Hand Selected and Spoon Fed

Greetings good citizen,

Um, as disturbing as it is, I often complain about the STIFFS who ‘write for a paycheck’. Although half of the time I sympathize with them, they are no different than any other ‘paycheck hostage’.

I don’t care if your way is easier, I’m paying you to do it MY WAY!

And other nonsense we ‘non-stakeholders’ regularly put up with.

But…and some things are ‘unforgivable’, sometimes you just have to wonder how these fuckers sleep at night because NOT ONE ‘mainstream media outlet’ reported this story

Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein said Wednesday police handcuffed her to a chair during her eight-hour imprisonment following her arrest outside the second presidential debate.

“For most of the time it was just [running mate] Cheri Honkala and myself,” Stein told Democracy Now anchor Amy Goodman. “Yet they felt the need to keep us in tight plastic restraints tightly secured to metal chairs.”

Stein and Honkala were arrested Tuesday while sitting in the street to protest their exclusion from this year’s presidential debates between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. They tried to enter the debate hall at the host site, Hofstra University, but were denied access because they lacked the necessary credentials

Raw Story (http://s.tt/1qjFK)

[Deep Sigh…]

Well good citizen, is this something you’d expect to find in the country you were raised to believe in freedom and equality…or is this the kind of BULLSHIT you’d expect to find in some tin pot DICTATORSHIP?

We aren’t talking some obscure demonstrators from OWS, we’re talking actual, on the ballot in all fifty states, presidential candidates!

What are the FUCKING >One Percent trying to hide (besides an alternative to two sides of the same coin?)

Um, should we be ‘surprised’ by this? Dennis Kucinich wasn’t invited to the presidential debates last time and despite some squawking from the alternative press, nothing was done about that either.

Which is to say it’s probably time for another piece on ‘fatal myopia’.

What is the sound of one hand clapping? If you want to know then all you have to do is look at the presidential race through the eyes of the corporate owned media…

Two guys who both answer to the same masters.

It has occurred to me that since Obama has become identified as a ‘do nothing’ president, The >One Percent are offering up the Romney-Ryan show to justify his second term.

Not that I’m voting for the worthless…(fill in your own blank.)

How sad is it that until this article I didn’t even know who the Greenies were running. (Never mind that they had been taken hostage by the >One Percent!)

While I am all for sustainability, my ‘greenness’ is tempered by practicality. I’m unwilling to sacrifice large numbers of humans on the alter of some ‘unachievable balance’ and carrying capacity estimates that are guesses at best.

Perhaps my biggest, er, ‘issue’ with the greens is their lack of awareness that economics is deeply tied to politics and their ‘values’ are predominantly capitalist.

I don’t know who it pisses off when I exclaim that predatory capitalism (and ALL Capitalism is predatory) must go, but that’s my position and I’m sticking with it.

The planet isn’t big enough for one capitalist and the rest of us.

Which is to express my support for the ‘Gone Galt’ project of transplanting this planets, er, assholes um, I mean ‘good people’/capitalists to their very own colony on the Moon!

Once there they can sort out who will do the heavy lifting for them…it won’t be our problem anymore.

And we MUST send them all, no matter how vigorously they protest that we NEED them to ‘take care of us’…

Since they are the self professed ‘best and brightest’ of us all they should easily overcome the, er, ‘oxygen deficit’ that will occur when we don’t send along any additional supplies.

This will also solve the problem of feeding them once they’re there too.

But let us not get too wrapped up in the details. They have long insisted they are better than the rest of us, maybe it’s time we put that claim to the test!

It was disturbing enough that the moderators basically ignored the one candidate who wasn’t a stooge for the One Percent…but at least they didn’t arrest him!

Although the War Criminal had ‘uninvited attendees’ to his campaign events arrested…which probably ‘set the precedent’ for this atrocity.

This tracks back to ‘authority’ good citizen, under whose authority did they arrest legitimate candidates for national office and detain them for 8 hours?

One would THINK there would be several job openings at THAT Police Department/Government agency by this time tomorrow!

Understand good citizen, a cop is YOU with a gun and a blue suit!

You can’t walk around and arrest anybody you like because you don’t agree with what they’re doing, can you?

Then why aren’t those security personnel under arrest awaiting charges of kidnapping and hostage taking?

Oh, wait…it’s because Obobo ignored his mandate and went for giving insurance companies a gift rather than prosecuting W, the war criminal!

Um, when it’s YOU being ‘illegally detained’ it will be far too late to do anything about it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: do not ignore the elephant in the room, you are also being deprived of hearing alternative voices, so blatant has the ‘pay to play’ atmosphere become!

The deplorable state of what passes for justice in our society is sadly secondary…although it is primary to our society's restoration.

Hail Anarchy!

Greetings good citizen,

For the longest time Anarchy has gotten a bad rap under our capitalist society…mostly because our leaders DON’T want YOU thinking and deciding for yourself!

How long would the thieves on Wall Street gone unprosecuted if YOU had something to say about it?

Wouldn’t YOU be screaming for the head of those supposed to be in charge of investigating this sort of thing?

Because under A Simple Plan you can (and will) institute action (that must be answered to!)

Not that the kind of fraud we are seeing today will even be possible under A Simple Plan but the fact that those in charge are answerable directly to ANY MEMBER of the public is a true game changer.

Um, like communism, there are many different ‘varieties’ of Anarchy, A Simple Plan is based on the ‘Rules without Rulers’ variety.

While I have been advised that my, er, ‘type’ of Anarchy is close to a variety championed by Bakunin (who was executed by the Bolsheviks) I am unfamiliar with the specifics of Kropotkinism…

It seems that everywhere, these days, people are talking about anarchism. Now Dmitry Orlov joins the discussion with a 3-part series, “In Praise of Anarchy.” Utilizing primarily the work of the 19th century Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, Orlov argues that anarchy, rather than hierarchy, is the dominant pattern in nature, that hierarchical organizations ultimately end in collapse, and that the impending collapse of the capitalist industrial system presents an opportunity for the emergence of anarchism.

Orlov,(aka kollapsnik at Club Orlov), is probably best-known for his book, Reinventing Collapse, in which he compares the collapse of the Soviet Union with the imminent collapse of the United States. Russian-born Orlov is in a unique position to make such comparisons. He immigrated to the USA when he was twelve years old, and, as an adult, made numerous trips back to the former USSR in the years immediately following the collapse of its political and economic system.

With a wry Russian wit I find immensely attractive, Orlov describes in Reinventing Collapse how people in the USSR were better positioned than are Americans for economic collapse. For example, most Soviet citizens did not own their homes; instead they lived in state-owned dwellings. When the USSR collapsed, they simply remained where they were and nobody evicted them. Compare that with the United States, where people were seduced into signing questionable mortgage agreements for outrageously priced homes, and where, since the economic crisis of 2008, 3 million have been foreclosed upon.

Unhelpfully, this article goes on to compare life in ‘post-communist’ Russia with living conditions in the US just after the collapse of the financial markets.

What this has to do with Anarchy is unclear…although the writer points to Orlov’s background as a naturalist and his observations on nature to reinforce the concepts of Anarchy…

Much like this video explores Darwinism as a justification for the excesses of capitalism…

The video is an hour long and provides a curious window into the mindset that brought us the original Great Depression…

I have not visited ‘Club Orlov’ and it remains unclear whether or not Alternet will run the remainder of the series…I am assuming they skipped the first installment as this one seems to indicate it is the ‘middle’ piece.

I have to give Orlov credit though, he states the Darwin (actually Spencer’s) term ‘survival of the fittest’ is merely the fastest route to extinction…which is to point out that ‘fitness’ has many more aspects to it than the fitness of the individual.

Man’s success is predicated on his ability to pull together with other members of his species to achieve larger goals and to overcome other, more virulent competitors.

So this ‘survival of the fittest’ bullshit has actually had a dampening effect on our social development…so a few could be rich.

Which leaves us to ponder how we protect the bulk of our species from the few self-centered enough to betray the trust of the rest?

I posit that the best preventative here is to place the levers of power beyond the reach of the self-interested…which is what *A Simple Plan does.

[* Part of the testing feature that governs advancement also measures the candidate’s moral compass. You can ace the technical aspects but if your moral compass is broken, you will NOT advance.]

Most psycho paths believe others are ‘too stupid’ to know they are being played…this is a shortcoming in the psychopath…because everyone KNOWS who is a few fries shy of a Happy Meal and that they need to be watched.

The only ones the psycho is fooling is themselves. Everybody else has a ‘good idea’ something’s wrong with the clever guy who talks down to everyone…

But I digress…

This is supposed to be an opportunity to talk up anarchy, and idea whose time is long overdue!

I designed A Simple Plan with certain laws already in place so we could avoid having the ‘I didn’t vote for that’ bullshit that some people will engage in regardless.

The idea was to lay down a framework that enabled us to vote on the laws we want without having to hold critical ballots that preserve our freedoms…like the Human Anti-Exploitation Law.

It’s so basic you can only marvel why it isn’t already a law…but then you take a quick look around and you know the answer.

It’s a ‘choice’ those who are screwing you left and right DON’T want YOU to have.

With that one law as the cornerstone of our new civilization, everything else falls into place.

There is also a law about new proposed laws that forbids legislation that isn’t ‘universal’ in nature.

Which is to say it prevents stupid laws like ‘Only white people can vote’…

Or only the military can be armed…

Seriously good citizen, you have to be extremely careful with what you prohibit.

Protecting the few at the expense of the rest is a recipe for tyranny.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Concept Vehicle

Greetings good citizen,

Everybody jumped on Romney’s latest gaffe and again the number of people defending him was sobering…but that’s what the corporate owned media does, it puts its thumb on the scale to make you think wrong is right and that the majority doesn’t care.

Well, how, er, gratifying is it that the ten highest states for tax non-payment also happen to be bastions of conservatism?

Yup, almost to a one they are ALL what we have come to call ‘Red’ States.

I am not going to excerpt the article itself, there really isn’t anything else to add except a different perspective.

Something I touched upon in yesterday’s post…a cautionary note.

In today’s local rag the ultra-conservative ‘retired business manager’ (who never tires of bashing liberals for everything from late postal delivery to a rainy day) was on his favorite hobby horse again, defending our former governor.

BUT apparently his deadline for the local rag must have preceded the latest flub by the Mittster because he didn’t even elude to it.

Although his post did prove most comical in light of his hero’s blatant insult to nearly half of the electorate.

And that’s where the caution comes in.

You know the elite (and their brain-dead followers) could care less about what happens to you and yours.

In the Mittster’s own words, you have brought this upon yourself…by not voting Republican! (Or so posited the ultra-conservative moron in the local rag tonight!)

SOME pundits are too young to know better but this nitwit is already drawing his SSI, and is shaking in his socks that OBAMA is going to water down his Medicare! (like the Ryan voucher program will be so much better, idiot!)

All I can say is this guy was asleep during the entire Reagan administration. For some bizarre reason no conservo-loonie remembers that person most responsible for NAFTA was St. Ronnie himself!

By the time Slick Willy signed the bill into law, NAFTA was a 'done deal'. He also had a Republican congress so vetoing the legislation would have proven fruitless (but it WOULD HAVE made the Rethugs take responsibility for their treachery.)

And how did they ‘thank’ Billy boy for his service? They impeached him…and then they made his wife a senator from New York…go figure!

Oh, and PS by the way, Slick has been ‘swimming in honorariums’ since he left the White House.

That po’ boy is a lot richer than he was…but like our pal Barrack, he had that ‘silver spoon’ thing happening even before he hit the big time.

And in retrospect, Billy’s two terms read like an entry into the ‘Hall of Shame’ for political sell-outs.

Which is to point out (again) that the people pulling the strings around here are starting to get pretty sloppy as far as keeping the public ignorant.

That said, the public (obediently) doesn‘t see anything it don’t want to see.

That annoying itch at the back of your skull is asking you how long you should play stupid…because it’s only a matter of time before YOU draw the ‘short straw’ and find yourself being thrown under the bus.

Wait too long and you’ll be one of the Mittster’s ‘victims’.

I’m interlacing this with tonight’s editorial by the ultraconservative lunatic…who paraphrased his idol, St. Ronnie when he closed his piece by stating, just as Ronnie famously did, that government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem!

Now ask yourself if YOU want to live in a society that has NO government.

Which is tricky because technically, you’re already there. YOU, the average citizen, no longer have a government that is cognizant of or responsive to, your needs.

But would you voluntarily live in a society that answered to no one?

Short answer, isn’t it…definitely not!

Now all simple-minded conservatives think the government is the enemy because the government makes you pay taxes.

If we didn’t have a government, we wouldn’t have taxes…that’s their logic anyway…like this is a ‘good thing’!

Um, there are no taxes under A Simple Plan either but that’s because the laws governing money are radically different than they are under predatory capitalism.

You see, the conservo-loonies flunked civics 101 because they don’t have the faintest clue what the ‘purpose of government’ is.

Which is why they make these insane claims that we’d all be ‘better off’ without government.

Do YOU know what the ‘purpose of government’ is?

Essentially, it is a ‘pact’ among the members of a nation that they will defend each other’s rights and care for one another as if they were one big family (despite how messy that can be in actual practice…)

A Simple Plan assumes a ‘universal’ pact the transcends borders and frontiers, encompassing ALL mankind...and imbuing its members with ‘inalienable rights’…the ones the founders of this nation only gave lip service to…because they didn’t get the money piece of the puzzle right!

I don't have megalomania, I just want to put an end to the bullshit...and if the concept isn't adopted 'universally' it will leave the door open for a later showdown...and the fucking opportunists that have oppressed us for so long don't deserve another crack at us!

In essence good citizen we are faced with a choice. Do we choose peace and learn to live together in harmony or do we choose death and destruction at the hands of the ‘rugged individuals’ among us who call themselves the Masters of the Universe (‘One Percent’?)

How will you choose?

Because the choice, as always, is YOURS!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

About Me

Greetings good citizen,

I have just perused the media offerings for today and concluded, amazingly, that in a world that is truly falling apart, they have nothing to say!

So for today’s ‘treat’, you can read me, ‘unplugged’.

Let’s start with my humble beginnings, shall we?

No, I’m not going to bore you with my tawdry upbringing because being raised poor has little to do with anything…although I doubt I’d be who I am today had I been born with anything even resembling a ‘silver spoon’ protruding from any orifice!

So yes, it is at least tangentially relevant that I was born poor and remain poor to this day.

Um, contrary to popular belief, I have never set myself on a path to ‘conquer the world’…and, unsurprisingly, might be accused of failing because I didn’t’ set my sights high enough.

But we can’t ALL conquer the world…and maybe that is my fracture because my goal always has been the ‘greatest good’.

Why is it in a world so full of bounty that only a few get to enjoy it?

And the answer comes back (quite quickly I might add:) mismanagement.

The system itself is deeply flawed and remains that way due to deep corruption!

But I preach to the choir, do I not?

Everybody knows.

So why doesn’t ‘somebody’ DO SOMETHING about it?

Have we all been so deeply indoctrinated with ‘go along to get along’ that none of us dare ‘rock the boat’ (even though it is headed over a cliff?)

Although I’d daresay we have already gone over that cliff, rocking the boat now would merely remove the only thing between you and the jagged rocks below.

As thin as that object may be,

And no, it is unlikely you will survive that sudden stop that follows every long fall.

But I digress…(and do so with such frequency that I fear few of you can follow my, er, ‘insights’ to their conclusions.)

Which is to announce that I suspect my son isn’t the only one with ADD.

Meaning he comes by his ‘honestly’.

So let’s return to the beginning (because we’re gonna end up there anyway) and try not to ‘squander the opportunity’ which the slavers among us are prepared to defend with their worthless lives.

Yes good citizen, there are those among us who support slavery so long as it is not they who are the slaves.

They will inflict a fate worse than death upon YOU if their children are spared.

Did I lose you again? Try to keep up, eh?

These ‘true believers’ form a singular barrier to a fair and equitable society. They must be eliminated OR those they follow/obey must be, er, ‘eradicated’ for subsequent generations to be free.

No ‘half measures’ here good citizen, this is not a ‘once and done’ proposition.

Which is to say vigilance is key. We may succeed in sweeping them aside (temporarily) but they will regroup and start over if we provide them with the mechanisms they need to corrupt society.

Their ‘tool of choice’ is (and always will be) ‘hard currency’. Without it, it becomes near impossible to ‘bribe’ others towards your way of thinking.

This is why you are ‘trained’ to demand money you can touch…while money itself remains an ‘idea’.

Fix this and we break the slaver’s back.

The other ‘trump card’ the slaver holds is their control of the workplace. They get to decide who ‘prospers’ and who starves.

A decidedly toxic power to have in a world where survival depends on ‘participation’.

If they don’t let you play, you can’t prosper…legally.

That is the ‘powder keg’ the unemployment situation has become.

Yet the conservatives (those who would enslave you) still preach that it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to make yourself ‘USEFUL’ to the employer.

And soon SOME OF YOU may be able to ‘redeem’ yourselves by being willing to DIE for people who wouldn’t ordinarily spit on the best part of you!

Oh, you’ll be a hero for taking a bullet for them but you can almost hear them shriek ‘idiot’ as you fall to the ground, clutching your vitals!

Um, I find myself apologizing after these solo flights if only because a trip through the landscape that is my mind can be a pretty disturbing experience for those who don’t usually think along those lines.

So, in short…(not that I’m particularly comfortable with the short version of anything) A Simple Plan was designed to facilitate the ‘equality’ we need to move forward as a species.

If we don’t learn to live together, we will not survive to go forth and meet new (and hopefully more intelligent) races across the cosmos.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Failure to plan = the plan to fail!

Greetings good citizen,

It sickens me to see our alleged ‘saviors’ pulling the same shit the capitalists pulled when they took over the ‘sustainable economy’.

We need to ‘build communities’. Isn’t that the SAME STUNT the capitalists pulled when they established industrial drudgery as a ‘way of life’ they were ‘building communities’…until they got their lapdog legislators to open the borders for them!

Then they forgot all about ‘community’ or the fact that ALL ECONOMIES ARE LOCAL!

Just look at how the scumbags dress up their new initiative!

In what has come to be called the Cleveland model, the goal is to leverage the city’s existing anchors—in this case, hospitals and universities—to provide a long-term market for new worker-owned cooperatives while providing living-wage jobs and access to business ownership to employee-owners situated in surrounding low-income, largely African American communities. The first point is to recycle purchasing power to achieve greater stability. The second—and critical—point is to target firms owned by people who live in the community and create an ongoing stabilizing effect.

The first of Cleveland’s planned network of cooperatives opened its doors for business in September 2009. The co-op industrial-scale laundry is a state-of-the-art, ecologically green commercial facility capable of handling ten million pounds of health-care linen a year. Its sophisticated business plan provides all employee-owners a living wage and health benefits. After seven years on the job, if current projections are realized, each employee will have a $65,000 equity stake in the enterprise.

Read my lips: THERE IS NO CAPITALIST SOLUTION TO OUR NOW DEFUNCT SOCIAL-ECONOMIC MODEL!

The ‘projected increase’ in ‘employee/stakeholder equity’ is based on the old, unsustainable idea of ‘perpetual expansion’ (which ties directly to ‘the greater fool dictum’.)

Second huge mistake is to continue believing the old model is still operating…it is NOT!

Um, the ‘anchors’ of our ‘new economy’ are oddly the same as the anchors of the old economy, the university/hospital system!

Tell THAT to all of the kids walking around with student debt larger than most people’s mortgages and NO FUCKING JOB!

In order to ‘fix’ our broken economy the ‘employer/employee relationship’ HAS TO GO!

A job ISN’T a ‘reward for being humble and hard-working’; IT’S YOUR FUCKING RIGHT! IT’S YOUR ABILITY TO SUPPORT YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY IN A CIVILIZED MANNER!

Being deprived of this right is where ‘outlaws’ come from.

Savvy?

Which, interestingly enough, makes those who deprive you of your ‘legal’ ability to support yourself, ‘criminals’.

Yes-siree Bob, creating criminals is (and should) be a crime!

So why do our self-professed ‘saviors’ persist in parroting known broken solutions as the answer to our dilemma?

‘More of the same’ is after all, no change whatsoever.

If we keep doing the same things the same way, we will solve nothing.

Did I mention that we are on the path that leads to extinction?

And believe you me, there are more than a few of our so-called leaders who think it is precisely the path we should be on!

Worse, they believe we don’t deserve better, partly for electing and following leaders like them!

Which is to predict that the new broom will sweep amazingly clean while merely restoring us to a state we should have already been in!

Which is to (again) opine that our current society is mismanaged to a stunning degree.

And now the Progressives are telling us that the same old, same old, disguised as new and innovative is going to be the ‘way to go’.

And it is…if you’re a FUCKING MORON!

This is the exact same tired bullshit that HASN’T WORKED for thirty years but if we call it ‘community development’ that will make somehow, magically everything all better…idiots!

Which is to point out that I don’t suffer fools gladly. I will also apologize to the majority of you who have not been ‘cozened’ into thinking the Progressives are our new champions.

The Progressives are Libertarians and Libbies are only a half a degree removed from the conservo-loonies.

So the above proposal is just one more version of the ‘tough luck’ plan we are currently suffering. It’s not the conservo-loonies fault YOU took the ‘wrong courses’ in college and can’t find a job.

And this supposedly ‘export-proof’ economy…(still owned by capitalist investors) is going to save us all from the ravages of the global race to the bottom!

Gotta have those ‘free markets’ to keep the competition razor sharp. Not that there’s a capitalist alive who likes competition, they prefer monopolies.

And that’s what they have today, funny how that anti-trust stuff all goes away once you buy the justice system of the world’s nuclear superpower…

Which is just one more thing to ponder as the walls come crashing down and your told, (for the umpteenth time) that if you don’t like it go suck a rock…

And you know what THAT rhymes with…(infantile bastards.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head.

Gegner

One Thousand!

Greetings good citizen,

Welcome to the one thousandth post of A Simple Plan! Truth be told I haven’t been keeping track. Blogger tells me when this one hits the net; it will be labeled as post number one thousand.

So whoop de do, good citizen!

And I suppose one thousand posts would be as good a time as any to restate the reason why this blog even exists.

Regular readers may remember me from the original blogger, which, back then, billed itself as a ‘get paid to write site’ based on the popularity of what you wrote. I didn’t go by my current handle then but I’m still pedaling the same ‘ideology’ I was then. So we’re talking the mid-nineties.

Which is to point out that there are a lot more than a thousand posts possibly triple that amount, maybe more.

Like I said, I’m not keeping track.

Posted on Daily Kos for a couple of years before the Libertarians chased me off in that heavily polluted pool, then I joined Conceptual Guerilla and stayed there for about three years.

For the record there is no ‘bad blood’ between Joe and me, he told me he wanted to take the site in a different direction and I respected his request, stopped posting there and started posting here, end of story.

Which brings us back to today and the 1,000th post here.

Same shit, different venue.

But, naturally, (and for me it appears to be consistent thing) I digress…

I was going to explain ‘why’ (my reason) this blog exists, what makes Gegner write?

Um, to say I was born ‘disadvantaged’ would be both an understatement and an exaggeration.

I was never hungry or naked. In this respect I am MUCH ‘luckier’ than my ‘third world’ counterparts who were born (and died) in war torn hellholes where they never stood a chance.

But I found myself at the bottom of the food chain, born to a crippled and uneducated father who had no ‘trade’ to pass on to me.
Ironically, since my ‘trade’ got off-shored, I have nothing to pass on to my son either, an outcome that I find, er, ‘worrisome’.

But it’s not just MY kid who will find himself behind the eight ball when he graduates High School in a couple of years, he’ll have plenty of company.

So this is not a ‘woe is me’ platform where I cry foul for the advantages I never enjoyed because that’s not the point.

This post (and the multitude before it) exists to prove the meme of ‘there’s nothing out there better than capitalism’ is a boldfaced lie!

But is it a lie if you can’t prove there IS a ‘better way?’

Some would say A Simple Plan is ‘unprecedented’ and therefore, ‘unproven’. I would counter that the Native Americans lived under something very close to A Simple Plan and their society flourished for centuries longer than any European civilization ever did!

Um, the more astute would ask how lucky I am to arrive on the scene just as Capitalism enters its death throes?

As you have seen repeated here countless times, nobody can survive in an ‘economic desert’ and capitalism has turn the whole world into a gigantic one with only sporadic oases of wealth scattered around the globe.

It really does boil down to the question of whether civilization exists to help all humans prosper or if it exists to make a few humans wildly prosperous?

We know how things have turned out but we also know this isn’t ‘as advertised’.

Worse, we continue to believe that ‘someday’ it will be ‘our turn’ to live in the big house and play with all of the ‘toys’ until we die…

As irrational as that ‘belief’ is.

Since this model is ‘unsustainable’ it will invariably collapse, and what is poised to replace it, so far, ain’t looking to, er, ‘equitable’.

Part of my ‘goal’ is to point the way to a more equitable future. The rest is centered on raising awareness of the eminent failure of the lifestyle we have all become accustomed to.

The ones who have buttered their bread on both sides are expecting a reasonably smooth transition from their self-destructing ‘free-state’ to the all-powerful slave state.

Which should explain why our bought and paid for politicians are sitting there ‘twiddling their thumbs’ as (what passes for) our justice system sits there, inert.

We all KNOW our civilization is rushing headlong off a cliff, NO ONE denies this, not even the corporate owned media but only a hand full know that this no accident.

That handful has only THEIR best interests in mind, you get what you get (and only after they have determined you deserve it.)

We MUST hunt them down and cast them out or our species is doomed, good citizen.

Some of you think it’s not possible and the simple minded think it’s not desirable but I tell you that the ‘parasites’ among us exist only at the top of our civilization!

Some of you recognize this and it is my intention to show you that you are not alone, others only suspect and it is my purpose is to show you that your suspicions are correct.

If we fail to identify the enemy, they WILL defeat us.

And that’s your ‘thought to ponder’ on this 1,000th post

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Compasses

Greetings good citizen,

In what can only be described as massive case of cognitive dissonance (although there is the 'only game in town factor’ also in play) markets are generally ‘up’, again, for no apparent or rational reason.

The pending Greek vote, like the upcoming Egyptian elections both appear to be just like the upcoming US elections, already stacked with ‘non-choices’ pretending to be ‘alternatives.’

Because no matter how you choose, the outcome remains the same.

And how friggin’ sad is THAT, good citizen?

In my mind it conjures the image of a captive being prepared for slaughter by cannibals. It doesn’t matter that the captives out number the cannibals by a factor of a million to one, the cannibals have them all hobbled, hand and foot so they can’t resist.

You should seriously take a moment to marvel at how effective just a handful of men with guns can be.

Which raises some other, disturbing social problems and the raging debate over ‘how’ these problems should be ‘handled’:

In his June 11, 2012 op-ed in the NY Times, Paul Krugman goes beyond economic analysis to bring up the morality and the conceptual framing that determines economic policy. He speaks of “the people the economy is supposed to serve” — “the unemployed,” and “workers”— and “the mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming.”

Krugman is right to bring these matters up. Markets are not provided by nature. They are constructed — by laws, rules, and institutions. All of these have moral bases of one sort or another. Hence, all markets are moral, according to someone’s sense of morality. The only question is, Whose morality? In contemporary America, it is conservative versus progressive morality that governs forms of economic policy. The systems of morality behind economic policies need to be discussed.

Most Democrats, consciously or mostly unconsciously, use a moral view deriving from an idealized notion of nurturing parenting, a morality based on caring about their fellow citizens, and acting responsibly both for themselves and others with what President Obama has called “an ethic of excellence” — doing one’s best not just for oneself, but for one’s family, community, and country, and for the world. Government on this view has two moral missions: to protect and empower everyone equally.

In a debate totally void of reason the conservative ‘argument’ over ‘the natural order of things’ smacks so loudly of religious dogma as to be indistinguishable from it.

‘It’s that way because that’s the way it is’ is a mighty ‘feeble’ argument that is only a half a degree removed from the truth, it’s that way because that is how I want it to be!

Which the meat-headed conservative will vehemently deny (if he is not surrounded by his criminal cohorts.)

How fucked up is it that the phrase ‘the poor deserve what they get’ serves as the ‘secret handshake’ for a club any self-respecting human doesn’t want anything to do with?

Funny thing about that particular ‘handshake’, you know what it will buy you under A Simple Plan? It gets you an all expenses paid trip to ‘liberty-land’, that place where you’re ‘free’ to do whatever you like, you can lay claim to the whole place because it will be the only place in our new society where you will be allowed to ‘own’ things.

Sounds like a ‘good deal’ right?

There are a couple of little ‘hitches’…and ‘how little’ are matters of ‘perspective’.

First, we send you on your ‘permanent holiday’ in your ‘birthday suit’ [regardless of time of year.] Since you don’t appreciate the cooperative nature of society/civilization, you will not be permitted to bring anything you didn’t make yourself out of natural materials. Um, there are also ‘size restrictions’, you won’t be allowed to bring the Hogan you built with you either.

For safety reasons, if your only handmade possession is a ‘sharp rock’, you won’t be able to bring it with you because there will be no shortage of ‘sharp rocks’ where you’re going.

You won’t be permitted to bring food with you, part of your, er, ‘rehabilitation’ will be the sharpening of those self-sufficiency skills that you folks prize so highly.

You’re free to hunt, prep and eat whatever comes along…and ‘whatever’ is a literal term.

The people who have been there longer may well include you as part of the day’s menu, so choose your ‘allies’ carefully…

Those who befriend you may have other motives (like not wanting to drag your dead ass to the cook fire.)

Now it sounds a bit ‘harsh’, doesn’t it?

Shouldn’t we show these misguided souls some ‘mercy’?

In answer to that we have to reverse the situation and ask where was THEIR mercy when it came to the destitute?

Who were they to decide who did and didn’t deserve succor in a situation THEY created?

An employer ‘picks’ their employees, hiring no more (and usually less) than they need.

So it comes down to cases…do the poor ‘deserve’ what they get?

Are they truly ‘undeserving’ of respite from their misery because they are ‘immoral’ or is the pig who would pocket the poor’s share for himself the one with the broken moral compass?

Circle logic is often employed to cover self-serving behavior.

The disturbing aspect of this whole line of questioning is why nothing is done when we see these feeble excuses being used to defend inequity?

Why aren’t the defrauders of the destitute prosecuted?

Why aren’t the employers who don’t pay a living wage fined?

Where is the Justice, good citizen?

And ‘I don’t know’ isn’t the right (or enough of) an answer.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Elimination

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Friday to those of you who are looking forward to their weekend. (One day stretches into the next when you’re unemployed, although weekends mean there are people around!)

Um, for some bizarre reason oil is up to $104 a barrel and gold is up $50 an ounce in the past couple of days but neither of these stories made the headlines because stiff price increases are NOT GOOD NEWS for the economy, although investors seem to enjoy them. (Which tells you something else about the ‘interests of investors’ that you should always keep in mind!)

So we have this headline:

U.S. Economic Growth Slows to 2.2% Rate, Report Says
By SHAILA DEWAN 9:52 AM ET

Gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2.2 percent, easing from the prior quarter’s rate but maintaining what economists have called a “sustainable” pace of recovery.

(Like these jokers would know what a ‘recovery’ was if it kicked them in the balls!)

One thing is certain, the only way we the public know anything about any recovery is because the well paid liars in the media continue to insist there is one!

Repeat after me, ‘There is NO recovery’ (and there ain’t gonna be one UNTIL we remove the criminals from power, then conditions will improve immediately; almost magically!

The other headline from today’s business section tells us:

Stocks Unclear on Direction
By REUTERS 10:07 AM ET

Major market indexes were mixed in early trading, putting a fourth consecutive day of gains in jeopardy.

4th day of ‘gains’? The news all week, hell, all YEAR has been horrendous! How the FUCK can stock values be climbing when the rest of the economy is tanking?

Oh, but wait! I’m a fucking liar! Look at the ‘profits and earnings’ the ‘wizards of shake and bake’ have cooked up the books with to dazzle our eyes!

It’s the old ‘garbage in = garbage out’.

Company A buys out competitor B and shazaam, company A is ‘profitable’ (because it is now the sole source of commodity C in a given region, hell, hemisphere…fucking magic all right!)

There’s another ‘game’ that is playing itself out. Not too long ago the beancounters decided ‘retail was retail, why make two trips to do the weekly marketing?

Suddenly you could buy food from the same people who used to sell you underwear!

The ‘warehouse stores’ pioneered the idea but now the ‘big box stores’ offer ‘one stop shopping’, hell you can even fuel up while you’re there!

Which begs the question of how far away are we from just having our paychecks mailed directly to them?

Weird how ‘convenience’ is becoming the ‘enemy’. It may be ‘more profitable’ to do business this way but cut out too many ‘middle men’ and you end up in a world of slip-shod products that suck. (Once you’re the sole source 'quality' is whatever you want it to be…

New slogan: This AIN’T Burger King. You take the mo’fukker MY way or YOU don’t get the sum bitch!

Worse, one stop shopping also seriously reduces the number of ‘job opportunities’ there are in a society that is already plagued with hopelessness.

You don’t want a majority of the population just twiddling their thumbs, they’ll get restless and start wrecking the things they can’t have.

How ‘profitable’ will that be?

Which brings us to another concept most of you don’t ‘understand/appreciate’ and that would be the question of ‘what is profit’?

Is it the coin the retailer puts in his pocket after it is all said and done or is it the benefit society reaps from the effort expended?

Your typical capitalist will cagily answer ‘both!’ but he really only gives a fuck about the first part, the ‘coin’ he puts in HIS pocket, society be damned!

No irony should be lost on the fact that keeping the businessman honest is the very reason governments are established in the first place…especially considering what happens once a government is ‘co-opted’ by the very people it is supposed to be overseeing…

Which brings us (isn’t it interesting how one topic leads to the next?) to A Simple Plan, which eliminates the need for the watch-dog by eliminating the reason commerce needs to be watched!

If we shift the emphasis of our commerce system to the latter part of the equation (the benefit society reaps from the effort) and eliminate the ‘privatization’ of commerce (which only benefits the owner) we greatly improve our society!

Everyone (except the former ‘owners’) will agree!

I belabor the obvious when I point out that YOU don’t NEED to OWN ANYTHING! All you need is the ‘use’ of certain things while you’re here (or there or anywhere else for that matter.)

YOU (invariably) take a beating on anything you sell because it’s ‘used’. Okay, ‘real estate’ appreciates but ONLY under the ‘correct’ market conditions, something the last crisis destroyed for the next three generations!

Worse, real estate is a lousy ‘investment’. If you want to ‘dabble’ in real estate, become a banker where you keep getting paid for the same hunk of land, over and over again in perpetuity…until the bottom drops out like it just did.

Then you don’t want anything to do with real estate…(but you can’t let the public know!)

Um, where were we?

Oh yeah, Happy Friday, good citizen!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Doubt

Greetings good citizen,

I’m chuckling to myself because of an old truism about the three things people hate, cameras, mirrors and the truth.

I titled yesterday’s offering ‘Truth’ and it hasn’t gotten a single read! (Must be that day before the holiday thing happening…)

Understandably, since much of what I write is opinion, it is a bit brash of me to label my opinions as ‘truth’, but the truth is always ‘relative’ (even the ever so elusive ‘bald truth’.)

Then there’s the old adage about opinions, that they’re like assholes…because everybody’s got one.

Well, good citizen, how much of your life is the result of somebody else’s ‘opinion’?

It’s not as stupid a question as it first appears…

Here’s a little peek into what happens when an outlier goes mainstream

I started to think along these lines a few years ago, during the long stock and housing bubble expansion in the stock market that led up to the financial collapse. And we must certainly thank Mr. Greenspan and his Fed for that, as it is clear they knew exactly what was happening. And rather than fulfill their pledge to stop it, they aided and actually promoted it.

What is shocking is that these are no longer rogue operations, no statistical outliers, no isolated dirty dealings by obscure hedge funds.

The moral hazard and decay has progressed so far, has tainted so much, that the US markets are not even worthy to be called casinos, much less captial management and efficient allocation mechanisms.

They have become abattoirs where the real wealth of the nation is taken and slaughtered. These fellows produce nothing, create nothing, except for fraudulent conveyance to take other people's wealth.

There is no better example of this than MF Global, but you can trust your instinct, that there will be more. The blood feast has only begun.

Wait until the wiseguys start skinning their own, those who think they are going to profit from this because they are smarter and better than the rest, and on board. Then you will real some real howls of outrage. I just wonder if there will be anyone left to care.

The very lives we live rely heavily on what we believe…when doubt starts to worm its way into our perception things fall apart quite quickly…

I continue to predict what will be termed as ‘systemic collapse’ because of the ‘cascading effects of doubt’ that will destroy the current flimsily constructed supply chain.

As the ‘smash and grab’ tactics of MF Global escalate, ‘faith’ in the (wholly faith based) stock markets will ‘evaporate’.

If you can’t trust stocks, bonds or banks, what do you do with your (decidedly shaky) money?

Hard to tell because it’s value will vary (wildly) depending on where you try to spend it.

This is a situation that will get out of hand so quickly that people will abandon, er, ‘legal tender’ completely (in favor of ‘fair trade’)

Sadly, this automatically abolishes your paycheck! (and ‘benefits’? Forget about it!)

Which is to opine that the ‘new’ hand to mouth existence will redefine the term ‘hardship’. (You will be absolutely amazed at what you will happily put in your starving mouth …seriously.)

Things we ‘take for granted’ will literally ‘disappear’ and other things will become, er, ‘unreliable’.

Just try calling the cops AFTER paychecks start bouncing to the moon! If someone answers the phone, you will likely be asked how you intend to pay for their, er, ‘services’…

Is your house on fire? Hope you can drive a fire truck (and can figure out how the hoses hook up before the only thing left is the concrete foundation!)

Yeah, as I have been advocating for all along, what we do and why we do it is going to change whether you like it or not!

And anything resembling ‘normal’ will only return if we completely erase our current (predatory) system of commerce.

How ironic is it that this WON’T start with a King?

In order to ‘resurrect’ our civilization we must embrace the rule of law, that is placed ‘beyond the reach’ of men who would do as they wish, unopposed.

You have to dedicate a lot of thought towards remaking the world/creating a ‘viable’ social model, (although all of the ‘pieces’ have been around for centuries.)

NOTHING in A Simple Plan is ‘new’ (except the ‘cashless’ feature that would have been impossible to implement before the 1980’s)

And that is just icing on the cake because it greatly deters ‘corruption’. (Sadly, there isn’t yet a way to effectively prevent ‘stupidity’ something we are all, on occasion, guilty of.)

So, yeah, things are falling off the old ‘slippery slope’ at quite a pace right now, it will be, er, ‘interesting’ to see how things go from here.

Er, thanks for letting me inside your head,

And stay safe out there!

Gegner

It's A Miracle!

Greetings good citizen…

May I begin with a mighty WTF happened on Wall Street yesterday? Bad enough we all suspect these robbers of making it up as they go along without the they’re throwing it in our faces!

Although, I strongly suspect yesterday’s ‘inexplicable’ rally was Wall Street signaling their ‘approval’ of the House Tea Party Republican’s efforts to torpedo the so-called ‘middle class tax cut’.

I mean they really turned the old ‘excuse shirt’ inside out scrounging up rationalizations for the unimaginable.

Many analysts also noted that wild swings were a predictable feature of the end of the year as managers balanced under-performing elements in their portfolios at a time of low trading volume. And even after an impasse over extending a payroll tax cut was announced Tuesday in Washington, the markets held on to their gains.

“The market just seems to have no memory from one day to the next,” Mr. Flam said. “To drive a move of this magnitude, you would expect there to be some sort of resolution on the bigger-picture issues.”

Even more ‘humorous’ (with a ten year overhang in the housing market) was the, er, ‘assertion’ that the because ‘housing starts’ were ‘up’…

Naturally, building more houses in an environment where nobody is buying them is, er, sheer stupidity more commonly associated with being ‘optimistic beyond belief.’

This is ‘Flipper’ paying all outdoors for a foreclosed property only to find out nobody can afford to rent it off of him.

We have a name for idiots like that…we call them bankrupt.

BUT you’re supposed to believe these so-called investors are acting ‘rationally’!

Worse, you’re supposed to think the fucking economy is ‘on the mend’…

Don’t you wonder what happened to all of those ‘green shoots’ from three years ago?

When you know as well as I that absolutely nothing has been done to straighten out the economy.

Which is something else that was rolling around in the back of my mind today…

It’s been a while since I provided an outline of A Simple Plan.

In order to ‘fix’ the current predatory system we must first, er, ‘catalog’ what’s broken.

The biggest problem is the legal system, it is totally fubar BECAUSE it is ‘for profit’.

This is a glaring problem that nobody (in a position of power) acknowledges.

Without equality there can be no justice and without justice there can be no peace (and without peace there can be no prosperity!)

So if we are to achieve an approximation of equality the first thing to fix is the legal system and that entails everything from the courts to the government.

No more elections and by default, no more legislators (although we will still ‘vote’.) No more ‘judges’ as the laws will remain simple and few.

There’s more to it but you get the general idea and that is to place the laws we all must live under beyond the reach of the self-interested.

No legislators to be bought off means no more ‘self-exempting’ and no more bending the rules to fit the desired outcome.

Then there’s the, er, ‘purpose of civilization’ issue.

Did we band together to build a better life for ALL mankind or just the few greedy bastards that claim to ‘own’ what belongs to all of us?

What does the ‘one percent’ say? They say the US was founded on the principle of ‘the protection of property rights’.

This, unsurprisingly, is in direct conflict with the notion that this planet belongs to ALL of us.

Um, if we continue down this path then there are ‘owners’ and the rest of us, half ‘hired help and the rest are just useful idiots/squatters.

Um, NOBODY can produce a ‘genuine’ bill of sale from either ‘spirit in the sky’ or the next best thing, Mother Nature.

Ironically, ALL ‘bills of sale’ are traced back to this King or that Emperor, who had no more right to the land than the current, er, owners.

Isn’t it time we cut the bullshit and drop the ownership crap?

And why would we abandon ‘ownership?’

To straighten out the economy, of course!

End ‘private ownership’ and the resultant ‘income streams’ stop.

Which creates the ‘approximate equality’ we’re shooting for.

We all work and we all have the ability to support ourselves…which is more than we have now!

If you can’t make yourself ‘useful’ under ‘Fuck you, pay me’ capitalism it’s your problem!

Under A Simple Plan your ‘job’ is guaranteed. You’ll only work a few hours a day OR a few days a week as there are more workers than jobs, thus we will ‘share’ what labor there is while building a better life for us all.

Better, your ‘membership’ in society will be real (and valued!)

Since nobody can ‘line their pockets’ at your expense anymore, most of the necessities of life will be yours ‘free’.

Why won’t EVERYTHING be free?

Because there isn’t enough of EVERYTHING to go around (And not everybody WANTS the same things!)

You’ll be well paid for what you do BUT when you ‘spend’ your money, nobody gets it. It is simply erased.

Same thing happens when you die, you don’t ‘leave’ anything behind…your accumulated wealth is simply erased after you die.

Everybody makes their own way under A Simple Plan but under the plan EVERYBODY enjoys cradle to the grave security.

WITHOUT the ‘flim-flam fuckery’ like what happened in today’s stock markets!

A Simple Plan, an idea whose time has come!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Seriously?

Greetings good citizen,

Sunday’s topic wasn’t provided directly by a story that’s in the headlines but rather it was suggested by those headlines.

If my ‘off the reservation’ pieces disturb you then save yourself the trouble and move on now.

Today’s musings about the ‘quality of leadership’ will only bore you.

For that, good citizen is what caught my eye as I browsed the front page of the online edition of the NY Times (free version; Gegner is too poor to pay.)

I’d like to add that the, er, ‘inspiration’ to tackle this topic hit me even before I read today’s headlines, Herman Cain’s claim that God, er, ‘told him’ to run (apparently god loves Republicans so much he tells them all to run! Yet another reason why I am a devout atheist. I have no use for a god that would inflict Republican/Libertarian principles on anyone!)

If we were to back up even a quarter of a step right here we would be wondering precisely what kind of circus the governing of our civilization has become?

I mean the only legitimate employer of clowns are circuses, right?

(I mean no disrespect to those who study to be ‘real’ clowns, it is both a noble and honorable profession: it is the ‘clowns’ who run for political office that are besmirching your profession.)

How sad is it that the general public can readily grasp such an analogy?

Seriously good citizen, how disturbing is it that there ISN’T a single democratic challenger to the incumbent?

More disturbing is the very notion that this individual even thinks he deserves a second term!

At least Mr. ‘I elected myself a half a dozen times’ Berlusconi (it is no secret he owns the Italian media, HE can make anyone he wants Prime Minister…and the people will buy it!) has ‘stepped down’ from politics, once again begging the question of who (in their right mind) would want to take the reins of ANY of the badly broken nations on the planet?

Which, naturally, is a damning indictment of capitalist media in general…although communist media proved just as useless.

Only Anarchist media would be the type of watch dog the people could rely on.

Um, yeah…probably a deal killer for some of you but A Simple Plan was designed using the principles of Anarchy…and I count myself as an Anarchist.

WITH THE DISCLAIMER that I AM NOT ‘affiliated’ with the multiple bizarre manifestations that claim to be anarchist in nature but totally ignore ‘true’ anarchist principles such as rules without rulers, rather than the empty credo of ‘I will not obey’, (the angry retort of a belligerent child!)

Just as there are Marxists, Leninists and Maoists (to name a few) anarchists are similarly, er, divided.

Another of the feature of A Simple Plan is that our ‘leaders’ will NOT BE ‘legislators’; only the people can alter or, through the courts, interpret the laws.

The laws will be few and simple…conversely, the penalty for breaking them will be severe if not extreme…exile is a one-way proposition.

Um, while we’re talking about insuring ‘effective’ leadership (our leaders will compete for the job using their experience and skills, which is to say the ‘test’ will have a ‘practical’ aspect as well as a written evaluation.

More interestingly, it is likely this practical portion of the test will be televised!

Which is another way of insuring our leadership won’t get away with operating ‘behind closed doors’.

To that end the media cannot be denied access to ANY aspect of government, as a kicker, the media will be the ‘sole arbiter’ of what is or isn’t ‘fit to distribute’.

A society of secrets will soon consume itself and cannot be permitted.

If the more you read, the less you like gnaws at you, consider the alternatives…

The Who said it best; ‘there’s no easy way to be free!’

Now, if I can design this system to ensure we are not lead by a troupe of simpering sycophants, why do we persist in inflicting that exercise in futility upon ourselves?

Probably because the only thing I’m in charge of is the garbage…

Actually it’s not about doing the ’right’ thing, it’s all about PRETENDING to do the right thing!

And being clubbed like a baby fur seal for our ’poor decision making’ when the media’s picks turn out disastrously!

And in fairness to the ‘we write for a paycheck’ brigade, they only publish what they’re told to publish…information that comes from a deeply corrupt election commission.

Ironically, we have arrived at a time when even the general public has become ‘disenchanted’ with our seriously defective electoral system.

More frustratingly, we seem to have as much chance of repairing that as we have of ’reforming’ our obviously corrupt government.

Which is to say ’no chance’.

Can you say ’viva la revolution’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Who IS to Blame?

Greetings good citizen,

Part of the Libertarian full frontal assault in favor of ‘free and unfettered markets’ has been the argument that the young have been screwed by the old

It’s the older generation’s ‘fault’ that there are no jobs and the government is broke…

How pathetic is it good citizen when a deep pocketed ‘think tank’ releases a study indicating that the ‘gap’ between the younger and older generations exists ‘naturally’ (ignoring the fact that there’s nothing ‘natural’ about what passes for our current economy.)

A new study purporting to show that older households are doing much better than younger ones in terms of wealth and income threatens to spark an intergenerational class war, pitting Americans of different ages – people who have all been devastated by the crash caused by Wall Street's recklessness -- against one another. But there are serious flaws in how the research is being interpreted.

The analysis, by Pew Research, is being spun as evidence that the government “spends too much” on the elderly while leaving younger Americans hanging out to dry. It's already becoming another weapon in the corporate right's long-running battle against Social Security.

There's no doubt that this economy is especially grim for young people. Unemployment among young adults continues to hover around 18 percent, and a report by the Federal Reserve found that full-time undergraduate students are borrowing 63 percent more for school than they did a decade ago. (Outstanding student-loan debt broke the trillion-dollar mark for the first time this year.) Young people have few prospects for decent jobs. This bleak situation is clearly a driving factor behind the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement; studies suggest that the “occupiers” skew young, don't have a lot of income and suffer from a much higher rate of unemployment than the country as a whole.

Anyway, the so-called ‘progressive press*’ is crying foul (and rightly so) at this latest attempt by conservatives to deflect blame for the negative consequences of their policy decisions.

(* Can there be a ‘progressive press’ if the Democratic Party no longer exists?)

DO SOME of the OWS protesters ‘blame’ the ‘old people’ for their plight?

Sure they do, because they are IGNORANT of how we got to be where we are today!

Where does the real blame lie? It lies with their great-grandparents who failed to put an end to capitalism when they had the chance in 1933.

Not that there was a viable alternative to capitalism back then. In those days socialists held sway (which is where the ‘New Deal’ came from, thank you!)

Tough to wrap you head around the notion that the same generation that produced Edison and Einstein FAILED to see the danger inherent in ‘income streams’!

Literally boggles the mind good citizen…but then you probably don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?

Ready for another ‘jaunt off of the reservation?’

Good, buckle up, it’s going to be bumpy!

Why do (most) lottery winners (eventually) file for bankruptcy? The answer lies in the ‘income stream’.

Why are ‘rich people’ rich?

Again, the answer is (at least partially) due to control/ownership of an income stream.

What is an ‘income stream?’

For the average schmuck, your paycheck constitutes YOUR income stream.

Why aren’t you ‘rich’? because your income stream is intentionally too small to live on.

Rich people have (through the power of ownership) much larger income streams than you have access to so, unlike lottery winners, their income stream doesn’t ‘dry up’.

Like a movie set, YOU are the person the camera/siphon is aimed at, everybody on the other side of the camera uses YOU as THEIR income stream!

If you make barely enough to live on, how does somebody else use YOU as THEIR income stream?

Ownership TO THE INDIVIDUAL is essentially MEANINGLESS, power flows from owning A LOT of a particular commodity.

Yet you are ‘required’ to own a great number of items (if you expect to function in our modern society)…which also (unfortunately) serves to keep you in perpetual poverty.

You can see why they don’t teach this in school, kids would be murdering one another for their lunch money before they hit fourth grade!

Ironically, Libertarians would be fine with this…if they believe in nothing they believe in Darwin and the ‘law of the jungle’.

(Until either/or goes against them, then they want the ‘protection of the courts’!)

They’re all ‘ANIMALS’…until it is their turn to be eaten.

But I (once again) digress. I have explained what an ‘income stream IS but I have NOT explained why they are an ‘abomination’.

This brings us to the current global ‘banking crisis’, which, naturally, nobody is explaining correctly (or the revolution would already be underway…if not over already!)

Income streams are the primary reason why pretty much ALL of the money in a given society ends up stuck in the figurative ‘top’ of the income distribution.

Understand, good citizen; Civilization DOES NOT need money to operate NOR does it need to be ‘profitable’! (Don't you wish they'd teach THAT in school!)

Most people have been (rightly) scratching their heads wondering just who keeps putting the world’s tail in the financial wringer?

WHO (precisely) is saying ‘stick ‘em up’ to the rest of the civilized world?

THE SAME PEOPLE WHO ALREADY HAVE MORE THAN THEY CAN FUCKING SPEND!

Is that fucking insane or what?

If we were to stand them up on a gibbet with a noose around their neck, how quickly do you think they’d recant?

You’d get the occasional ‘nutter’ who would, even under those circumstances, stick to his/her guns and say ‘fuck you, pay me!’ as the trap door swung open beneath their feet…

Acting is a fine profession but there are limits, there’s a time to act and there’s a time to face the music.

Which is to say if a paycheck is ‘good enough’ for 99% of us then it is good enough for ALL of us…

And the ‘cornerstone’ of A Simple Plan is the Human anti-exploitation law which voids the ‘employer-employee relationship’.

If you were to ask me, it is long overdue. NOBODY should be given the ability to hold another individual’s livelihood ‘hostage’!

That and there will NEVER be enough jobs if we continue to support the capitalistic system of the employer ‘winning’ the difference between the cost to produce and the sell price…great for them but it SUCKS for everyone else!

The global race to the bottom has ruined the global economy and only a complete moron thinks there’s even a remote chance of ‘saving’ it.

Which is NOT to say there shouldn’t be a global economy, there has long been one but the need to ‘balance’ that against the reality that nobody can survive in an economic desert desperately needs to be addressed.

But that’s the trouble with ‘going off the reservation’; there’s so much ground to cover that you can easily get lost jumping from point to point.

There are so many reasons why we need to alter what we do and why we do it.

I heard (constantly) when I was growing up that nobody had a ‘better way’ than capitalism…and if there was something better, people would sure love to hear about it.

Well, I created that ‘better way’…but nobody wants to abandon the ‘devil they know’.

How unfortunate is it for you good citizen that failing to embrace change when the opportunity presents itself condemns your children to worse privation than you have suffered…all so (the same) ‘few’ can be rich?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

We COULD NOT do worse (even if we tried!)

Greetings good citizen,

Um, the rushing over the edge and falling off part is over, we’re at the hitting the ground and shattering into a zillion pieces mode.

Ironically, still in impossibly slow motion.

Naturally, this is not the ‘remarkable’ part of the puzzle, what has everybody scratching their heads is how those who are SUPPOSED TO BE ‘taking care’ of the problem continue to pretend it will work itself out.

At what point, good citizen do we recognize the we could do a far superior job ourselves?

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and a member of the deficit-reduction panel, has repeatedly said he has no intention of letting such cuts occur. Some House members said they were being urged by military contractors and others in their districts to avert such reductions.

Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the panel, said the attempt to undo the triggers “reflects a total lack of seriousness.” Adding that such efforts would not be successful, he said they were “the result of people trying to escape the fundamental choices before us, and one of those choices is whether or not we are willing to end special interest tax breaks to pay for defense.” The White House is also highly unlikely to approve such actions. The president is averse to the military cuts, but saw the threat of them as a way to pressure Republicans to reach a deal. “There is more fear this time,” Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, said about the anxiety being expressed by military contractors in his district. Mr. Brooks said he voted against the debt-ceiling legislation because of the possibility of deep Pentagon cuts.

Under the debt-ceiling budget agreement, members of the joint committee, evenly divided between the parties, have until Nov. 23 to recommend ways to reduce budget deficits by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. Both houses are supposed to vote on the package by Dec. 23. If no legislation is enacted, the government would automatically cut almost $500 billion from military spending, with an equal amount from nonmilitary programs, between 2013 and 2021.

Are these asshole managing the affairs of the nation or are they protecting the interests of their campaign contributors?

How can the ‘Party of No’ rail against ‘government waste’ with one breath and defend a grotesquely bloated military budget with the next?

A military that makes no secret of its imperialistic motives…

Like I have pointed out before, good citizen, this isn’t being done FOR you, it’s being done TO you!

Why else would a Republic of equals employ ‘soldiers of fortune?’ (a ’free nation’ already has all the soldiers it needs…what‘s wrong with this picture?)

Perhaps we should let Mr. Williams tell us

No. 397: October Employment and Unemployment November 4th, 2011
Monthly Payroll and Unemployment Changes Were Not Statistically Meaningful October Payroll Employment Not Only Was 6.5 Million Below the Pre-2007 Recession High,  But Also Was 1.0 Million Below the Pre-2001 Recession High October Unemployment: 9.0% (U.3), 16.2% (U.6), 22.9% (SGS) Annual Growth in October Money Supply M3 Held at About 2.6%

I don’t know about you good citizen but I find the labor force still being below the 2001 level the most disturbing.

We didn’t hit the 6 billion mark in human population until 2000…making last week’s announcement of hitting 7 billion that much more disturbing…

And nothing is being done about that either…or is it?

There are two choices when it comes to dealing with the population problem…depending on how you view the problem itself.

One is to ’manage’ a sustainable economy and the other involves ’balancing’ labor with consumers.

Currently, the focus is on insuring there are enough strong backs and weak minds to keep the lights on and the water running, damn the ’cost’…which is why ’nothing’ is being ’fixed’.

This is the identical mentality that ‘cannot conceive’ of a society without slaves…

These are the ‘mental defectives’ currently in charge.

This is the mindset that isn’t interested in ‘solving’ the problem as much as they want things to ‘work like they’re supposed to’, regardless of how difficult/impossible that makes life for the rest of us.

Um, just to make my point, the ‘shrinking to fit’ method of dealing with the economy is EXACTLY what I’m talking about.

The ‘question’ this raises is just who is considered ‘redundant’ (and thus disposable.)

There are MILLIONS of workers over fifty who will NEVER enter the workforce again (at least on a ‘meaningful level’.)

This sort of sucks when you have to be (minimum) 62 to draw social security, leaves quite the gap that, once again, THE INDIVIDUAL is expected to bridge the best they can!

But what would you expect from the ‘if your paycheck doesn’t crack your nut IT’S YOUR PROBLEM crowd?

How do these assholes intend to ‘deal’ with the mortgage crisis? By making all future mortgage loans ‘full recourse’!

WTF!

To the point, good citizen.

Our society/civilization is deeply ‘mismanaged’ by the same people who fail to appreciate that their continued liberty relies almost totally on a ‘stable’ society.

We can do better…the problem, naturally, is who gets to define ‘better’?

That is why I have laid out A Simple Plan for all to see (and what you see is what you get, there are NO ‘hidden agendas’ lurking underneath.)

Which is to say if someone comes along claiming to support A Simple Plan but then claims the ‘cashless’ aspect of it is unworkable…hang them…they are a lying thieves.

A Simple Plan is holistic with ALL of the parts interlocking to create the larger whole…half measures WILL NOT WORK!

There should be (by now) enough ‘copies’ of A Simple Plan (I developed it twenty years ago) to keep the self-interested honest…but it wouldn’t hurt if you saved a copy to your hard drive, preferably the copy here on this blog as it is the most current revision.

Search for it in the archives…if you can’t find it let me know, I’ll post it again.

Understand good citizen, we are facing the same circumstances our grandparents faced precisely because they failed to ‘fix’ the problem when they had the chance.

This time will be different.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Short and Sweet

Greetings good citizen,

Let us begin with the AM rally being enjoyed by the stock markets. The official cause of the rally is said to be due to the ‘superior performance’ of the retail sector.

Just look at this load of BS:

Analysts noted that the retail sales numbers had beaten expectations. Sales rose 1.1 percent in September from August, and 7.9 percent from the previous year — the fastest monthly growth since February. Total retail sales were $395.5 billion.

The report was another sign that the United States economy may be in better shape than many economists thought, said Dan Greenhaus, the chief global strategist at BTIG. The recent rise in stock prices reflects the change in the prevailing outlook, he added.

You know as well as I that the above figures were subjected to some rather serious massaging to produce the, er, ‘desired results’.

Unsurprisingly, data from the nation’s largest retailer casts this data in an entirely different light:

It seems that cash-strapped consumers are not only trading down to stores like Walmart. They are also trading down at stores like Walmart, choosing cheaper brands and smaller sizes.

Of course, the Wall Street crowd sees a silver lining in there somewhere. Otherwise, why else would they be so upbeat on the retailing sector?

How’s that for a ‘reality check’ good citizen? I’m thinking the second story runs a lot closer to actual experiences of the majority of us.

While the NY Times may be the nation’s ‘paper of record’ it is obviously written for a considerably, er, ‘smaller’ audience. (and I’d dare say a more ‘elite’ one than I write for, no disrespect intended, gentle reader.)

Which brings us to the ‘bear trap’ we find ourselves caught in.

We are roughly a year away from the next presidential elections and we find ourselves saddled with an, er, ‘ineffective’ incumbent that is running ‘unopposed’.

How fucking sad is it that we are powerless to do anything about this? (Which is to ask how the hell the ragtag 99% of us is going to cough up the nearly billion dollars it takes to mount a presidential run?

Worse, who the hell are we going to run against the (Libertarian) ‘stacked deck’ entrenched in Washington?

We can all pretty much surmise how we ended up with a Congress filled to the brim with ‘representatives’ who aren’t who they say they are…

Come election day you only have two choices. Half of the time, after you scrape away the paint job, you end up with none.

Of course, we got to this sad state of affairs through the ‘Party System’, where if you want to run as a candidate for either party you must first pass a ‘sniff test’.

The people who perform this process get to decide who gets to run (with Party funding) and who doesn’t.

Politicians are no longer free to respond to the public mood, in fact, so fearful are they of deviating from the ‘Party Line’ that one would suspect they have all been threatened with assassination!

Maybe they’ve been, er, ‘assured’ that straying from the script will result in an unfortunate and unforeseen ‘accident’.

But this crap isn’t pulled until AFTER they win the election…which is why most challengers can still talk a good game.

IF, as the evidence suggests, our political process has been ‘hijacked’ by the self-interested, what, pray tell, should we do about it?

(Here’s were we get our ‘in a nutshell’ version of A Simple Plan.)

As you can see, the problem of ‘captive government’ is a legal one and not a fiscal one. (Although seizing control of the government by default gives you ‘control’ of the monetary system since money is nothing but a ‘legal construct’.)

But I still haven’t answered the question, have I? What the hell are we gonna do about it?

We can’t ‘talk about it’, the captors own the ‘public square’.

The only viable option is to use the ‘power of numbers’…

It will take twenty or thirty MILLION of us ‘parking’ in Washington DC, demanding the elected government ‘stand down’…just like the Egyptians ousted Hosni Mumbarak.

Let’s indulge our fantasies for a moment and suppose like a dog chasing a car, we get what we’re after, the media arranged elected government indeed stands down…

What next?

We make a ‘Leap of Faith’, the ONLY way an equitable system will EVER be established is over the still kicking and screaming corpses of the privileged.

While it would be ‘nice’ to think A Simple Plan would enjoy near universal support, it doesn’t have a prayer of being ‘voted in’, the ‘entrenched interests are too powerful.

We have been played for dupes for so long that there is no reason in the world ANYONE should trust the ‘level playing field’ promised by A Simple Plan.

So, like EVERY OTHER ‘alternative’ out there, A Simple Plan would have to be enacted ‘by decree’.

Just like the founders of the deeply flawed system we are currently saddled with did to us.

Understand, the, er, ‘survivors’ of the Revolutionary War fully expected ‘somebody’ to declare themselves King.

But our founders had been thinking of the ‘bulls-eye’ royalty traditionally hung on the nobility and opted for a ‘different’ solution. A ‘half-measure’ if you will.

The fear being that a government truly run ‘by the people’ would vote itself ‘free food’ (a sentiment that persists to this very day) was avoided by allowing the public to elect ‘representatives’ that would vote for them…

Which was a sham from the start considering the total lack of accountability the current system has.

Worse, they dare to call it an ‘oversight’ (with nothing being done about it for more than two hundred years! That’s some ‘oversight’!)

No-no, you were distracted with the wonderful (although imaginary) Balance the new ‘trilateral’ system possessed!

How do you like that ‘balance’ now?

I could spend hours tearing the current system apart but it doesn’t answer the problem of replacing it so back to the matter at hand.

We ‘establish’ A Simple Plan by fiat/decree with MORE PROTECTION than our humble forefathers had when ‘mock democracy’ was sprung on them.

What protection is that you might ask?

It is the protection of large numbers knowing how things are supposed to work.

In the beginning there will be a minimal number of laws as laid out in A Simple Plan.

Once you familiarize yourself with the plan you will note that few activities are ‘illegal’, because Anarchy is one of the ‘freest’ forms of government possible.

Protection number one is the law itself is beyond the reach of the ‘self-interested’ Beyond the basic precepts that establish Division Society, no one has the authority to decide either what is or isn’t a law or when a law will be enforced and when a law will be ignored.

So we have this ‘blueprint’ that explains how our new civilization operates but we have no new ‘chiefs’…yet.

Life as we know it can be ‘divided’ into 12 broad ‘fields of endeavor’ All of the jobs necessary to maintain a happy, healthy human civilization come from these 12 fields.

Which is to explain that ‘rich people’ ARE NOT ‘job creators’ (given their preference they are in fact ‘job destroyers’!) Only Mother Nature can create a job, wealth has nothing to do with it!

In fact, wealth is EVER and ALWAYS the end result of CRIMINAL ACTIVITY!

In our, ‘reformed’ world EVERYBODY gets a paycheck and NOTHING more, the very act of ‘buying and selling’ [for personal profit] is prohibited/criminal!)

You don’t need to set aside funds for ‘retirement’ (that most of us won’t live to enjoy.) Our new society provides cradle to the grave security at zero ‘cost’ to you!

But that’s an extra.

What about our currently ‘saturated’ markets that are being choked off due to excess profit-taking by the financial sector?

Jubilee, Baby!

All personal debt ‘disappears’ along with ‘unemployment’.

Thanks to the highly predatory capitalist system, some people have NEVER had a job and probably CAN’T adapt to becoming a ‘worker’ at this late stage of the game.

HOWEVER, there is absolutely NO LACK OF THINGS THAT NEED DOING!

And EVERY job will pay ‘a living wage’! (Mostly because your expense picture will shrivel to almost nothing!)

So, everybody works with the work day/week being adjusted to accommodate ‘full employment’. You aren’t going to get ‘rich’ working for the common good but you will enjoy a better life than your parents did. (Unless you’re one of those twisted bastards who gets off on making everyone else miserable…then you’re out of luck!)

No credit and no property ownership so the two biggest drains on your income disappear.

Um, one of the final ‘wrinkles’ of the new system will be the responsibility to vote (directly) on the laws you will live under since ‘legislators’ no longer exist.

Yes, good citizen, we will have ‘leadership’ but they will NOT have the ability to create or alter the law. (Much less exempt themselves from them like they currently do!)

The law belongs to those who must live under it and all laws MUST pass ‘The Golden Rule’ to be a law to be enforceable.

Sounds ‘dumb’ doesn’t it? A rule we all learned as children governing our society but think, good citizen, would we be in the trouble we’re in today if we paid heed to this very basic premise?

I didn’t name it ‘A Simple Plan’ because I thought the phrase was catchy. It really is based on some very simple premises.

One is it is impossible to build a ‘sustainable’ social model if we permit even one person to claim they own ANYTHING we all must share!

(The first fucktard who insists on ‘sharing’ their dirty underwear will be strangled with them!)

(Learn to LOVE that Golden Rule Bucky or you’ll find yourself exiled before you know what hit you!)

Two, the purpose of civilization is to provide its MEMBERS with the bounty of nature, commerce DOES NOT exist to make a few rich!

IF we fail to adopt a system that levels the playing field, we WILL NOT survive as a species.

And if you doubt that just keep on doing what you’re doing.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Critical Thinking Skills...

Greetings good citizen,

I sometimes despair that there are so few ‘viable’ alternatives to the failed system we are currently saddled with.

It is only in retrospect that we have learned that capitalism has NEVER worked and only thrived due to the collusion of the few it benefited.

(As we are witnessing, the only thing holding it together was avoidance of the massive train wreck switching to another system would cause.)

Perhaps the most distressing of all of these proposed ‘alternatives’ is the plethora of ‘half measures’ that don’t take into account the true nature of the problem.

Take this tripe for example.

Rushkoff also raises points worth considering, particularly for those of us trying to articulate, in the wake of massive failures of the economic system we've lived our whole lives with, some sort of alternative to the cycle of boom, bust, bailout.

He argues that perhaps we're going about it backward when we call for jobs, that maybe it's not a bad thing that technology is replacing workers, and points out that actually, we do produce enough food and “stuff” to support the country and even the world—that, in fact, we produce too much “stuff.”

He alternately harkens back to a past before jobs, when many people worked for themselves on a subsistence level, and forward to a future where we are all busy making games and books and communicating with one another from behind computer screens, with the hours we have to work dwindling.

Like most ‘half-measures’ Bobo leaves the details to ‘take care of themselves’. Worse, this half-wit doesn’t possess the presence of mind to focus on the crux of the problem, which is where a solution can be found.

Constant Reader knows where I place that crux (we don’t have a money problem, we have a legal problem, big time!)

It is the laws that need to be changed…and until they do, nothing will change!

Your kids starving to death? Sorry, nothing we can do, helping you (or you helping yourself to what you need) is against the law!

Yes good citizen, fuck you, pay me capitalism is ‘centered’ on property rights NOT the ‘common good’ (which empty -headed Libertarians routinely dismiss as being exploitive.)

So what the fuck is the thinking behind a future where only some people contribute?

Where’s the justice in that?

Which is to ask ’who the fuck thinks THAT is a ’good idea’?’

While A Simple Plan mandates 100% employment as ‘the price of citizenship’, detractors would question the sanity behind essentially quadrupling the commute.

Well, as we build a more sustainable future, working where you live will become the rule rather than the exception it has become today.

If you commute at all you will use your feet as the preferred mode of transportation.

Going anywhere else you’ll probably take the choo-choo (or a dirigible.) If your travel plans take you across one of the world’s oceans it is more likely safer to take a sailing ship.

Yes, we will ‘sacrifice’ supersonic speed for ‘fuel efficiency’.

Hopefully, slowing things down a couple of notches will give us all more time to think things over.

Everybody (even the ‘handicapped’) will be provided with the opportunity to ‘participate’ in society…and that means ‘jobs for everyone!’.

You WILL do your part, even if it is only for a couple of hours a day or a couple of days per week.

Which is to point out there’s no lack of things that need doing, it is capitalism which prevents them from being done!

People are already aware that they can no longer ‘breed like minks’ and that is the true danger of building ‘utopia’.

Which is to say that there are still ‘hard choices’ to be faced, that part doesn’t go away.

I strongly suspect only a ’hooray for me and fuck everyone else Libertarian’ is capable of conceiving of a future where not working (and thereby not participating in society) is an option.

It is uncertain which disturbs me more, the lack of critical think on display here or the fact that THIS ASSHOLE gets a national forum to air his nonsense in!

Oh fucking well…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Planned Obsolescence

Greetings good citizen,

As planned obsolescence continues to pour rain into my life we also persist in rbing mired in the land of make believe

While I have the utmost respect for the man behind Jesse’s American Café, he, like many others, clings to his ‘illusions’ of what money is and what it isn’t.

I have a very simple philosophy about what money ‘is’ as well as a rather unique system governing its use.

In my, er, ‘construct’ your money is for you (and no one else.) Only you can earn money and only you can spend it…and when you die, your money dies with you, EVERYONE makes their own way in the here and now.

That is why money, under my system, is ‘intangible’, You will never ‘find’ a heap of it hidden under a mattress or grab a bag full off of an armored car, it’s not there.

Besides all crime being ‘cash and carry’ a world where nobody can buy or sell is key to leveling the playing field. Remember, the first pillar of sustainability is equality, we’re all in this together and if we’re not then somebody is getting screwed!

Anyway, here is an excerpt from Jesse’s piece, lets see how ‘clearly’ he explains the current understanding of ‘money’:

Like gold or any other asset or liability, credit must be transformed into a utilitarian form of wealth, or money, in order to effect the exchange. You may HAVE a million dollars in credit somewhere, but at some point someone must agree to transform that credit into actual money for you to use it. If an unused million dollar credit line expires, we do not see ourselves as a million dollars poorer.

When organic credit expansion fails to create money, the Fed or the Treasury can step in and create money non-organically, that is, not as the result of economic activity. In the case of an external standard, the Treasury can formally devalue the currency, as the US had done in the first half of the 1930s. Monetary authorities do not like to do this, because it makes their activity more transparent, and therefore more controversial.

By the way, Roosevelt did not have to take the US off the gold standard, or disallow the holding of gold by US citizens, in order to devalue the dollar as he did. This was a more complex arrangement designed to recapitalize the banking system, which I covered in some detail in an earlier blog.

Oh, and by all means, click the link and read the entire article! I promise you the only thing it will make clear is that ‘SOMEBODY’ (not YOU) gets to decide what money is and for how long that will be the case, which is to say whatever you’re told is subject to change at any random point in the future if that is what suit’s the needs of the money power at that moment.

It should make you crazy when you read of people describing money as ‘a storehouse of value’ when it is obvious that ‘storehouse’ they speak of is wide open, offering zero protection from anything.

Quite literally the wind could diminish the value of your money…

Thus do we need significantly different ‘rules’ governing the ‘be-all, end-all’.

Do you think I exaggerate? Since the founding of the Federal Reserve in (ahem) 1913, the ‘value’ of a dollar has gone from 100 cents to just 3, and nobody can explain why…

Not that anyone needs to because we all know the answer, it is theft, plain and simple.

No one should be surprised that the degree of theft is directly proportional to the amount of breakdown in the justice system…and our justice system is almost transparent, which is to say ‘non-existent’.

Naturally, the overhaul of the monetary system dovetails with the necessary overhaul of the retail environment/employment situation.

You see, under the ‘your money is for you’ system, everybody has to ‘work’ for their money, the practice of ‘scalping’ your fellow citizen for ‘whatever the traffic will bear’ will cease (as it should have long ago.)

It is only by thinking outside the box that we will escape the consequences of unsustainable, self-serving systems.

Naturally, this WILL NOT HAPPEN if you are unwilling to fight for it…and if you don’t fight for it you kids will suffer the alternative, which WON’T be what you suffered, that much is certain.

You may not like the end of private buying and selling but again the key is the ban will be universal, nobody will ‘own’ an enterprise where they alone extract the profits for themselves.

Here’s an economic fact that should win me the Nobel Prize, COMMERCE DOESN’T NEED PROFIT TO OPERATE!

In fact, the ‘for profit’ model is bankrupt (and always leads to bankruptcy, just as it does in Monopoly!)

How bizarre is it good citizen that the object of a game intended to ‘teach’ youngsters the ins and out of our enterprise system is to bankrupt all of the other players!

Why no one makes the connection that the only thing left after somebody ‘wins’ is a smoking wasteland remains a mystery.

If you learn anything here good citizen it should hopefully be that we need to extensively overhaul our socio-economic model to accommodate our changing/evolving reality.

Evolve or die! How pathetic is it that the Libertarians firmly believe in stay the same or die? Worse, it is these champions of ’free markets’ that destroyed the global economy!

I have stated before that the ONLY way to solve the unemployment problem lies in restructuring the work week/day. What do you suppose the chances are that Mr. Obama’s ’jobs program’ even feints at reducing off-shoring, never mind work sharing?

Today, Maureen Dowd asks (rhetorically) is whether or not Mr. Obama will be a ’one term’ president.

As crazy as it sounds, I fear he WILL win re-election…and THAT will be ’against all odds.

Can you hear the ‘spin’ now, Obama re-elected DESPITE having the lowest popularity of any sitting president ever!

But enough of our current ‘insoluble’ problems…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner