This is probably in lieu of the original $50 billion bonus which has run into legal trouble in Delaware. Is democracy further threatened? Oligopoly, dictatorship. Disturbing consequences. Widening wealth gap between rich and poor. Fairness of pay?
Capitalism and free markets are great. History has shown that they are the best way for society to generate wealth. But like nuclear power, which can unleash untold amounts of energy, capitalism and free markets can cause problems, just like an insufficiently contained nuclear power generator. The freer the economic system is the more likely it is that wealth and thus economic and often political power will accumulate in the hands of fewer and fewer people. This is why, on the economic front, we have laws preventing/restricting monopolies. The point is that laws have to be enacted that prevent the accumulation of too much wealth and thus economic and hence political power into the hands of just a few people, or a dictator.
Here’s the video:
Moving on….
While religion can undoubtedly play a very positive role in people’s lives, man can sometimes misuse it with devastating consequences on a huge scale. This video talks about decision-making and how religion can lead the parties in the wrong direction. A highly relevant example is the Israeli and Iranian positions with respect to the nature of their existence.
Here’s a very important video we did in response to Trump’s decision to bomb Iran in later June of 2025. The extended intro to the video discusses the wide ranging potential ramification of the bombing. It talks about the power of Presidents to unilaterally start a war. It addresses some points about why Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO dislike the U.S. What about Russian, Chinese, European and other interests. What were Trump’s political motives? The video wraps up with a video we did prior to the bombing which talks about often overlooked principles applicable to finding peaceful settlements. It wraps up with asking whether there’s a duty to resist the government.
This next post is largely based on the original “Important But Ignored” article. We experienced a considerable amount of spam (originating from Russia) in connection with our posting of the original article and videos. This is probably because, unlike our President, we have been very critical of Putin and Russian aggression in Ukraine. To prevent a recurrence of the spam problem we have turned the “comments” off.
Pardon us if this is a bit choppy but here’s our newest video as of June 9, 2025. We are highly suspicious anytime we do a video that is even remotely remotely critical or wary of AI, Google or Youtube or …you get the picture …and it gets no views. Such is the case with the following. These may seem trifling to many (because sadly, so much of this is now commonplace and accepted) but there is absolutely no question, that mankind is setting itself for a total loss of freedom all in an attempt to make everything quick and easy.
as of June 1, 2025. We believe it to be incredibly important especially since all 3 events mentioned happened over such a short period of time which leads us to believe that Trump could be signaling that he has no intention to obey the courts, which would be a momentous event indeed and would signal the end of democracy for sure.
In yet another, this time audacious, indication of the authoritarian intentions of the Trump administration Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Bondi both recently made headlines. Despite over 200 years of American jurisprudence to the contrary, Vance doesn’t think the President should be required to follow what the courts say the law is. To add to this the Attorney General says the Trump administration will no longer follow the recommendations of the American Bar Association when it comes time to filling judicial vacancies on the the federal courts. We believe these to be an extremely important events and represent perhaps the biggest threat yet to our democracy.
We sometimes update this page, however we intend to periodically add volumes 2, 3 etc of Important But Ignored instead. First we link our most current ignored but important video and then below that we link other important but ignored videos as well:
Here’s what we think is one of our most current important but ignored videos. The reason being, that it raises a huge issue that does not get discussed, when it clearly drives (or should drive) how the U.S. (and Trump) addresses the immigration issue. It also draws into question whether Trump’s vision of a MAGA Nirvana can ever possibly be achieved under even the best of circumstances. One might even think that Trump knows this, and is a huge reason why out of desperation: (i) he is considering offering $5,000 per newborn baby to induce Americans to have kids; and (ii) why at one point he gave White South Africans an open invitation to come to the U.S. And beyond that, it demonstrates that Trump should not be in such a big hurry to spend hundreds of billions of dollars deporting illegal immigrants, when in fact, from a social security perspective we need them. Moreover, it also probably shows that Trump knows he’s been selling snake oil to the MAGA faithful perhaps from as early as 2016.
Don’t get us wrong, We often don’t like being exposed to a lot of foreign culture as we go about our daily lives either. It is often disconcerting. As such, this next video is going to be a hard swallow for many but Robert Reich was the former Secretary of Labor in the Obama Administration. He taught at Harvard and, we believe is currently teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. He’s been around Washington a long time. Here’s what he has to say about immigration. It’s a real eye opener and just so happens to be consistent with our video on birth rates:
Given the foregoing, one has to wonder why the Trump Administration is spending so much time, effort and energy deporting immigrants. Shouldn’t it be doing just the opposite? Could it be Trump says what he does to engender animosity for a perceived foreign and/or internal threat which is a common tactic of would be dictators? After all Hitler did it using the Jews as his target. It is very sad and truly amazing how Americans and their political parties have lost the ability to have rational policy discussions based on the true facts. In fact, there’s a total unwillingness on the part of some, particularly in the Trump Administration to worry about the facts. Instead Trump wants to control all information and “bend” “reshape” and “distort” the facts all to suit his own political ends.
Although we admittedly, probably overstated the case in a few instances, we then did this video on May 17, 2025:
Two points the above video. As one viewer pointed out, many if not most Republicans want to do away with abortion. Doing so, it is argued would help the population problem. The second criticism which is arguably true again is that the Trump administration is considering offering $5000 per baby to help solve the immigration problem Here’s what we said in response to the first criticism:
“Thanks for your comment and for watching the video. All I can say is that everyone except the Oligarchs knows that there are widening unjustifiable income and wealth disparities in the United States. For wealth inequality see https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm For income inequality see https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/income.html It’s important to note that estimating the exact number of unauthorized immigrants is challenging due to factors like undercounts in surveys and the dynamic nature of migration. Therefore, while the 2022 estimate stands at 11 million, the actual number in 2024 could be higher, potentially ranging between 11 and 14 million, according to some analyses. Regarding your excellent comment about abortion, as of now we do not have a nationwide abortion ban. While I will concede that such a ban (which many Republicans insist upon) might, to a certain extent, help with the overall population problem causing the deficiency in social security funding Having 29 state ban abortion at various points in the pregnancy cycle is not going to be sufficient to solve the funding problem. Naturally, many folks, think banning abortion is a very bad idea as being a very repressive infringement on a woman’s right to choose. Moreover, bringing an unwanted child into the world carries substantial risks and costs for the child the parents and society at large.Finally, the bottom line for those of us at reasonandbalance.com is that Trump is a “wannabe dictator” who has no respect for our Constitution, our democracy and/or the rule of law. He’s a convicted felon, an insurrectionist (because of the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021) and should be impeached and removed from office as soon as humanly possible. Voting for Republicans only helps to keep Trump in office. Meanwhile he’s destroying our government and the rule of law.”
The second criticism prompted us to create a separate blog post page which delves pretty deeply into the actual numbers behind the solvency of social security as it is affected by birth rates and immigration. Here’s the link to that deeper dive which is well worth the read for those who truly want to understand this subject. Here’s the link: https://reasonandbalance.com/social-security-immigration-and-birthrates-the-figures/
And we can’t resist reposting this breathtakingly good example of what we, at reasonandbalance.com, are fighting for:
It’s hard to be truly objective about one’s own content. However, more times than we would care to admit we have been disappointed in the viewership of some the videos and blog posts we’ve published. What really concerns us is that many times this disappointment has come with respect to videos and content that we thought were the most important that we’ve ever tried to publish. And what gives us the greatest pause for concern is that sometimes we have felt that the low viewership and/or clicks was due to the subject matter of the video and/or that we were criticizing or saying something that was against the economic/political interests of the elites and/or the very powerful parties that have a lot of control and/or influence over the means of communication, including the internet.
Could it be that our consistent attacks against oligarchs, plutocrats and would-be dictators has hurt our viewership? Could this be because oligarchs largely control the internet and the airways? Same question, but with respect to our often expressed worries about, and criticisms of, artificial intelligence–after all, these same parties have billions invested in it?
Another concern is that we are beginning to believe that the major site that publishes videos is actually regulating/limiting the number of video “views” it will allow a particular publisher like reasonandbalance.com. It seems that no longer are we permitted to have more than a certain number of views for any of our videos. We say this because we will publish videos and the views/clicks will accumulate fairly quickly and then, when we get to a certain number of views or clicks (and it’s always the same number), all of a sudden and for no apparent reason, the video will stop getting clicks. And this can be true in just a few hours after the video is first published.
In any event, on this page we are going to re-post some of what we think are our most important and best videos that have not gotten enough views–at least in our opinion.
We posted this next video late on Friday 03/21/25. It got no views. We consider this to be the core of our entire political belief system. Essentially, what we’re willing to fight over. It’s embarrassing, maddening and somewhat insulting when no one watches it. However, you are invited to do so, so please do by clicking (with our thanks) the link below: (It was originally titled “Sermon on the Eve of Destruction” then “The Sermon From a Foxhole” but we retitled it to be a little more upbeat, all with some, but limited success.) Here’s the link:
On March 22, 2025, we took an important issue into our own hands and actually decided to ask ChatGPT 4.5 what the chances were that Trump was under “undue” Russian influence, which CHAT defines as anything that compromises or seriously interferes with independent decision making of the President beyond normal political considerations (and which would cause the President to put a foreign country’s interests ahead of that of the U.S.) including blackmail, coercion, threat of disclosing sensitive information and the like. It would include being a planted Russian agent. Here is what we came up with:
We may ultimately develop a separate page for topics and videos like the following. We’ve become a real fan of this next lady. Why? Interestingly she’s a Russian, who about 20 years ago immigrated to this country. Agree or disagree with her, she’s charming and more importantly, extremely intelligent and insightful. All Americans should listen to how much folks from other countries, especially Russians, appreciate our democracy and the freedoms it allows.
So, with that being said let’s give Elvira Bary a listen:
Here’s a video, we posted on 03-31-25. We’ve always counselled compromise and reason and balance. However, enough is enough. We’re at about 10 years of Trump being in the public eye and it’s gotten well beyond tolerable. We are unusually pointed in expressing ourselves in this next video. Why? To add to the mountain of other reasons, Trump now wants to be on Mount Rushmore, and worse, says he’s looking for ways to run for a third term. He makes no attempt to reach out to folks who don’t agree with him. In fact, he enjoys upsetting folks who don’t agree with him. He’s a bully. And a dangerous one at that. He’s all over the airways lying, making outrageous statements. He’s spoiled friendships, made Christmas awkward. He makes surfing on the internet a sure way to get depressed, angry and outraged. He’s a national disgrace.
In assessing what we say in the next video. Just remember, before he came to power Hitler did not publicly advocate exterminating Jews. And, every time we think that Trump cannot go lower or say or do something worse or more dangerous or oppressive he always does. He must be stopped.
That last video is bound to be controversial. So we felt compelled to explain it. Here’s the explanation: