Thursday, May 31, 2012

Nanny State

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets around the globe are bleeding from the eye-sockets for the second straight day but THIS is today’s top story:

TOP NEWS
New York Plans to Ban Sale of Big Sizes of Sugary Drinks
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

A proposal that would take effect as soon as next March is the most ambitious effort yet by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's administration to combat rising obesity.

Isn’t it comforting to see that the > One Percent’s Mayor has his eye what’s important?

Could this latest incarnation of the Nanny State be any less intrusive? How long before ‘robo-conservatives’ start decrying this move as another ‘Liberal attack’ on liberty?

How much worse is it that this asshole is able to claim he’s an ‘Independent’?

By distancing himself from his decidedly conservative roots he is able to blame the much abused but no longer existent Liberals for his unpopular social decisions.

And the editor chose this story as what is ‘important’ to New Yorkers?

Looks like there ought to be a job opening at the NY Times…don’t you think?

Let’s see what got relegated to the ‘inner depths’ of today’s edition.

You don’t suppose THIS would have made a ‘more appropriate’ headline, do you?

Debt Crisis in Europe
Central Banker Sees Structure of Euro Zone as ‘Unsustainable’

By JACK EWING 10:37 AM ET

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, warned Thursday that the structure of the euro zone had become “unsustainable.”

Europe Fears Bailout of Spain Would Strain Its Resources

You don’t suppose the, er, ‘unfortunate choice of words' by the head of the European Central Bank has anything to do with shuffling this story off to the business section, do you?

I mean, calling the world’s fall back currency ‘unsustainable’ is a bit harsh, isn’t it?
Maybe they were reluctant to run a story not centered in the US but, the very next headline tells us what we all already know:

U.S. Steps Up Pressure on Europe to Resolve Euro Crisis
By DAVID JOLLY 36 minutes ago

President Obama has held conference calls with the leaders of France, Germany and Italy to help lay the groundwork for action before a G-20 summit in June.

It is also ‘understandable’ that they wouldn’t want to run with this story as today’s top headline.

The ‘Euro-crisis’ has been bubbling for four years now and nothing they have attempted (or proposed) has proven workable.

What does dummy think will change by adding his two cents?

If he has a solution don’t you think he should try it out on the US financial network first? It’s not like our banking system isn’t on life support.

And naturally good citizen, he doesn’t expect anything to change, he is doing this to provide the appearance of doing something.

If he actually did ‘do something’ it would likely, er, ‘upset’ some important campaign contributors…(who, PS, by the way, are still making sizable contributions to his re-election campaign despite their public dislike for the incumbent.)

He must be kicking back and grinning, ear to ear…just like ‘the great one’ (Jackie Gleason) with a hearty ‘How sweet it is!’

Getting paid tons of cash for NOT doing the right thing!

And NOBODY’S saying a word about it! (Talk about having a muzzle on the media!)

Skipping along we have this little tidbit:
Other Business News
First-Quarter G.D.P. Revised Down to 1.9% Rate
By REUTERS 9:05 AM ET

Economic growth in the United States was a bit slower than initially thought in the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported.

Again, not quite the story you want to run at the top of the paper…although the public would be interested in knowing this little factoid.

But how do you run a headline like that without opening the door for a discussion about why things are going so badly?

Since the ‘official line’ has been to ignore the symptoms leading up to the crash, you don’t want people to start asking questions now…

They might actually expect something to be done about it!

So the question turns back onto YOU…are YOU ‘happy’ with how things are being handled?

Or are you getting fed up with ‘more of the same’ from our deaf and blind political leaders?

Because, UNTIL YOU ‘show them’ you will no longer tolerate inaction, NOTHING is going to change, capeche?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Bad Joke

Greetings good citizen,

A quick check of the stock markets shows us another day of bleeding from the eyesockets for markets worldwide.

And what would one expect, the global economic desert isn’t restricted to just the labor markets!

The ‘source’ of our current worldwide financial collapse started twenty years after the end of the second world war, when the completion of rebuilding a bombed out Europe caused investment opportunities to ‘dry-up’.

This is the same source that created what became known as Happy Days for the sole survivor of that European war, the USA.

During the post war period, jobs went begging. There literally weren’t enough workers to keep things going.

This led to better benefits and the steady rise in living standards we all take for granted today.

But was this just a historic fluke? The short answer is no. We could have enjoyed lifestyle improvements introduced in the fifties long before then, but the same fucking greed heads who want to push us back to living in mud huts kept them from us.

They were ‘afraid they’d spoil us.’

With that thought firmly in mind we move on with today’s offering :
The title of Ferguson’s book certainly gets the reader’s attention, and he powerfully delivers the goods, with a scathing, detailed history of what led to the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression. Ferguson takes the reader on a revealing journey -- a sordid and corrupt trail that leads from the Pandora’s box of deregulation from 1980 through 2000, through the two major economic bubbles. The first was the dot.com stock market bubble of 2000, exacerbated by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Then came the much larger housing/mortgage bubble, fueled by sub-prime lending and the emergence of a host of new esoteric financial tools, meant to protect investments -- in fact, they did the opposite, provoking the financial crash.

The economic disaster was driven, Ferguson writes, by a combination of “very low interest rates, pervasive dishonesty through the financial system, massive lending fraud, speculation, demand for high yield securities, and not insignificantly, a squeezed American consumer desperate to maintain living standards, and told by everyone – including George Bush and Alan Greenspan, the brokers and the banks, that home borrowing was the way to do it.”

Along the way, Ferguson debunks the right-wing meme that Freddie and Fannie Mae caused the bubble; he holds the pure private sector responsible, especially its least regulated shadow banking parts.

As we can see, Reaganomics failed. All of the liberal hatred and gay bashing are intended to distract the rest of us from the failure of conservative ideology.

A conservative ideology so ingrained in the power structure that the media blindly protects it.

But wait a moment…what’s that you say? Reganomics WORKS?

It’s just that the outcome of Reganomics is so ‘anti-social’ that it would never sell if it weren’t camouflaged as something else!

Thus do we have the world’s greatest scam ever perpetrated upon a civilization.

And now that civilization is collapsing.

Which is neither here nor there good citizen because in the end the question remains; will YOU survive the collapse of civilization?

Yeah good citizen, at the end of the day the very same self-styled ‘pranksters’ are going to accuse you and I of failing to protect ourselves from being ‘scammed’.

Yup, this was all 'our fault'!

And somehow making it illegal to scam on such a scale would never occur our once fine legal minds…would it?

Free Speech is sacrosanct, you can’t muzzle Liberty (like you regularly muzzle the truth)…you despicable fuckers!

Which is to point out what you already know, we are dealing with unadulterated evil here, good citizen.

There is nothing to ‘redeem’ (although they would all offer us wealth beyond our wildest dreams if only we would spare their children…)

And it ain’t gonna happen because that wealth already belongs to ‘us’. It isn’t theirs to give.

Yet another thing they must laugh themselves breathless over.

Well, the day is rapidly approaching when they won’t be laughing much longer.

And they will learn the true meaning of the term 'being hunted to the ends of the earth’.

We have arrived at a ‘make or break’ point for our species. If we don’t turn our current situation around it will be ‘game over’.

And I, for one, actually like ‘us’ and think we have the potential to be great, someday.

But first we have to remove the few who think this whole thing is a joke from power.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Free Falling

Greetings good citizen,

Perhaps more useful than specific articles, the snippet of headlines in the business section provides us with a clearer picture of the contradictions being fed to us by the corporate owned media.

Were we to back away a couple of steps and, er, ‘pretend’ the media is the victim here, that they can’t help what the news is which is totally wrong! We would come away shaking our heads trying to figure out which parts of the media’s stories are in fact lies.

Because if the news doesn’t make sense then somebody is lying.

It really is as simple as that.

In fact, I’ll go you one better. The news should make ‘holistic sense’; it should all be related by a clear cause and effect chain!

But is that what we’re seeing?

After Facebook, More Fear of Stock Market
By NATHANIEL POPPER

The financial industry had hoped that Facebook would rekindle ordinary investors’ excitement in stocks. But the Facebook faltering just added to a growing retreat from the stock market.

DealBook: Talk of Facebook Interest Drives Shares in European Web Browser 8:56 AM ET

The long-term unemployed face the end of benefits. | Microsoft still working to integrate Skype.| After Facebook's troubled debut, smaller investors shy away from stocks.

U.S. Winds Down Longer Benefits for the Unemployed
By SHAILA DEWAN

In February, Congress phased in a reduction of the number of weeks of extended aid and made it more difficult for states to qualify for the maximum aid, adding a financial burden to the long-term unemployed.

Wall Street Rallies
By 27 minutes ago

Stock indexes in the United States raced higher, after their first weekly gain since April, on a report that home prices showed marginal improvement in March.

Home Prices Show Mixed Improvement 9:58 AM ET

Spanish Data Point to Further Decline
By DAVID JOLLY 3 minutes ago

Spanish retail sales fell by a record 9.8 percent in April, and the Bank of Spain forecast that the economy would continue to shrink through June.
Euro Isn’t Loved, but Few Want to Drop It, Poll Says
By PAUL GEITNER

A poll of citizens of five nations using the euro indicates they do not want to revert to a system of different currencies, a survey by Pew Research Center shows.

So, if we read the current headlines (and admittedly, they change from minute to minute) we can’t make heads nor tails of the current news environment. This is because you are being bombarded with independent snippets, many of them generated by people that want YOU to remain ignorant of the truth!

It’s like the highly massaged and politicized ‘government statistics’ that don’t tell you the truth about anything.

Then you get some idiot that insists the government data isn’t ‘wrong’ if you know how to read it!

Which brings us full circle to the issue of what use is incomplete data?

And the short answer is, it is very useful when it comes to covering up inconvenient facts.

This is usually done with the disclaimer, we don’t have all of the data right now (nor will we ever) but this is what it looks like so far, if we back out this information and lump these three piles together!

Why back out this and lump in those, because it distorts the data to show the situation in a ‘favorable light’.

Once the ‘real data’ is available you end up with the results you suspected it would yield but by now the spotlight is being trained on different (albeit incomplete) data.

And as long as they can keep your attention focused on the irrelevant, you won’t notice that they aren’t doing anything to fix the here and now.

Let’s focus for a moment on this series parting shot, that the Euro isn’t ‘loved’ but few want to ‘drop it’.

Why do you suppose that is?

Is this not a perfect example of ‘perception management’?

People who would be much better off outside the currency union don’t want to abandon the Euro because they ‘fear’ that their nation’s currency wouldn’t be as ‘strong’ as the currency backed by 27 nation states!

And every time you open that particular door the bankers give you what you wish for.

Which is to (once again) point out that whosoever controls your money controls YOU!

With that as a given, don’t YOU want a ‘level playing field’?

This is why under A Simple Plan ‘your money is for you…and no one else!’

This is the major ‘flaw’ in monetary design and why our civilization is so badly mismanaged.

Money is only ‘useful’ to the individual (and then only as a regulator.) Especially in a world where too many things have price tags hanging off of them!

Think every thing has a price…how much would you sell one of your children for?

If you can arrive at a price, regardless of how ridiculous, you are a monster!

We could temper that with the notion that your kids aren’t yours to sell but, conversely, YOU are not ‘Yours to sell’ either (because there are no buyers!) [Want to see a Libbie’s head explode, tell he doesn’t own himself and watch him FREAK!]

The whole justification of buying someone else’s labor is unjustifiable, it allows the undeserving to skate…and that is unjust!

Not that repeating how ‘unjustified’ it is makes the point any clearer…

It all starts with management and a clear goal, specifically, the ‘common good’, which the challengers of labels like to call ‘socialism’.

Which should mystify most of the sycophants out there, how do capitalist knotheads rail against socialism while screaming for the common good?

The two terms are interchangable.

OFW!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Monday, May 28, 2012

Dreamland

Greetings good citizen,

Perhaps today is not the day to ask ‘who are these people and who, precisely, do they think they’re fooling?'

Here in ‘Dreamland’ otherwise known as the broken and miserable US of A, we are told ‘there’s always room at the top’…but we know what that means. The unspoken part of that expression says ‘for MY kids!’

There’s a lot of ‘speech’ favoring equal rights and affirmative action but very little actual evidence of it.

What they’re trying to say is ‘there’s room at the top…but it’s reserved for me and mine.

So we get more stories like this from the friggin’ clueless (who sadly think you’re just as clueless as they are/pretend to be.)
Ivy League universities tend to self-select young people who have a more conformist sense of achievement. True, students at Harvard and Yale are unlikely to be forced to work at coffee shops to pay off loans. But they measure themselves by a different yardstick, and the idea of not living up to all the hype that they and their families have been fed about their world-class educations can induce panic even in the well-to-do. Plus, Ivy Leaguers, just like students everywhere, register cultural shifts, and with the U.S. economy still crawling and the Eurozone stumbling and JP Morgan losing billions, many of them now feel that they had better make a run for Wall Street and make as much money as they can before Armageddon.

[Not that money is going to do you a lick of good once the bottom drops out!]

Then there’s also what James Kwak and others have described as the wildly successful Wall Street recruiting machine. Flush with cash, Wall Street firms can hire consultants and recruiters who tailor their pitches to the audience, mimicking the kinds of tests, competitive environment and validation these young people have been trained to respond to.

Ironically, Greg Smith, who recently quit(e) [typo in original] Goldman Sachs, stating his reasons in a New York Times editorial, described how he was taken in by – and later organized – just these kinds of recruiting efforts. Only his journey ended in complete disillusionment and the shameful knowledge that he was working in a den of crooks.

Yuppers, the children of the >One Percent are just scrambling for a job, right along with the rest of the ‘mud people’ (as they call us behind our backs, cowards)

Like their parents (if these jerk-offs play their cards right) they’ll never have to ‘work’ a day in their lives.

But, contrary to popular belief, ‘sucking up’ to the ‘right people’ can be a full-time job by itself.

And their parents proved to them (repeatedly) that it’s not what you know but who…

So, who are these ‘best and brightest’ minds that Wall Street tends to lure over to the ‘dark side’ of Finance?

They are your ‘straight A’ scholars, kids with an aptitude for solving problems who are also easily indoctrinated.

Not only can they do complex equations but, in their youth, they also tend to be exceedingly gullible/trusting.

How sad is it that the ‘Masters of the Universe’ don’t want ‘our’ obvious problems solved, all they want are new ways to bilk the system.

Sadly, fraud can only go, er, ‘unnoticed’ for just so long…then it has to be addressed or your whole civilization collapses.

Like our current ‘irreversible’ situation.

Yes, good citizen, we are walking our personal ‘trial of tears’ where the same people responsible for breaking our civilization start implementing ‘patches’ that fix problems no one else notices!

Like gay marriage.

WTF!

Worse, my longstanding ‘optimism’ that most people were smarter than the media would have us believe is slipping…but I do live in a conservative part of the State.

Naturally, things wouldn’t be this far gone if ‘most people’ were brighter than the media thinks.

Which is to point out that the battle for the future promises to be tougher than any of us suspected, largely due to ‘indecisiveness’.

On a certain level we are (most of us) aware that we’re being ‘played’ that what the media sells us isn’t 100% true.

But we want to believe the current regime isn’t ‘pure evil’ so we sort of sigh and shrug and think, what can you do? When we see things going irrevocably wrong.

While it is the (corporate owned) media’s goal to keep us asleep, it needn’t be a deep restful sleep. Your tossing and turning and general feeling of unease is perfectly natural.

Because the Dream weavers know it’s a ‘bad old world’ out there. Always has been, always will be and they don’t see the need to ‘interfere’ with the ‘natural order of things’.

So on this Memorial Day it would be wise to take a moment and contemplate just what we’re being asked to remember.

The Dream Weavers want you to be grateful to those who died for your freedom.

But are you free?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Sunday, May 27, 2012

Postcards from the 'economic desert'

Greetings good citizen,

Most of you know that ‘a couple of percent’ of the population of the US is a number in excess of 3 million, right? Which is to say a single percent of our population would be in excess of 3 million, so more than a percent would be decidedly more.

You can do the math. You know two percent would top 6 million and so on and so forth so what about the statistic where 40 percent of the population receives some kind of food assistance?

Where are the alarm bells over such flagrant mismanagement of our society?

Are we ‘too stupid’ to figure out that the collective ‘we’ are being robbed by the now infamous > One Percent? Or is this just another ‘side effect’ of being absolutely powerless to stop these motherfuckers?

Perhaps I expect too much. Both the capitalists and their apologists are vigorously denying the news that capitalism is defunct. They don’t care about the facts on the ground, all they care about is going about their business ‘unmolested’ (read ‘unaccountable.’)

Still it can’t be denied that people are NOT being paid enough to live on and the bankrupt capitalists continue to insist this is NOT THEIR PROBLEM, it’s ‘ours’.

Well, let’s take a look at the flip side of what living in the ‘economic desert’ has produced:
A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told The Associated Press.

What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.

It's unclear how much worse off these new veterans are than their predecessors. Many factors are driving the dramatic increase in claims — the weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such as concussions and PTSD. Almost one-third have been granted disability so far.

A war twice as long as WWII and the only thing the media can point to is the number of people claiming disabilities is DOUBLE that of the 29 day Gulf War back in the 1990’s!

(The six months of ‘camping out in the desert’ don’t count.)

Geez good citizen, you don’t suppose there’s something wrong with ‘journalistic integrity’ these days, do ya?

Worse, it is not being debated that these soldiers have been injured, the corporate owned media is marveling over ‘how many ways’ these soldiers claim to have been ‘mistreated’.

WTF were they expecting, fighting an endless ‘war of occupation’ with no idea of what victory looks like can be completely demoralizing.

If you asked your commander what you were doing there you’d be told you were there to win.

If you dared to ask something as trite as ‘how will we know when we’ve won?’ you’d probably wind up in the stockade! Even if you were legitimately asking ‘Can we go home if we kill ‘em all?’

You couldn’t get a ‘straight answer’.

You’d be fed illogical bullshit like ‘we’re fighting them here so we don’t have to fight them back home.

But the mind rejects that kind of twaddle, how are they going to get ‘here’, swim?

Small wonder these boys are experiencing psychological problems. Is there any way to explain (never mind justify) the kind of trauma they were forced to inflict upon the natives of a country that had never done anything to warrant armed occupation by an overwhelming force?

Short answer, no.

Well, maybe the longer answer, the one that goes ‘we are ruled by idiots’ MIGHT, partially explain what happened…but it will never make it right.

The part that should amaze even the dumbest among you is the ‘it’s on you’ card! Because once we left with the ‘conclusion’ that we have (been) suffering from a major ‘breakdown in leadership’ the question of ‘who should have put a stop to this’ ball starts rolling.

Fingers are pointed left and right, anywhere but where they belong and that is the fucking corrupt media for completely IGNORING IT for the duration as well as those ‘eternally patriotic’ bottom feeders who earn their staggering wealth from the public teat!

So, good citizen, why do you suppose HALF of the returning service men and women are claiming, er, ‘disabilities’ upon returning home to the economic desert that has no need for them?

Worse, good citizen, the line has already been draw in the sand. Regardless of who you vote for this November, it will be FOUR MORE YEARS of the same exact bullshit!

Barrack isn’t going to put a stop to it but neither will Willard (Mitt.)

Some fucking choice, isn’t it?

Welcome to the broken land good citizen, where we all pretend that things will get better…someday.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Hat-tip to you vets out there. Thanks for letting me write this and a word of comfort, you will soon be granted the opportunity to redeem yourself, fight the good fight when your people will need YOU most!


Saturday, May 26, 2012

PRIVATIZED!

Greetings good citizen,

How can our civilization be collapsing while we are still achieving technological breakthroughs like this one ?
“This is, I think, going to be recognized as a significantly historical step forward in space travel,” SpaceX’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said during a news conference. “Hopefully the first of many to come.”

Mr. Musk’s dreams are far grander than delivering cargo to the space station. Although he would like to carry astronauts to the station in a few years, that would still be merely retracing accomplishments that the American and Russian space programs achieved decades ago. “It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary,” Mr. Musk agreed in an interview last month.

To accomplish Mr. Musk’s very long-term goal — sending people to Mars, which he regards as essential for ensuring the survival of humanity — SpaceX must create new technologies that fundamentally change the current equation of space travel, in which most of the vehicle is thrown away each time.

What do you mean it’s not a ‘breakthrough’?

Because you’d be correct, it isn’t.

What does this latest travesty represent? More rape of the public purse at the hands of ‘private industry’.

They are eager to demonstrate the private sector’s new found ability to travel into space but don’t you think for a second that the keys to this particular venture are up for grabs or that YOU may be the next Fred Smith of inter-planetary transport.

Ain’t happening Buckwheat and you know it! You also know why you will never get this opportunity.

What I find hysterical is how the first launch failed…although you can bet they billed NASA for it anyway!

You KNOW this whole ‘private venture’ is strictly ‘cost plus’ (because there’s NOTHING a fucking capitalist hates more than risk! They even hate risk more than they hate competition!

Then there’s the other ‘PS by the way’ snuck in there, the part about going to Mars.

You ARE aware that Mars has no ‘magnetosphere’ (a built in magnetic shield that protects us from the sun’s cosmic energy, don’t you?) Mankind can NEVER live on the surface of Mars, anyone attempting it will die!

But numbnuts wants to send people there! (He also wants to charge them big money to get there, what happens after they’re there isn’t his problem!)

Let us not forget who is dreaming this shit up, it is (once again) ‘stupid conservatives!’ who don’t give a fuck who gets hurt by their consistent failure to think things through.

Stupid is as stupid does (so don’t give stupid your money!)

Simply put, without a protective magnetosphere, there is nothing to hold the atmosphere on Mars and the ‘cosmic wind’ will carry any atmosphere we manage to create away with it!

I watched a theoretical physicist try to build a case for ‘terraforming’ Mars on the Science channel and wouldn’t you know it, he’s a conservative (so his degree is essentially meaningless because ‘facts’ are optional to him!)

Sam Neil hosts a show based on science fact that pretty much explained why all of our planetary neighbors are uninhabitable (without protective environments) he also explained why terraforming Mars would be an ‘exercise in futility’.

Our ‘best bet’ for finding a habitable, earthlike world lies outside our own solar system.

And until we can crack the secret of interstellar travel journeying to our local neighbors is essentially pointless.

Except to find elements that don’t exist on Earth…and to use those elements to create the necessary technological breakthroughs to crack the interstellar travel ‘nut’.

Again, theoretical physicists have ‘ideas’ but they don’t possess the materials necessary to test those ideas with!

And it is possible (if not probable) that some of these materials may exist on the decidedly hostile environments of our nearby neighbors.

And we won’t know unless we go and look.

Which brings us back to the recent and totally unannounced ‘privatization’ of our space program.

People who have even gone as far as to call themselves ‘Space X’. I mean, seriously?

And what do you think is going to happen when how much this little boondoggle costs leaks out?

Will we be told to ‘stick it’ if we don’t like paying up to ten times what it cost NASA to do the same job?

Will those who attack this rape of the public be condemned as Luddites who are standing athwart of ‘progress’?

Um, in an unrelated ‘it is just too much’ moment I was listening to NPR this afternoon (who might as well change their call sign to the more fitting NRR because those assholes are ‘gone’ too!) The host of All things considered was interviewing the single largest private contributor to a ‘superpac’ on the air.

And this MORON went on to explain his ‘motivation’ for pissing away 19 MILLION dollars of his money on the Romney campaign.

He said he wanted somebody in the Oval Office who knew how to manage a business!

Um, I don’t know about YOU good citizen but I don’t want ‘a businessman’ anywhere near my civil liberties!

You see good citizen, my freedom naturally inhibits his ability to profit from my labor.

I don’t have to work 24/7 and I don’t have to buy his crappy products or listen to his idiotic media because I’m free to choose (as limited as that freedom often is.)

Worse, good citizen, this brings us full circle to the ‘purpose of commerce’…and while the Roberts Court has determined that commerce exists to earn profits for its shareOWNERS. What the Roberts Court didn’t specify was that commerce earns those profits AT THE EXPENSE of the nation’s citizens!

And for THAT the court is criminal! They have deliberately distorted the very meaning/purpose of government itself!

What do we do with a ‘criminal court’, good citizen?

We bring ‘em to justice…even if we have to mete out justice ourselves.

Because, good citizen, when the time comes we shall be judge, jury and executioner!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Friday, May 25, 2012

Sustainability

Greetings good citizen,

For the third time this week I feel compelled to take AlterNet to the woodshed for (this time) ‘over-complicating’ what already exists!

Will the existing structures have to change? Yes, but we can take our time! Part of the ‘beauty’ of A Simple Plan is it DOES NOT attempt to ‘remake’ a failed world from scratch, overnight.

It takes what we already have and applies a different set of rules, the processes don’t change right away, nor do they have to.

Maybe the tree huggers will have a problem with that but Rome wasn’t built in a day so converting to ‘sustainable practices’ will probably take a while…(remember, How Long is a Chinaman!)

Worse, good citizen, they start off claiming capitalism is dead then they go right back to advocating unsustainable capitalistic principles and policies!

Ironically, most of these schemes share capitalism's biggest flaw, which is its inherent reliance on growth. As a business owner, it's very hard to say, "We're big enough now. Let's stop here." (Though some, like Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, have done just that.) Most businesses have competitors who, if they're allowed to get bigger than you, will swallow you whole. If you don't stay big enough to compete, you don't survive -- and since the competitors are facing the same imperative, the race can never really end.

As noted, this kind of constant growth simply isn't sustainable on a finite planet. People will always trade -- it's an essential human activity -- but going forward, we need small-scale businesses that can stay happy and healthy without being pushed to grow. Worker ownership doesn't really address this problem, though relocalization, which roots businesses deeply in their own local markets, limiting their reach beyond those boundaries, may provide one natural brake on growth.

For many large and necessary enterprises (utilities; essential centralized manufacturing; big, capital-intensive tech industries; and so on) public ownership may be the only way to ensure that they grow no bigger than they need to be to fulfill their mission. If there are other solutions that will allow us to have complex enterprises minus the growth imperative, they're still lurking out beyond the horizon.

Read my words (because you can’t see my lips!) Share = Good, Own = Bad!

These idiots can’t seem to escape the artificial construct of ‘ownership’, it’s NOT ‘yours’ so get the fuck over yourself, Damn it!

And if you CAN’T abide by the need to ‘share’ what there is, we have a special place for you where you will be ‘free’ to accumulate all your little heart desires. (Not that there’s a lot there to accumulate, they don’t call ‘em the Bad Lands for nothin’.)

Think you’re gonna be the ‘big fish in a little pond?’ Think again, grabbing as much as you can for yourself is another way to secure a one way trip to ‘Me-ville!’

So don’t ‘obsess’ about the ‘competition’ because there WON’T BE ANY!

Commerce will no longer exist to enrich the ignorant sons of bitches that claim to ‘own’ it, commerce will exist to serve all humanity! The number one goal of sustainable society is to ERADICATE POVERTY!

A fact that appears to be MISSING from AlterNet’s, er, ‘proposal’ and something you’re NEVER going to see under capitalism.

I will once again point out that there is NO LACK of things that need doing, that is why A Simple Plan guarantees 100% employment (by literally ‘eliminating’ the ‘employer’!)

How fucking sad is it good citizen that capitalism RELIES on a certain level of poverty to keep the rest of the population ‘motivated’?

If one were to read the article with a critical eye one would see that these so-called ‘architects of the future’ sneer at the idea of ‘localization’ (and then proceed to distort it out of all proportion!)

I again ‘belabor the obvious’ when I point out that resources are not ‘evenly distributed’ around the planet, and that simple fact will, er, ‘dictate’ what a particular locality focuses on.

It is also ‘simplistic’ in the extreme to even allude to the idea of any locality being a ‘one trick pony’.

There will be a lot of ‘duplication’ but almost no ‘competition’ because the purpose of commerce is NOT to ‘compete’ but to ‘serve’!

I believe I have made it abundantly clear that our civilization, such as it is, is extremely mismanaged.

We do all of the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Now that there are more of us we must stop being so wasteful…and we also need to put the brakes on the damn multiplying!

Because it is becoming apparent that Mother Nature has already stepped in to correct this phenomenon.

Which is not to say she didn’t have some ‘help’ from some seriously mis-guided and more than a little deranged, er, ‘elites’.

Almost ALL married couples in Western societies are in ‘fertility programs’!

And their offspring are, er, ‘weaker’ than those conceived ‘naturally’.

But not to worry, after the kill-off kids will go back to having kids younger than they do now…should solve the problem. (Or so the seriously deranged seem to think…)

But that’s another ‘landmine’ our species is tap-dancing on without realizing it…and we can thank the ‘corporate owned media’ for our ignorance.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, May 24, 2012

Fried (as in cooked)

Greetings good citizen,

Did I mention that it’s over? Put a fork in it baby because she’s ‘done’, toast in fact!

We (some time ago) entered the Alice in Wonderland phase of collapse where the residents of the shattered lands begin to realize just how badly broken their cozy little society really was.

Yesterday I was treated to an editorial in the (decidedly conservative) local rag that had me asking myself the same question I regularly ask myself regarding conservatives…

How do you argue with a broken mind?

Understandably, ‘editorials’ are mostly ‘opinion’ and we read them to learn what (and sometimes how) others think.

Well good citizen, this editorial was (chapter and verse) straight from the ‘conservative play book’ which states a single ‘indisputable’ fact, that more tax cuts will solve everything.

Oh and the other ‘conservative canard’ of Tax and Spend Liberals (as opposed to borrow and spend conservatives!) was also there, in case you’d forgotten.

Anyway, numbnuts went on to say our current, er; ‘foundering economy’ was due to excess taxation that went towards entitlement programs…

And, in a brazen display of cognitive dissonance, this ‘retiree’ had the chutzpah to complain about rising healthcare costs forcing ‘rationing’ within the healthcare industry!

Which is to say he demands his healthcare but he doesn’t want to pay for it.

How the hell do you argue with someone so…STUPID?

Let’s back up a moment to a perfect example of ‘cause and effect’…(but the >One Percent don’t want YOU thinking about this:)

For decades after WWII our lifestyle and income improved consistently. It got so you could count on getting a raise in pay EVERY year (if not every six months!)

And people planned accordingly! They began to plan their lives around raises they hadn’t even gotten yet.

And then the 80’s hit and Reagan got in office.

And what did we get? No more raises and runaway inflation!

What caused them? Slashing taxes!

Yup, slashing taxes dried up salary increases (although it didn’t dry up inflation.)

Why did slashing taxes dry up salary increases? Because (thanks to the fucking Republicans) owners were allowed to keep the bulk of what they bilked society for!

Back when the top tax rate was 90+ percent the employer had two choices of what to do with ‘his’ profits, he could pay his help better (literally ‘buying’ their loyalty) or he could hand it over to Uncle Sam, who would gladly find a use for the money.

Yes good citizen, ‘happiness’ is a high marginal tax rate!

As I have pointed out repeatedly, the rich already have everything they want, paying themselves more serves NO USEFUL purpose…but the chiseling greed-heads won’t give YOU and extra nickel because they can hire labor that still lives in a mud hut for pennies a day.

Worse, the very definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and each time (truly) expecting a different outcome…

But then we have these other disturbing stories from the, er, ‘alternative media’.

And you can be sure some will cry ‘foul’ for pointing to this ‘bad apple’ case.

But the evidence continues to build that the people we hire to ‘protect and serve’ are doing neither.

And many suspect the reason for this lie in how these assets are being ‘managed.’

And this brings us back to the ‘crux’ of the situation. It is not a ‘financial crisis’ but a legal one!

Which reminds me (back to the topic of ‘put a fork in it’) the headlines this morning said stocks opened lower due to the ‘lack of a resolution’ in the Greek debt crisis. (Which would be more accurately stated as the ongoing failure to bring the international bankers to justice, but there it is!)

Markets, if you bothered to check, displayed the (still) disturbing phenomenon of spiking upwards that roughly corresponds to the opening of the NYSE worldwide…the only ‘exception’ to this was the NYSE East located in London…

Big surprise, huh?

By now most of you are used to hearing ‘chirping crickets’ around here. Beyond the occasional spammer there has been no ‘dialog’ in the past three years…but that won’t stop me from asking:

What evidence are YOU seeing that things are not ‘as they should be’ in YOUR neck of the woods?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Done Deal

Greetings good citizen,

After two days of ‘irrational exuberance’ markets have resumed ‘cliff diving’ as markets around the globe today are selling off.

Um, How to put this? Should I point out that the ‘collapse’ of our civilization is mostly complete, the only missing element is the (inevitable) descent into barbarism?

Understand; this is not a question of ‘if’ but one of ‘when’.

We have arrived at a point in the ‘cannibalization process’ where the useless courts and contracts will no longer suffice to, er, ‘protect’ one’s investments.

So if you are to, er, ‘secure’ what’s yours, you will be obliged to resort to ‘physical force’.

This will be followed shortly by the resumption of ‘barter in kind’ as ‘faith based’ monetary systems prove, er, ‘unreliable’.

The wise are already scouting around for sources and checking what they are willing to accept ‘in trade’.

Let there be no doubt about it good citizen, the collapse of the increasingly fragile supply lines that bring us live as we have come to know it will be the result of treachery at the highest levels. (Worse, it will be passed off as ‘incompetence’ despite thousands of years of experience to guide us.)

Let’s pause for a moment to look at today’s ‘snapshot’, shall we?

Stocks Fall as E.U. Leaders Gather in Brussels
By DAVID JOLLY 15 minutes ago

European stocks fell almost 2 percent and the euro slipped ahead of another meeting to address the Greek crisis.

Economix: A Primer on the Euro Zone Crisis
Wall Street Follows Europe Down 10:36 AM ET

The main fish market in downtown Athens. Many small businesses in Greece say that they are not prepared to go through a conversion back to the drachma.
Greek Businesses Fear Possible Return to Drachma
By LIZ ALDERMAN

The move would involve complex legal and financial steps and could set back the economy further, many say.

Merkel Defensive Amid Fresh Calls for Bonds
Largest Greek Banks to Receive Financing

DealBook
Facebook Debut Raises Questions on I.P.O. Process
By EVELYN M. RUSLI and MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

Rival bankers and big investors have complained that Morgan Stanley botched the debut by setting the price too high and selling too many shares to the public.

Facebook Stock Falls Again

Is it just me good citizen or does this Greek thing seem to be ‘insoluable’?

How many more ‘summits’ will they have to hold before they arrive at the inevitable conclusion, the situation is ‘unrepairable’ (actually that’s not true, the COULD fix it tomorrow but at the cost of nuking the rest of the Euro-zone.)

They’d have to ‘revalue’ the Euro so much the typical German may never have to work again (in this lifetime.)

Which would be screwy because the bulk of what Germany produces are ‘luxury items’.

A phenomenon capitalism deals with poorly. (Charging a premium for ‘perceived quality’.)

Which, oddly illustrates why money as it is currently used is a colossal failure in both intent and execution.

Just look at the mess created by forty years of ‘unregulated capitalism’!

Which is to point out that the problem is deeper than just the markets, it goes all the way back to the ‘incentive system’ itself.

The very reason we do what we do, which ‘dictates’ how things get done.

I am constantly circling back to the very basic issue of ‘the purpose of commerce’.

Today, we treat commerce as the court granted ability to screw the public out of as much as they can be taken for, regardless of the consequences to society as a whole.

And that basic shift in attitude, from establishing commerce to ‘serve the needs of the local community’ (in a symbiotic manner instead of a parasitic one) is why our justice system needs a serious ‘purging’.
A purge we should begin with our ‘lawmakers’. NOT Replacement, eliminate them and bring them to justice for their crimes!

And that includes ‘lawmakers’ at all levels.

NONE are fit to sit in judgement of these scoundrels save perhaps the people they have wrongly convicted (or allowed to come to grief so they could line their own pockets.)

Naturally, during periods of ‘civil unrest’ the line between justice and murder blurs considerably…and it goes without saying that many of the guilty will flee successfully, leaving unwitting dupes in their very dangerous place.

Corpses mutilated beyond recognition will become a ‘regular occurrence’ once the hunt for the guilty begins…and this too is ‘inevitable’.

While we would all hope the criminals would be satisfied with ‘disappearing’, all to many will try to throw their pursuers off of their trail by leaving a string of corpses behind them.

It won’t be unusual at all to hear that so and so was killed multiple times in multiple locations (usually after being sighted once again!)

But such is the game of ‘retribution’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Capitalism 2.0

Greetings good citizen,

It seems the ‘slaver assholes’ are on a roll because AlterNet is at it again today with another version of Capitalism 2.0!

It is already a given good citizen that we CAN’T trust the same people who fucked up the original version to create its replacement!

Until we implement the Human Anti-exploitation law, no one (except the owners) is safe:
Our economy is dominated by a monoculture business model, Kelly says, driven largely by publicly traded corporations that have built in pressure from Wall Street for maximum short-term earnings. But a healthy, living economy needs biodiversity. We can find this if we begin to look around -- across the U.S. and the world -- where there are businesses designed not for maximum profit, but with a mission-driven social and economic architecture. One of these models is the "social enterprise."

The Social Enterprise Alliance defines these organizations as "businesses whose primary purpose is the common good. They use the methods and disciplines of business and the power of the marketplace to advance their social, environmental and human justice agendas." And one of the defining characteristics is that "The common good is its primary purpose, literally 'baked into' the organization's DNA, and trumping all others."

Here's an example. Remember Working Assets? Starting out as a progressive-minded credit card company in the '80s, it added phone service -- first long-distance in the '90s, then cellular in 2000 -- and now it has created the subsidiary CREDO Mobile. The company operates as a for-profit business, which is privately owned, with most of the employees owning the stock, so it doesn't have to bow to Wall Street pressures. They use their profits to help support causes they believe in -- so far the amount of money donated is $70 million and counting.

Geez Louise, what’s ‘wrong’ with this picture?

Do YOU see ANYTHING ‘new’?

Short answer, no.

Is this another version of the same old ‘make the employees stakeholders’ scam?

Yup.

You see, ‘stock’ is a funny thing and it definitely isn’t what you’re led to believe it is.

An example would be your checking account, ‘do it yourself’ money…with a banker to keep you ‘honest’ (although if you do it right you can ‘kite’ money until the cows come home.)

You give somebody ‘a share’ of stock, it’s not ‘immutable’, it can change, radically, as time goes on.

It seems there is no limit on who much you can ‘dilute’ a given ‘class’ of stock, which is a horse of another color entirely.

So this ‘not bowing to Wall Street’ is BULLSHIT and so is the ‘joint ownership’ ‘pretense’.

After it is all said and done you end up ‘owning’ the dust under the doormat!

Just as there is NOT and WILL NEVER BE enough ‘market share’ for capitalist utopia to exist (it is even ‘metaphysically’ impossible!) there are not enough resources on this or any group of planets for ANYONE to OWN ANY of them!

This much we know to be true, Own = bad, Share = good!

(Which is absolute heresy to a Libbie! Their whole philosophy is based on ‘ownership’, hell, the idiots even equate ‘freedom’ with ownership!)

How fucking stupid can you get?

Don’t answer that because we live in a world chock full of stupid!

It says something (pretty dark) about our society when you contemplate how readily the starkly anti-social precepts of Libertarianism are accepted within our crumbling society.

Let me state once again that there are no Democrats…and we can take that a step further and point out that there aren’t any (old time) Republicans left anymore either.

So what’s left?

Fucking whacko Libertarians! (Pretending to be Democrats)

Don’t tread on me (nutjob) Tea Partiers (who are also Libertarians!)[Pretending to be Republicans.]

This is perhaps the only thing more frightening than the monolithic communists, a single deck stacked with ‘jokers’ which is Libertarianism.

No irony should be lost on the fact that despite the name, Libertarianism has nothing to do with ‘personal liberty’…

Only ‘owners’ can be ‘free’…(yet another stunning contradiction!)

IF YOU are NOT an OWNER then you are advocating YOUR OWN ENSLAVEMENT!

Did I mention we are living in a world chock full of stupid?

Or at least that’s what the corporate owned media would have us all believe.

And it’s time to, er, ‘purge’ that blight from our midst too.

(Boy, when I digress I REALLY go ‘off the reservation!)

Back to the subject at hand.

Capitalism 2.0 is INDENTICAL to the original, worse, if we didn’t have a badly broken justice system then we would/could easily have ALL of their (corporate charters) revoked.

WHY do these boneheads think things will be different ‘next time’?

It ALL (straightening this mess out) starts with A Simple Plan and law number 1, the Human Anti-exploitation Law, which outlaws the ‘employer-employee relationship’. It makes it illegal for anyone (entity) to buy and sell you labor for their benefit!

The ‘answers’ lie within A Simple Plan

Don’t listen to the lying Libertarians, capitalism only benefits the owners…and if you don’t like it, tough!

How many revolutions do we need to fight before we smarten up and stop turning over the keys to the treasury to people intent on fucking the rest of us out of our share?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Monday, May 21, 2012

Dumb and Trusting

Greetings good citizen!

Happy Monday! In a disturbing display of ‘nowhere else to go’ the stock markets (around the globe) are on the rebound once again…for absolutely no discernable reason!

Hard to say what is more disturbing, the fact that the markets are rising irrationally or the fact that this phenomenon has occurred in ‘lockstep’ for years?

Add to this the question of why no one is crying ‘stop thief’ and you have a real puzzler on your hands. (Which SHOULD direct you attention to the strangely mute corporate owned media. But by now this surprises no one.)

(Whenever stocks rise ‘irrationally’ your purchasing power gets diluted…sadly, when stocks fall your purchasing power does NOT increase…it’s a one way street.)

Anyway, I find myself, once again, cast in the role of ‘naysayer’. Alternet (one could suppose) in an attempt to be ‘proactive’ regarding the economy is promoting the ‘capitalist solution’ to the current capitalist created debacle.

Unknown is if this is due to the irrational belief that ‘free markets are self correcting’ of if there is some other twisted and tortured logic in play, let me repeat, there is NO CAPITALIST SOLUTION for our economic woes!

You can no sooner spend your way out of debt than you can drink yourself sober.

Yet we have this tripe to contend with
The New Economy Movement is already energetically involved in an extraordinary range of activities, but it faces large-scale, daunting challenges. The first of these derives from the task it has set for itself—nothing less than changing and democratizing the very essence of the American economic system’s institutional structure.

Even viewed as a long-range goal, the movement obviously confronts the enormous entrenched power of an American political economic system dominated by very large banking and corporate interests—and bolstered by a politics heavily dependent on the financial muscle of elites at the top. (One recent calculation is that (the) 400 individuals at the top now own more wealth than the bottom 160 million.)

[Er, needless to say there are more than 300 million US citizens so who are these 160 million they’re referring to? There are 230 million working aged US citizens, which again, misses the mark by a wide margin…Chilling thought, is the 160 million the total US population LESS the 'surplus population' this so-called 'new economy' has no use for? This leaves the deeply disturbing question, good citizen, of precisely 'who' is 'surplus'?]

A second fundamental challenge derives from the increasingly widespread new economy judgment that economic growth must ultimately be reduced, indeed, even possibly ended if the dangers presented by climate change are to be avoided—and if resource and other environmental limits are to be responsibly dealt with.

So it that it? All we need do is ‘democratize’ the decision-making process and whamo, all will be well?

How much you want to bet when it comes to dividing up the work, management is going to take the standard position: you guys baby sit production, we’ll shuffle the papers (for twice what they pay you!)

Does anybody else notice a certain ‘sameness’ about this arrangement? What is ‘democratization’ supposed to ‘solve’ precisely?

It is suppose to provide workers with a ‘stake’ in the company, an incentive to do more and to do it better.

To lift them above the ‘Cog in the machine’ feeling perpetuated by the management attitude ‘You could all be replaced by trained monkeys’.

What does the worker get out of this ‘democratization’?

NOTHING!

You get a ‘bonus’ instead of a raise and you get more of your heath insurance expense dumped on you, (by a company making billions!) and then you get ‘downsized’ the moment they decide to sell your business group.

WTF!

Oh, and you think they are going to let YOU ‘vote’ on issues like hiking your own health insurance or cutting your vacation/sick time?

Never happen!

So what are these turkeys preaching besides the old conservative canard of ‘patience asshole, patience’.

The problem with being ‘too patient’ is you wind up dead before anything gets done…if ever.

And that’s part of the problem we’re facing right now.

People see the global financial system is on the rocks and they get hopeful, thinking ‘they’ll have to fix things now’ (and assholes like Alternet aren’t helping any!)

When in fact those who counsel ‘patience’ like things just the way they are! They’ll make you wait forever if you’re dumb enough!

And sadly, there ain’t a lick of difference between dumb and trusting…

Just because they have proven they don’t know what they’re doing (well actually they DO know what they’re doing, the problem is they don’t give a shit!) doesn’t mean they are suddenly going to start listening to you!

There is no ‘capitalist’ fix for the situation we’re caught up in. ‘Broken’ goes beyond the financial piece of the puzzle all the way to the justice piece.

If we don’t fix the justice system our species is screwed, plain as that.

A Simple Plan accomplishes this goal in a way EVERYBODY can understand (although, admittedly, not in a way EVERYBODY is going to like!) [The caveat being if you don’t like A Simple Plan then YOU are a CRIMINAL.] How about them apples?

Bad news boys and girls, this ain’t Heaven, we can’t all have it the way we wants it, all of the time.

If we can just get past our personal desires this place doesn’t have to be a notch above hell either…

The decision, as always, is yours.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Sunday, May 20, 2012

Police State

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Sunday good citizen! Most Some of you have been to commune with ‘Spirit in the sky’ and don’t want anyone ‘harshing your mellow’ while your fresh from the pew…but for most of us those stirrings of ‘brotherly love’ we get from communing with God never make it out of the church’s parking lot.

But hey, not to worry, Big Brother’s got your back!

Why do I say that? You’d be hard-pressed to find someone more religious than a conservative!
On last night's Real Time, Bill Maher interviewed Dan Rather about his thoughts on opinion journalism ("I think it has its place" but "it's not my kind of journalism"), Rather's Bush-going-AWOL story, which famously got him fired, and media consolidation. His thoughts on that:

Whether you're a conservative or a liberal or a progressive, a Democrat or a Republican, everybody can be and should be concerned about this: the constant consolidation of media, particularly national distribution of media, with a few companies -- no more than six, my count is four -- now control more than 80 percent of the true national distribution of news. These large corporations, they have things they need from the power structure in Washington, whether it's Republican or Democrat, and of course the people in Washington have things they want the news to be reported. To put it bluntly, very big business is in bed with very big government in Washington, and has more to do with what the average person sees, hears, and reads than most people know.

And what does the Conservo-fascist do with political power?

Have a gander:
I've always thought of the Military Industrial Complex as welfare for white guys. This would back up that claim:

Among other unasked for changes, the bill keeps aging aircraft and ships the military wants to phase out, keeps the Army and Marines at larger force levels and orders construction of missile defenses.

They don't want it, they don't need it, but the Republican donors want the profits and their conservative base voters want the very well paying, extremely high benefits jobs.

They like to say they hate Big Government, but that's a lie. They love it. It's just that they want to funnel the money to their own constituencies --- and they want to build a police state that will keep everyone else in line in case they decide to do something about it.

And you thought I was paranoid? Not that they don’t have damn good reason to be, er, ‘suspicious.’

In a ‘free and democratic’ society, what could be the motivation of people ardently attempting to strangle democracy in its sleep?

Worse, good citizen…what kind of democracy is it that only asks you to chose someone who will decide in your name WITHOUT EVER CONSULTING YOU?

Because in my book that is NOT ‘democracy’, it’s FRAUD!

BY DEFINITION ‘democracy’ is you having your say DIRECTLY on the issue at hand.

This process that removes you completely from the entire decision-making process is both treachery AND fraud!

And you can see that this ‘process’ has been ‘duplicated’ right down the line.

So you CAN’T use the process to fix the process!

(Which has created the current pickle of the system being broken and there’s no way to fix it (from the outside and no will to fix it on the inside!))

So we ‘cast our votes’ (as we will in a couple of months) then they hand pick the winners, (completely disregarding your vote,) then they go ahead and do what they want without regard for the consequences!

Because to defy them now is to invite, whether you realize it or not, getting ‘disappeared’.

How ironic is it that it was the communists that made this a ‘common occurance’…but understand, this didn’t start until AFTER the ‘counter-revolution’ had succeeded.

Just as the ‘trade doors’ to China remained closed UNTIL the ‘counter-revolution’ and the usurpers had cemented their power! THEN they made overtures to the West to join the ‘global community’.

And who accepted? Richard Nixon. No matter where you look over the past forty years there's a conservo-fascist behind every big move!

Now we have a shattered global economy (capitalism was NEVER intended to be a ‘universal’ commerce system because of its ‘cannibalistic qualities’ and it’s over reliance on an extremely limited amount of ‘market share’.) threatening to leave a huge ‘void’ that much of the human race will fall into.

And the psychopath running the whole thing doesn’t care! Worse, he believes it is the ‘natural order’ of things.

Pushing humanity into its own cesspool is no more than we deserve, especially for ‘permitting’ something as cruel as capitalism to flourish!

And that’s a pretty damning indictment regardless of how you look at it.

It’s the same sad story, good citizen. The few will have to claw our way back from the brink to save the rest of us.

And among those saved will be the seeds of repeat episode.

Without the proper social safeguards, those seeds will contaminate society with a fresh crop of blind greed-heads, who will promptly destroy whatever they get their hands on.

Look at the job in front of us now and think for a moment; couldn’t all of this have been avoided if only we had the proper safeguards in place?

Look no further than A Simple Plan, the only revolutionary formula designed to defeat the ‘counter-revolution’ from the beginning!

With no money (hard currency) corruption is impossible and political power will remain permanently beyond the reach of the ‘self-serving’.

To even suggest removing political power from the hands of the people is an exile offense under the human anti-exploitation law!

Which is to point out that November is just the beginning of a long, slippery slope we need to claw our way back to the top of.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Saturday, May 19, 2012

Educated

Greetings good citizen,

More basic than the state of our economy is the state of academic accomplishment in our (rapidly crumbling) society.

Hey, it’s not new and it’s not hidden. You can view ads on TV that show the US 17th in math and 25th in Science…(worldwide standing)

And what’s the ‘major malfunction’ here?

The official reason is not enough ‘qualified teachers’!

Why do you suppose that is, good citizen?

Could it be the same reason nobody in the US studies engineering. They’re all studying to be lawyers or stockbrokers…with a smattering of accountants trying to get a leg up into the financial sector…

How sad is it good citizen that none of those jobs ‘go begging’? Sadder still is the meat-grinder that passes for the path to partnership in law firms NOT OWNED by YOUR family.

This is what capitalism and the, er, ‘contest’ to line your own pockets with as much as you can, as quickly as possible results in.

You end up with more lawyers than the system can use and not enough teachers.

Yet nobody faults this basic flaw of capitalism, especially those seeking the best legal representation ‘money can buy’.

[I digress to point out that everybody knows, in corrupt times like these that ‘legal talent’ is virtually indistinguishable from ‘political connectedness’. The more ‘grease’ you have, the higher the likelihood of a judgement being in YOUR favor…]

So what of our crumbling educational system that the anti-tax conservatives seem bent on choking to death?

They DON’T give a fuck; they’ll send THEIR kids to ‘private school’.

And finally: critical thinking is the birthright of every American. We should not aspire to a feudal society where only the elites are taught to think independently, evaluate evidence, weigh complex factors, and make informed decisions. But it will become one -- in just a generation or two -- if we stop making this the foundational competence delivered by our educational system. A democracy in which a majority of people are no longer capable of basic critical thinking skills cannot remain a democracy very long.

Our educational system is a product of our deepest values. And the battles we're having now are, very directly, battles over what we believe is possible in America, and what kind of country we want to be 20 years from now. The conservatives are not wrong: for 150 years, the schools have been the leading promoter and disseminator of progressive values. They are now doing their best to dismantle that system, and replace it with one that produces followers, subjects and serfs.

What is education for? We won't even be a contender in this fight until we're committed to our own clear, coherent, values-based answer to that question. How we answer it will shape the country's future.

Our schools system already SUCKS (thanks to deeply mis-guided motivations of capitalism…which, ironically isn’t taught ‘in-depth’ in ANY school system!)

Then there is the other ‘cornerstone’ of a ‘free society’. A society incapable of making decisions for itself is doomed to follow the decisions of the self-interested, regardless of the consequences or competence.

Worse, we already know that conservative ideology is base on belief that has no basis in fact, so their decision-making capability is, by default, disastrous!

Look at the two ‘wars of choice’ conservatives have spent trillions on and still can’t define what ‘victory’ looks like!

Not to put too fine a point on it but a conservative decision has become synonymous with being a ‘wrong’ decision.

How do you like your stacked conservative deck in November’s elections now?

The more we re-visit this topic (November Elections) the more irksome it becomes.

IF we’re ‘lucky’ they won’t happen…although I use the term ‘lucky’ in the broadest possible context.

If elections DON’T HAPPEN this November it will likely be because we are locked in battle to decide the future of Western Civilization, a battle we can’t afford to lose.

But I digress, let us return to the often-overlooked (despite constant media attention) education system.

Where, once again, we see conservative ‘tax relief’ efforts gutting the funding from public education.

As one might expect, the bone-headed conservative position is that our kids are ‘too stupid’, which is why they test so poorly…as opposed to the real reason our schools suck, because of the warped values of the capitalist system.

A system where people who ‘manipulate’ money are paid more than the people who actually produce a product or provide a service (like education or healthcare…)

Not that our healthcare system doesn’t cost us dearly…but again, thanks to the perverted values of capitalism, a bulk of the cost goes to paying investors!

The ‘incentive’ to become a teacher doesn’t exist (just as the incentive to become a doctor in today’s litigious society is decidedly negative!)

Understand, teachers these days make a pretty darn good paycheck as opposed to what they’d get in the private sector as a ‘grunt’…but the private sector doesn’t have a ‘continuing Ed’ requirement to keep your education credentials current.

Worse, the private sector has all but disappeared.

And the public sector is seriously under-funded as a result.

BUT, if your scholastic record is, er, ‘strong’, why wouldn’t you take a shot at becoming a lawyer or a banker? (Although those jobs aren’t going begging anymore…)

And with student loans becoming increasingly toxic, more students will be ‘forced’ into the still highly competitive market for educators.

As the tax pool shrinks to nothing, educators jobs will compete with police and fire jobs on the local budget.

How will you kids learn if the library is only open a couple of hours a week, if at all?

The battle lines were drawn long ago, good citizen, why are you still reluctant to fight?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Friday, May 18, 2012

Snapshot

Greetings good citizen,

There’s nothing better than ending the week with a snapshot of the ‘Funny Farm’!

For your review, straight from the business section of today’s NY Times:

Reticent Rich: Preferred Style in Silicon Valley
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

At Facebook, ground zero for the nouveau tech riche in Silicon Valley, peer pressure dictates that consumption be kept on the down low.

DealBook: Facebook Raises $16 Billion in I.P.O.
Video: Silicon Valley's Lust for High-End Bikes
[Let’s not forget their ‘passion’ for $5,000 footwear!]

DealBook
Long Odds on a Big Facebook Payday
By NATHANIEL POPPER 29 minutes ago

If history offers any lesson, average investors may find they face steep odds if they hope to make big money in a much-hyped stock like Facebook.

Interactive How Will the Stock Fare?

[This is a stunning example of the ‘dearth of investment opportunities’ out there, good citizen. Once again, if this is ‘as good as it gets’, the rest of us are in a heap of trouble!]

Other Business News
News Analysis
A Greek Exit? Euro Zone May Be Ready
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Years of foot-dragging and brinkmanship have prepared the currency union for life without Greece.
[WTF! Are they now trying to say that this was ‘the plan’ all along? What will become of the rest of the ‘PIIGS’? (Without Greece will the acronym 'pigs' still apply?)]

Euro Watch
Markets on Edge After Downgrades in Europe
By PAUL GEITNER 7:27 AM ET

Fresh credit rating downgrades affected Greece and Spain as the Group of Eight leaders gathered.
[Yet another ‘no shit, Sherlock!’ moment]

New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition seeks provide aid to farmers like these in Ethiopia.

White House Enlists 45 Companies to Invest in Food Production for the World’s Poor
By STEPHANIE STROM

President Obama and four African leaders will introduce the group of companies, the Alliance for Food and Nutrition Security, on Friday at a forum on food security and agriculture.

[Um, tucked quietly between tales of economic mayhem is this deeply troubling item that foretells of the coming famine, likely brought on by ‘Frankenfood’]

Workers at a solar panel factory in Huaibei, in Anhui province. A Chinese official called the American move “really dangerous.”

U.S. Slaps High Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels
By KEITH BRADSHER and DIANE CARDWELL

The United States Commerce Department concluded that Chinese producers had “dumped” their products on the American market.
[Okay, how does Chong think the denizens of the ‘economic desert’ are going to react to a technology DEVELOPED HERE but being made somewhere else? Are we supposed to be ‘jumping for joy’ that Chinese workers can make them (more profitably) than US workers can? NO! US workers are going to be PISSED because we could (and should) have made them HERE (with native materials) and FUCK the weasel ‘owners’ for sending the technology to China in the fucking first place! Chong has the wrong idea about just how 'dangerous’ a move this is. It is not dangerous to China, it is dangerous for the capitalist!]


‘Princelings’ in China Use Family Ties to Gain Riches
By DAVID BARBOZA and SHARON LaFRANIERE

The authorities are eager to paint the fallen official Bo Xilai, whose family has a substantial fortune, as a rogue operator. But other officials’ relatives have also amassed vast wealth.
[I suspect it is safe to say that China is no longer a ‘communist’ country, considering the ‘new royalty’ that has, er, usurped the revolution.] (See why I don’t like Commies?)
Graphic: Power and Profit in China’s Economic Boom


Hewlett-Packard to Cut 30,000 Jobs
By QUENTIN HARDY

The tech giant will refocus on product development and sales, executives say, and operations in China will most likely be spared.

[Any questions?]

Bribery Case at Wal-Mart May Widen
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

The scope of an investigation into foreign bribery issues seemed to have widened at the retailer, which reported higher-than-expected first-quarter earnings.

That concludes this week’s ‘snapshot’.

Did I neglect to confirm that the destruction of our civilization is proceeding unabated?

Which, disturbingly, confirms my ‘kill-off via cascading systemic collapse’ theory.

Left to our imaginations is what will replace our failed attempt at a ‘benign republic’.

If history is any indication, the benign republic is usually replaced by crushing feudalism, a ruthless hereditary dictatorship.

The choice regarding what comes next is, of course, yours.

If you refuse to fight are you prepared to accept what will surely come next?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, May 17, 2012

Elected?

Greetings good citizen,

Almost as disturbing as yesterday’s post about the ‘conservative tri-fecta’ assualt on the White House is today’s story expressing ‘guarded optimism that the party of ‘1 in 5’ can wrest control from the Democrats if THEY DON’T SCARE TOO MANY INDEPENDENTS!

For Senate Republicans, 2012 is starting a lot like 2010.

They have a shot at taking control away from Democrats as long as insurgent conservatives who are defeating the party's more establishment candidates in primaries don't frighten too many independent voters like they did two years ago.

Deb Fischer, a little-known state senator, became the latest unexpected Senate GOP nominee Tuesday, rallying late to upset the favored — and better funded — choices of both the party's mainstream and tea party establishments: Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning and state Treasurer Don Stenberg.

Her victory occurred just a week after tea party and other conservative groups embraced Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who scored an arguably bigger upset — knocking off six-term Sen. Richard Lugar, the Senate's longest-serving Republican.

USA today prints some pretty outrageous stuff and this is just another example of how far ‘off the rails’ the predominantly conservative media has become.

Worse, it is this very same media that tells us who won the election.

So the answer to ‘gridlock’ in Washington is more ‘Tea Partiers’, eh?

How fucked up is it good citizen that the only 30,000 member strong ‘Tea Party movement’ is (well) financed by the > One Percent?

Just who are the ‘rank and file’ members of the Tea Party movement? Why they are the denizens of the dementia unit at the local nursing home!

And yet the corporate owned media has the audacity to claim this is the wind beneath the Tea Party’s wings…people who forget what the inside of a voting booth looks like!

Worse, the last person they REMEMBER voting for is Ike. (One of the last ‘true’ Republicans.)

Which only belabors the main point, Tea Partiers are OLD (and I’m no spring chicken myself!) hardly ‘representative’ of the general public but isn’t that just how the deep pocketed like it?

Yes, good citizen, just how much bullshit will you sit still for while the corporate owned media spoon-feeds it to you?

Because we’re going to be fed shovelfuls of it between now and November, then we’ll be expected to believe it happened again.

Then it’s four more years of waiting for another…chance.

When the truth is we don’t stand a chance. The cheaters have stolen the entire process and we have only one way to deal with it and this is to reject what can politely be called ‘the chute’.

Understand we’ve gotten where we are today via ‘non-participation’ so merely ‘ignoring’ the voting booth will do us no good.

We’ve got to ‘reject’ the entire process, vigorously!

Which, of course, assumes we even get that far. Last election I predicted we wouldn’t make it that far and was proven wrong…but what the hell, I never said I was psychic.

THIS time we have even less reason to subject ourselves to ‘more of the same’ but we can already see that is all there is going to be on the, er, ‘menu’.

Greece, Italy and France have all, er, ‘rejected’ austerity but we haven’t seen any lasting results. The Greeks can’t form a government and the Italians can't arrive at a consensus and the new French Prime Minister has already started ‘back-pedaling’ on some of his campaign promises…

Which is also what happened when Obama took office.

Worse, letting Obama be re-elected sends exactly the wrong message to Wall Street (who has contributed mightily to Obama’s re-election campaign…)

So, do YOU see an ‘alternative’ here to more of the same?

No…because you aren’t supposed to.

THAT is the message the > One Percent is sending to US!

So HOW do we reject this blind chute that robs us of our choices?

Do we petition THEIR courts?

Like the faux America United ploy, who do we get to run against such a ‘stacked deck’?

Who would be, er, ‘selfless’ enough to go and stand up against a brick wall of bought and paid for opposition?

Because YOU KNOW there isn’t a chance in hell of our man occupying the White House for longer than a few months before the ‘money power’ paid to have him (and his family) assassinated.

Nope, good citizen, the ‘old way’ of doing things is gone for good!

Which is both good news and bad news.

Good because the old way was corrupt beyond belief, bad because the current supporters of the old way want to go back to the ancient way of doing things, which will really suck!

Think they are ‘insufferable’ now…just wait until we HAVE TO address them as Your Lordship or Sir!

Then we’ll all have to ask ourselves if it isn’t better to die on our feet rather than live on our knees…(and we all know ‘feet’ wins, every time!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Alternatives

Greetings good citizen,

All of those ‘bargains’ lying around on the exchange floor were too much to resist for the typical NYSE trader…even though they are sinking like stones (again) as I write this.

Not that it matters from a long-term point of view.

It won’t be long before stock markets around the world collapse completely under their, er, ‘highly subjective’ valuations (that have zero basis in fact.)

Which brings us to another ‘weather balloon’ that suffered ‘failure to launch’ syndrome:
I haven't written much at all about the effort to create a new political party called 'Americans Elect.' It seemed so stupid that it didn't merit my attention. My only interest in it was to see who they nominated for president because it could potentially change the outcome of the general election in November. But every time I checked on their progress I discovered that no one was paying any attention to them and they were failing to nominate anyone at all. Now they've basically given up on getting a 'bipartisan' ticket nominated according to their bylaws. No one showed up to vote, so no one can be nominated.

They've already secured a ballot line in most states, so there is a powerful incentive to change the rules and pick some ticket, if only to vindicate the tens of millions of dollars these hedge fund managers invested in the effort. I enjoyed this comment on the meaning of their failure:

“The worst thing would be for people to look at a failure to field a candidate and conclude that there is no appetite for this kind of change, which would be just completely wrong,” argues Mark McKinnon, former chief strategist for the Bush campaign, a fellow Daily Beast columnist, and a member of the Americans Elect advisory board. “I think part of the issue is that politics have become so ugly that it is simply difficult to attract good people to participate,” McKinnon adds. “And who can blame them?”

Um, you can read the rest of the article but what is conspicuously missing from this article is the observation that all THREE efforts to take the White House were being ‘orchestrated’ by CONSERVATIVES…

And THAT’S NEWS!

The, er, ‘incumbent’ has proven repeatedly that he IS a conservative ‘running as’ a Democrat. Despite the clownish sideshow of endless public debates, Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney was the best/most credible candidate the Republican’s could come up with.

Which leaves us this, er, ‘backup plan’ of fielding some ‘Captain of Industry’ as a ‘third party alternative’ to ballot box stuffing conservative or nothing agenda we are being subjected to whether we like it or not.

Because that’s what it ALL comes down to, good citizen. This November you choice will boil down to the ‘conservative you know vs. the conservative you don’t…and there ain’t a nickel’s difference between the two of ‘em (cuz they both take their marching orders from the same people so it don’t matter ‘who’ wins, the rest of us lose!)

It could be fun to speculate just who the ‘hedgies’ would, er, ‘tempt’ to toss their hat in the ring!

I mean, what do you think of Jamie Dimon’s chances now?

Um, how about Jeff Immelt or Lloyd Blankfein?

More interesting (considering The Donald and NY’s Mayor Mr. Bloomberg have both floated test balloons that crashed and burned) is just who would be their ‘ideal mainstream candidate’ who ISN’T a member of the > One Percent…

And the answer is (cue chirping crickets) NOBODY!

Despite my total availability it should sadden you all to note I have not been approached about a possible run (not that I would.)

Which is to point out that they aren’t looking very, er, ‘diligently’ for…‘elect-able candidates’.

Their ‘failure’ to field speaks volumes about what this agenda driven crowd would find ‘acceptable’ in a candidate.

First and foremost he or she would need to an expert ‘fence rider’. Publicly railing against the > One Percent while rolling over and playing dead when it came to extending the Bush Tax cuts.

They’ll talk a ‘good game’ about financial reform but be totally unable to produce any.

Which is exactly what we’ll get from Mitt…and what we’ve come to expect from his, er, what do you call this sympatico duo? Opponent isn’t right, um, ‘placeholder’ seems to be as good as I can come up with, although Uncle Tom fits BOTH of them to a T!

Then there is the perceived ‘need’ for a ‘new and more responsive’ political party…because it has become obvious that the ‘money power’ destroyed the old opponent.

Like W’s assertion that this whole thing would be easier if HE were a dictator, the conservo-monkeys don’t really want any ‘political opposition’.

Ideally, their political opposition would make their proposals look sane and reasonable…

Too bad the Tea Party is a grassroots member of the decidedly whacko conservative brand!

Because the Tea Partiers would be the ‘perfect foil’ for the conservo-loonies!

What’s frightening is how THE ENTIRE PROCESS has been ‘commandeered’ by right-wing conservatives…including the, er, ‘search’ for a replacement for the Democrats…

Um, in case you haven’t figured this out for yourself yet, we are in a heap of trouble, good citizen!

Because the guy who left the building just before Elvis? That guy was ‘reason and empathy’.

If we don’t find him before the conservatives murder him, it’s game over…

And not just here in the USA, the puppet government thing is now global…so it’s a good thing that A Simple Plan is designed to be ‘universal’ as well!

When I say ‘clean sweep’, I mean all around!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Prophecy

Greetings good citizen,

The opening bell just sounded but it’s too early to see where the markets are going…although if the ‘rest of the world’ is any indication, our capitalist overlords have another day of bloodshed on their hands.

But who knows, it seems for some (totally illogical) reason; yesterday’s pigs morph into today’s gems!

How sad is it good citizen that the ‘rationale’ behind purchasing stocks has boiled down to, ‘because they’re there’?

But it leads us right up to the edge of the world of ‘funny money’. The ‘presto-chango' required for a nation to abandon one currency and to then issue their own…er, ‘fiat’ currency.

Many of you have probably already heard about Mr. Krugman’s self-fulfilling prophecy by now but here it is for those of you who like under a rock (or anywhere inside the US propaganda zone…)

Below is his post in its entirety.

Some of us have been talking it over, and here’s what we think the end game looks like:

1. Greek euro exit, very possibly next month.

2. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany.

3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals.

3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing.

4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy — basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or:

4b. End of the euro.

And we’re talking about months, not years, for this to play out

Switch mental gears here as we explore the task of putting your own currency out there on the ‘global currency market’.

Understand that nobody doubts that the new currency will be ‘named’ what the old currency was called, at least in Greece’s case, the Drachma will be ‘resurrected’.

The ‘trouble’ comes in at where this ‘new’ currency will be valued relative to the (mostly worthless) already existing currencies.

Get this bad boy wrong and you have instant Zimbabwe on your hands!

IF those who dictate what our currency is worth are ‘too generous’ to Greece there will be a mad scramble to abandon the Euro…so we can be assured that the new Drachma will not receive ‘favorable treatment’.

Now it all depends on (because we’ve got a ‘chickens and eggs situation on our hands here) what they do AFTER a price is ‘set’.

They won’t be able to print Drachma number one without first specifying how many they intend to issue at that price and what will be used to, er, ‘back that claim up’.

Which is to say the market makers won’t issue a ‘value’ for the new Drachma until they are given an idea how many of them there will be.

Naturally, the Greeks would want to, er, ‘undermine’ the Euro, the old Drachma was like the Italian Lira in that respect…which mimicked the Japanese Yen.

One yen is worth roughly one US cent (which was responsible for turning Japan into an exporting dynamo! So how sad is it that it also marks the beginning of the long slippery slope of ‘financial manipulation’ that ultimately destroyed the global economy?)

Like the ‘cesspool’ we live in? Thank a fucking banker!

Back to our ‘exploration’…

AFTER a ‘value’ is set, the Greeks will ‘revalue’ as quickly as possible.

This is where the ‘tug of war’ begins. It is also kind of how they got into this trouble in the first place.

How much money there actually is and how much money they SAY they have will soon turn into a matter of ‘conjecture’ and all of a sudden the global banking system will find itself ‘awash’ in Greek debt instruments.

Hell, it worked the first time and NOTHING has been fixed…

And this time it’s ‘shame on me’! (Which is to opine we should be ‘smart enough’ not to get taken twice…but what kind of world would it be if you couldn’t trust anyone?)

A mighty dysfunctional one good citizen…and no place you’d want to raise a family in.

In a world where nobody can trust anybody we have the beginnings of a global systemic collapse, and we have our financial sector to thank for it!

Naturally, we can only skim the surface of this issue in a few paragraphs but the point is quite clear.

If we can’t trust the people who handle our money then we are well and truly…

Don’t you agree?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Um, PS: A Simple Plan ‘stabilizes’ money by re-purposing it to its ONE useful social function, that of a regulator.

Under A Simple plan there is NO currency, only money of account that is totally non-transferable and therefore, non-negotiable.

Thus does the ‘cheaper there’ not exist, just as it is a ‘fiction’ today.

Um, you have to understand the ‘true nature’ of money to comprehend the above statements which refer to the frauds you are regularly victims of.

I’m unsure how helpful you would find the explanation of a Duck remaining a duck, a Pig remaining a pig and a Dollar remaining a dollar no matter where you were!


Monday, May 14, 2012

Demented

Greetings good citizen,

I am, er, ‘naturally attracted’ to articles with the words ‘demented capitalism’ in their titles…but when those articles turn to equally as mindless communism for contrast I sort of choke on my corn flakes…

But first a quick blurb about today’s financial markets…

Since nothing has been done to improve the situation it should shock no one that ‘the markets’ are globally hemorrhaging money.

The good news is it’s all ‘funny money’, the bad news is these idiots tied their funny money to our, er, ‘operating funds’, confusing the signals and fucking up production schedules.

This will (naturally) lead to a systemic collapse that the boneheads actually desire.

The mission objective now is to ‘muddy the waters’ so hopelessly that the worst perpetrators will walk away unmolested. (If they are frugal enough to flee into the third world and assume the native lifestyle…which ain’t gonna happen because most of these asshats are too full of themselves to save their own lives.)

Okay, when my digressing starts to digress it’s time to return to the subject at hand
The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire. This struggle between belief systems was not lost on Marx. “The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx” is a series of observations derived from Marx’s reading of works by [European] historians and anthropologists. He took notes about the traditions, practices, social structure, economic systems and beliefs of numerous indigenous cultures targeted for destruction. Marx noted arcane details about the formation of Native American society, but also that “lands [were] owned by the tribes in common, while tenement-houses [were] owned jointly by their occupants.” He wrote of the Aztecs, “Commune tenure of lands; Life in large households composed of a number of related families.” He went on, “… reasons for believing they practiced communism in living in the household.” Native Americans, especially the Iroquois, provided the governing model for the union of the American colonies, and also proved vital to Marx and Engel’s vision of communism.

How curious is it good citizen that the average communist will readily attack capitalism but fails to see how closely aligned communism is to capitalism.

And I’m sure the columnist would vehemently deny any affiliation with the communist party, preferring to tone it down by saying he’s ‘sympathetic’ to communism.

Worse is how people ‘automatically assume’ that if you are not a capitalist then you are, by default, communist.

And somehow anarchists got ‘lumped in’ with communists because the capitalist labeled both ideologies ‘socialist’.

But the capitalist did the anarchists another ‘favor’; they got their propagandists to associate the word anarchy with ‘chaos’…

But this is not a lesson in politics…or semantics for that matter.

If there is a ‘useful takeaway’ in this article it is the emphasis the media has placed on playing up ‘pro-capitalism’ while literally assassinating anything that opposes its continued reign.

But even that, er, ‘understates’ the scope of the situation. All of our institutions ‘glorify’ capitalism and the few it benefits to the detriment of society itself.

You should really shun anyone who attacks socialism because society itself is a decidedly ‘socialist’ organization, regardless of whose rules you’re playing by.

More importantly, everything ‘good’ in our society is the product of ‘socialism’ so when an (obviously) ‘empty-headed’ conservative ‘attacks’ his opponent for being ‘socialist’, he is actually complimenting them!

You see, the ‘more for me’ (rugged individualist) capitalist doesn’t want to contribute to ‘the public good’.

He made his heap (by legitimately screwing) others and believes others should do likewise.

What’s truly disturbing is the people who idolize this variety of anti-social behavior.

Our capitalist cheerleading squad would have you believe that most of us aspire to the notion of being ‘king of the hill’ someday…to the point where capitalism ‘promises us’ our own private hill to be king of.

But if you don’t achieve that ‘ideal’ then it’s YOUR fault, you didn’t have ‘the right stuff’!

How ironic is it that the ‘right stuff’ is largely the kind of thing that will land you behind bars if your caught doing it!

Thus are the ‘heroes’ of our civilization mostly heartless criminals…with unscrupulous PR behind them, cleaning up/whitewashing their reputations.

You would be correct in your gut instinct that most people neither ‘envy’ nor idolize the, er, ‘successful’ (they are [sadly] too busy making someone else rich to be overly concerned.)

Perhaps more ironic is how YOUR meager existence is the foundation of some billionaires fortune!

Why most people never realize that it is THEIR labor that makes the rich man rich is ‘cognitive dissonance’ taken to the nth degree!

Wake up stupid, there is a better way!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner