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.

Lying liars (and what it means to you.)

Greetings good citizen,

When you’ve been doing this as long as I have you end up ‘re-visiting’ topics you’ve already addressed (some topics it seems like a bazillion times!)

So it is that we revisit one of my ‘core’ topics, something I have ranted about at length, albeit not recently.

To ‘refresh’ your memory I’ll begin with the primary assertion:

It is impossible to arrive at the ‘correct’ conclusion without accurate information.

One need look no further than the bombed out wreck of our civilization for proof of that postulate.

It seems, when the study of law was ‘new’ and the scholars were endeavoring to ‘get it right’ they recognized the, er, ‘power’ of ‘manufactured consent’ and the danger it presents to civil society.

Yet today, here in the wreckage of the failed ‘rule of law’ experiment we have a reckless disregard for the truth as the One Percent rams their fairy tales down the throats of the terminally stupid:

The Romney campaign recently accused Obama of directing his administration to relax the welfare-to-work provisions of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform bill. That accusation is directly refuted by the facts. What Obama did was to permit waivers for states that could affirm their progress in moving people from welfare to work, and allowing them flexibility to enhance their programs. It’s a modification that Romney himself had requested when he was governor of Massachusetts. Nevertheless, Fox News picked up the accusation and ran with it. In every segment on the subject it portrayed the issue precisely as Romney had framed it despite every factchecking operation concluding that Romney’s charges were entirely false.

Speaking of factchecking, Romney has been rated untruthful 67 times by PolitiFact, and 14 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies (including the welfare lie). In fact, 43% of PolitiFact’s findings on statements by Romney are rated as untruthful. He’s downright pathological, but Fox has not yet reported that fact.

Understand good citizen, a society that is ‘intolerant’ of the truth is on the edge of collapse.

If I were to be worried about anything right now it is about how few are sounding this alarm!

That said, there is the possibility that those warning the rest of us about our being manipulated are also, like my humble self, being ‘surpressed’.

Only those who feed (or ignore) the ‘bullshit machine’ are granted a national forum to share their opinion.

Which does YOU zero good!

So thank your lucky stars that you have found this oasis where you are provided with questions with which to test what you’re being sold.

Although it is much more comfortable to just lie down and let them tell you what to think…then you can be like your co-workers, little Fox News wind-up toys who regurgitate the day’s headlines with malice in their hearts.

And that has to be ‘damaging’ to the individual psyche all by itself.

To be given a (false) target and not being granted a way to ‘relieve’ that torment.

Liberals are tax and spend mental cases but every problem in your life is the direct result of conservative legislative action…

How the fuck do you deal with that?

And as our latest crop of shooters reveals, you don’t!

It is no secret that the mainstream (corporate owned…which translates directly to ‘owned by the >One Percent) is out of control and in complete disregard for the law as well as the general wellbeing of our society.

Which is why I have opined repeatedly that the first target would be rebels should tackle is the ‘dis-information networks’.

Weirdly, once again we circle back to concepts that haven’t been revisited for hundreds of years.

Back when the US was founded, the ‘learned men’ who met to build this nation apparently didn’t completely understand what a ‘free press’ really meant.

Worse, most people don’t understand it today.

How can you have a ‘free press’ under a totally ‘for profit’ enterprise system?

Short answer is you can’t.

Worse, good citizen, free ‘unbiased’ information is essential to a ‘free society’.

As evidenced by the battle for the Senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy.

Elizabeth Warren appears in her commercials questioning Republican heavy handedness regarding female reproductive rights while Scott Brown appears right after her talking up his efforts to restrain the bureau of wildlife management so that ‘hardworking fishermen’ can do their damnedest to drive commercial fishing stocks into extinction.

WTF!

Is HE a moron or does he just think the rest of us are?

And you already know the answer to that one…which is sadly BOTH! (Because morons think everybody is as dumb as they are.)

Well, I ‘try’ not to repeat myself too much but as my audience grows I find it important to keep returning to core topics.

Our future depends on you being on board with ‘the whole program’.

Looks like a big promise but believe me, there’s a lot at stake!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Mutual Feelings

Greetings good citizen,

In case you were wondering, it’s NOT ‘just you’ (that suspects the world is operating against its own best interests.)

People in other parts of the world are experiencing the exact same thing, which results in a variety of ‘disillusionment’ we see displayed here:

QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"I used to think the army was to defend the country and resist and fight the Western projects in the Middle East. My conclusion, after that, was that we were serving in an army that does not protect its own people."

JAMAL ABU HOURAN, a former Syrian soldier who joined the rebels fighting the government in April.

Makes you wonder just how many US service people would echo that exact same sentiment…

And when the time comes, how many of them will join the rebels for precisely the same reason?

Life With Syria's Rebels in a Cold and Cunning War
By C. J. CHIVERS

A rebel group presents a cross-section of a nation in upheaval – an accountant, real estate agent, farmers and laborers who have taken up arms believing their time has come.

Which returns us to a more complex question, good citizen. How do you know when it’s ‘time’?

We all have the sneaking suspicion that when you’re running for cover you’ll have missed that “I should have been ready for this” moment.

Meaning most of us won’t know it’s ‘time’ until after the fact. This also means the decision to act will be made ‘for us’.

The question, naturally is ‘who will make this choice for us?’

And the answer to that question is simple, if you’ve been paying attention.

Who the hell has been trying to exterminate us?

Short answer, the > One Percent.

What is this tiny group’s most potent tool?

The Corporate owned media.

Who represents this group’s ‘boots on the ground’?

The GOP (and to a lesser extent the DNC.)

So ironically it will ‘probably’ start as a clash between the Tea Party and the OWS movement.

And you have to wonder…what happened to the leaderless, causeless ‘movement’?

Was the ‘we don’t like what’s going on’ (but we offer no alternatives) movement die of ‘lack of interest’?

How fucked up is it good citizen that they go as far as drawing attention to the 99% then they sit on it?

We’re going to ‘occupy’ (space) until you arrogant assholes straighten up and fly right!

And we all saw how THAT worked out, didn’t we.

We’re especially thankful for the raises we all got because the 99% ‘flexed its muscles’…or not.

But I digress…

What about this ‘rebel spirit’ that is sweeping the Arab nations of the world?

The Corporate owned media is calling it the ‘cry for democracy’…but those of us living under so-called ‘democratic societies’ know it must be something else because those people won’t be any better off if the current government steps down.

Like the tune says: ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!’

Isn’t that the lesson currently being taught to the Egyptians?

You can stick whatever face you like at the top, so long as that face goes along with the ‘Status quo.’

How fucking sad is it good citizen that the (currently running unopposed) incumbent US president is the exact same deal?

Which brings to mind the question of, ‘how wise is it put a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ remark like the one above most of the way through a 3 page essay?

As for the other ‘rhetorical questions’ asked here, it truly doesn’t matter who shoots who first. There WILL be blood and the best estimates at the moment dictate there will be lots of it.

Some of it innocent; but the bulk will be those who richly deserve it.

A little ‘read between the lines’ here…disregard what you see on the corporate owned media, it’s mostly bullshit anyway.

The real question is how long do these morons think they can keep a lid on things?

Are we really going to see a test of the principle, ‘you can only control that which you can destroy’?

Probably…and more the pity because these blackguards hallmark has been ubiquitous waste!

But freedom never comes cheap…a lesson that needs to be relearned repeatedly.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Depressing

Greetings good citizen,

What a lovely day in the neighborhood we’re enjoying, naturally we’re enjoying it for all of the wrong reasons. Stock markets around the globe are ‘cliff-diving’ for the third consecutive day but I don’t own any stock so, eh, who gives a shit?

But, weirdly, this doesn’t bode well for that fleeting thing we watch the stock market for…

And what IS that fleeting thing we try to track via shareowner prices?

A little thing we call ‘social stability’.

Why watch the stock markets as a monitor of social stability?

Because if ‘Richie Rich’ is doing poorly then the shit tends to run ‘downhill’ and your chances of getting a raise goes straight to hell with it.

That’s the trouble with a system that depends on wealthy ‘doing better’ so they may decide to ‘spread it around a little’, feeding the ‘prosperity cycle’.

Let’s have a little look at how our pal Richie is doing:

Weak U.S. Hiring Adds to Global Gloom
By SHAILA DEWAN 10:06 AM ET

The United States economy gained a net 69,000 jobs in May, the Labor Department said, a dismal showing as the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent.

Watch how quick the idiot Conservo-loonies are to pin this economic ‘bump in the road’ on the incumbent.

Ironically, they’d be correct (because he has done nothing to fix the irreparable financial sector that melted down four years ago.) But that’s not why the Conserv-tards will blame him, they will blame him for not giving people who already have more money than they know what to do with, MORE tax cuts!

Funny how insanity never corrects itself.

Worse is how the corporate owned media keeps repeating this same sad one note tune.

Economix: Reaction to May Jobs Report, in Tweets
More From Economix: | Spring Slowdown | The Fed | Lagging Recovery

Wall Street Falls on Jobs Data 10:16 AM ET

The immediate reaction from Congressional leaders to the grim jobs report signaled little movement toward breaking the long, partisan deadlock over fiscal policy.

Euro Zone Unemployment Rises to a Record 11%
By DAVID JOLLY 9:11 AM ET

Ireland on Friday appeared headed toward adoption of the European Union’s fiscal compact, but stocks fell in Europe after data showed rising joblessness in the euro zone.

Car Sales Keep Up Healthy Pace
By BILL VLASIC 16 minutes ago

Chrysler reported a 30 percent gain in new-vehicle sales for May, Ford said its sales climbed 13 percent and General Motors reported an 11 percent increase.

Apparently people who are not paying their mortgage have plenty of money to buy new cars, funny how one thing makes room for the other.

Because inflation is OOC and NOBODY (outside the ‘executive suite) is getting a raise…so that leaves ‘the homeless’ to support the auto industry!

It may also explain why, in a time of sky-high fuel prices that SUV’s are still as popular as ever.

How sad is it that ‘living space’ now trumps fuel economy?

Which is another ‘red flag’ signaling just how ‘unsustainable’ our current social model has become.

The thing YOU need to wrap your head around is just how far those currently on the top will go to retain their top dog status?

Would they go as far as to ‘exterminate’ you and yours?

Just an opinion here but I’m gonna ‘opine’ yup!

In a heart beat good citizen.

It’s this goofy kind of economic calculus that throws the ‘supply and demand’ theory right out the window.

A strange thing occurs when people start using murder to ‘re-balance’ the equations,once you cross that line,‘more’ is always ‘better’.

It brings us back to the basic question of whether or not a whole planet is enough for a single capitalist?

Ironically, it isn’t…because in order to be a ‘capitalist’ (and not just a monkey marooned on a planet by itself) the capitalist monkey needs slaves to harvest the planet’s resources for him.

Can’t be a capitalist without slaves.

Now there’s a thought to chew over in your mind!

Funny how that ‘freedom’ thing keeps biting us in the backside when we least expect it.

So as the week draws to a close and ‘Massa’ lets you have your ‘two whole days off’, (unpaid), sit back for a moment and contemplate just how ‘free’ you aren’t.

If you dare.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Demos

Greetings good citizen,

Yesterday’s, er, ‘irrational’ surge in world-wide markets is being followed by a nosedive as we can see from the following headlines:

Wall Street Pulls Back
By REUTERS 23 minutes ago

Shares moved into negative territory and bank stocks declined despite some better-than-expected quarterly results.

But the banking sector ISN’T the freaking entire economy!
Yet we have this nonsense:

JPMorgan Chase's Earnings Beat Expectations
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ 37 minutes ago

The bank said it earned $1.31 a share in the first quarter of 2012, compared with $1.28 a share in the same period a year ago.

Lookie that! A whooping three fucking cents! (times a billion shares…WTF!)

Wait a minute, is that a mask hanging out of his back pocket next to the gun stuck in his waistband?

And who is that he’s talking to?

Wells Fargo Profit Rises 13%, as Revenue Increases
By BEN PROTESS 46 minutes ago

Wells Fargo reported earnings of $4.2 billion, or 75 cents a share, as its loan portfolio continued to improve.

Banks produce nothing but DEBT, good citizen, which should warn you to what’s going on when the ONLY ‘successful companies’ in your national economy happen to be in the financial sector…

When your economy is dominated by a ‘non-productive’ sector, you end up with this sort of bullshit: [The ten ways our democracy is crumbling]

1. Money and Politics
2. Voter Disenfranchisement
3. Our Skewed Distribution of Income
4. Tax Breaks for the Super-rich
5. Wall Street Bailouts
6. Deficit Hysteria
7. Crumbling Social and Physical Infrastructure
8. The Failure to Create Jobs
9. The Revolving Door
10. Worshiping the Market Gods

Is It Too Late for Democracy?

The game’s not over yet. We still have freedom of expression and the right to protest – more or less. Occupy Wall Street both showed how the debate could be altered, and how easily the authorities could end the encampments. So, it’s an open question whether we have the will to build and sustain a broad, powerful anti-Wall Street movement.

The financial rot is deeply impacting our democratic structures. It should worry us when Wall Street and its political minions warn that we might become the next Greece. They, of course, are referring to the debt crisis. But Greece is also the very place where finance is crushing democracy. Austerity is being rammed down the throats of the Greek people and democratic government can no longer protect the infirm and the unemployed from the onslaught of the oligarchs. It is both sad and frightening that it’s happening at the historical birthplace of democracy.

We all are Greeks.

It is the last remark that most of you should find, er, ‘objectionable’.

Because he’s right, we are still using a ‘highly bastardized’ form of a method created/pioneered by the ANCIENT Greeks.

(I need to tread carefully here as I’m married to one…)

Most of you are aware that I have been, er, ‘openly critical’ of those claiming to be ‘Democrats’ (mostly because their ideology is far from Democratic!)

The ‘bi-partisan legislation’ coming out of this supposedly ‘Democratic administration’ has been decidedly conservative.

And we can only wonder why that is…

Why is it that the only thing our ‘decide in our name without ever consulting us’ politicians can agree on is legislation that is favorable to or protects the already wealthy?

Which is to ask why does the writer of this article NOT champion a ‘purer’ form of democracy if he truly believes in ‘letting the people decide’?

 You see, we Anarchists believe in ‘true democracy’ where we have the RIGHT to vote directly on the law itself! (Anarchy = ‘rules without rulers’!)

What a wonderful world it SHOULD BE, but sadly those who feel compelled to DECIDE FOR US are too fearful to let us decide for ourselves (although they've done more than 'okay' for themselves...)

Which is to point out that there can be NO DEMOCRACY when only a few are allowed to participate in the decision making process!

Which is to point out that we can ALL agree on the basics and what we can’t agree on we probably shouldn’t be legislating!

Just another little something for you to play with from your uncle Gegner…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pardon Me?

Greetings good citizen,

As old as judges themselves, today’s topic will be the slippery slope of ‘pardons’…which may or may not be made public…at the discretion of the, er, ‘co-conspirators’.

Which is to wonder aloud, how much would you be willing to bet W. hasn’t been prosecuted for ‘war crimes’ BECAUSE he already has a ‘pardon’ in his pocket, issued by the sitting ‘jellyfish-in-chief’?

I mean his Dad (H.W.) ‘pardoned’ Reagan for his crimes against the state, so pardoning your predecessor is probably something that comes with the turf…done ’automatically’ on an ‘as needed’ basis.

But it begs the question, what does this say about our justice system?

One beneficiary, Burton Waldon, killed an 8-month-old boy in an alcohol-induced crash in 2001. Mr. Waldon, a high school senior at the time, pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence. He is a member of the prominent Hill Brothers Construction Company family, big-money political donors who give mostly to Republicans, including Mr. Barbour. An uncle of Mr. Waldon, Kenneth W. Hill Sr., sought and received a pardon from President George W. Bush in 2006, erasing a federal income tax conviction.

It is in this paragraph that we see the, er, ‘rationale’ behind the very existence of the, er, ‘executive pardon’…bad things sometimes happen to RICH/well-connected people.

(The understanding is seldom do you find a rich individual who IS NOT also ‘well-connected’…although the ‘soon to be bankrupt’ lottery winner is the only possible exception that comes to mind.)

Thus is it well-known THROUGHOUT HISTORY, that a ‘rich man’ will never see the inside of a jail cell…and, thanks to the rich man’s ‘connections’, he can also have the public record of his, er, ‘misfortune’ sponged clean…

To which I ask, Is THIS ‘Justice’?

You KNOW it’s not…but you can’t argue with (worthless) money, can you?

(This is one of the principal reasons why there will be no way to transfer funds between individuals under A Simple Plan.)

Equally as disturbing to some of you is that you will be judged ‘on your record’ your whole life through. If you’re a ‘miserable bastard’, difficult to get along with and do the absolute minimum required of you, don’t be surprised if you ‘reap what you sow’ come promotion time.

But I digress, we were discussing our badly broken justice system (and I get sidetracked when the opportunity to point out changes presents itself!)

I treat this subject delicately because people have an unfortunate tendency to ‘transfer’, they put themselves in the position of, er, ‘being able’ to buy justice…and it makes them more tolerant of the practice!

A pardon doesn’t make you a ‘better person’ it merely enables you to ‘pass yourself off’ as one.

How ironic is it that people (often the only ones) who venture into the public spotlight (not as ‘pop stars’ but as politicians) have the, er, ‘connections’ to, er, ‘sugar-coat’ their public images.

As we have witnessed, often these people’s private lives are, er, ‘exposed’ by those privy to the existence of such skeletons.

What we don’t know is how susceptible to ‘blackmail’ these people are. Who or what would they betray to keep their secrets, secret?

Because that’s where this sort of bullshit leads to.

It is also not the kind of thing you want ‘hidden’ in a decision maker’s closet.

(This is why this power will no longer rest with ‘select individuals’. Those who must live under the law will vote directly on the law!)

Legislators are TOTALLY UNNECESSARY! (In fact they are an impediment to Liberty!)

YOU cannot be ‘free’ if you are denied your ability to choose!

But again I digress! (Sort of a ‘hobby’ [although others may consider it a ‘fault’] of mine it seems.)

The very first ‘pillar of civilization’ is ‘equality’, the second pillar is Justice…to the point that we expect NOTHING LESS than ‘EQUAL JUSTICE under the law…and this ‘pardon bullshit’ makes a mockery of that!

I admit, it’s ‘nice’ to think that were we prosperous enough, we’d have the ability to ‘sanitize’ our pasts but I’d rather know about somebody’s skeletons than find out about them ‘after the fact’…(usually AFTER you’ve been sold down the river!)

Yet another ‘grievous flaw’ of our current political system.

But let’s back up a step or two and return to the ‘did he or didn’t he’ question of if Mr. Obama pardoned Mr. Bush?

Does the idea itself piss you off?

It should.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Oh, and if you want to alter the course of the current clusterfuck then your ongoing support for ASP would be appreciated.

Step one is to ‘spread the word!’

Why is that?

Greetings good citizen,

The world is a losing investment for those of us who don’t ‘own’ pricing power.

The few write the ticket and the rest of us pay for it…not in monetary terms but by sacrificing what we otherwise would have been entitled to.

So it should come as a surprise to no one that volatility in the markets is now the ‘new normal’ just as 9% unemployment has become the ‘new normal’ as globalization continues to rip our civilization apart.

“The best thing people could have done last month is nothing,” said Alec Young, an equity strategist at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research. “We don’t think that it’s a smart way to manage to be taking the temperature every day because you’ll be trading your portfolio till the cows come home.”

And volatility may not herald dips in prices — a study by Sam Stovall, a strategist at S.& P. Equity Research, found that markets since 1950 have typically been calm just before the highest consecutive price declines. But, he found, volatility goes up after prices start going down and the markets can remain nervous while prices recover.

Some longtime market observers attribute the skittishness to aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis.

“When there is uncertainty in the world, there is uncertainty in the market,” said James J. Angel, a professor of finance at Georgetown University. “After a big shock, it takes years for the markets to settle down.”

As of this morning the financial world was once again bleeding from the eye-sockets. There has already been one rally that ‘almost’ pushed the Dow into positive territory but it gave out and markets dropped to roughly half of their former lows.

Why? Nobody knows.

In sales we call this phenomenon ‘running out of stupid people’ but this shouldn’t happen to the stock markets because they have that foremost of market makers working for them, they are ‘the only game in town’.

They either play the game or the play makers ruin them…it’s that simple.

But that’s the ‘free markets’ for you, my way or the highway, right?

What do you mean no?

What planet did you say you were from again?

Never mind…like the theme of this piece, we’re going to take a little time to explore ’why is that?’ (across a multitude of topics so be prepared to shift mental gears…although it is, tangentially, all related.)

What do stock markets tell us in a world with a bankrupt financial system?

Short answer, nothing.

Just as I stumbled upon a video posted at Financial Armageddon this morning where some clueless fool blamed the latest ’recession’ on sub-prime lending. It’s like blaming fire on wood.

Why did the banks engage in all of that ’crazy’ lending? Because without it the Real Estate market would have collapsed and WHY would the real estate market have collapsed? Because payrolls have been completely stagnant for far too long! THERE WERE NO (too few) QUALIFIED BUYERS!

Which, ironically, is precisely where we find ourselves this very moment. NOTHING has changed.

Why have payrolls been stagnant for decades? Because ‘globalization’ removed what little ‘leverage’ workers had to demand higher pay for increases in productivity.

BOSS: “In lieu of raises this year I’m closing the plant an moving operations to China, you can all come…IF you can get a visa!

Bad news amigos, the land of a billion people don’t want you!

Make you wonder what kind of cat starves itself to death so the other cat can live high off the hog?

Is it a pragmatic cat or just a stupid one?

In my opinion the latter but time will tell, this race isn’t over yet by a long shot (and I think the ‘communist on the outside and capitalist on the inside‘ bastards have bitten off much more than they can chew.)

So, in a world on the verge of collapse, what other questions should we be asking?

How about the ‘War on Terra’? It most certainly is a bit too late start questioning the validity of the actions taken by a few crazed politicians but it will never be too late to correct them.

Um no irony should be lost on the fact that Israel ’pioneered’ the use of military force in police work. We have merely copied their example…and the civilian casualties are written off as collateral damage in the cause to keep the world safe from terrorists.

Oh and our politicians have to avoid all shiny, reflective things or they would find themselves face to face with the biggest, meanest, ugliest terrorists on the planet.

Talk about your viscous circle! If it weren’t for the bribes we pay for the ‘safe conduct’ of our convoys through Afghanistan the fucking Taliban would have gone bankrupt years ago!

Never mind what passes for Al Quida these days costs us a billion dollars a head to kill!

And every other week we kill their number two or number three operative at somebody’s wedding/funeral/birthday party.

Which is either a testament to their (much more robust than ours) chain of command or to the need to justify the murder of innocent civilians in the cause of ‘freedom’.

For our final ‘why is that’ question we return to the issue of crime and what principally constitutes ‘criminal activity’ in this bankrupt society of ours?

Isn’t the primary cause of all crime ‘adverse possession?’

In a world were everything is free from Mother Nature (not what we’re taught but indeed it is a fact) how can anybody be in possession of something that doesn’t belong to them?

Well, people don’t ‘belong’ to anyone but our fucked up government regularly deprives people of their freedom (instead of denying them membership in society, which is how it should be handled!)

What is the fundamental issue in a case of ‘adverse possession’? That the so-called ‘owner’ hasn’t been ‘paid’ for his/her property.

Why are so many people in prison if all money is (ultimately) ‘funny’?

The prison population would be EVENTUALLY reduced to zero while membership in civil society would also ‘diminish’.

Just not necessarily ‘proportionately’.

Not all crimes justify the withdrawal of membership in society.

As you can see, good citizen, it is more than just our system of government that needs replacing.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Perception Management

Greetings good citizen,

It is small comfort to me to see my dire predictions starting to ‘bear fruit’. That said I have yet to be accused of being ‘Chicken Little’ either.

It is obvious to even the most obtuse among us that all is NOT well.

However, things are much worse than they appear to be on the surface…

No. 384: Markets, July Retail Sales, June Trade Balance August 12th, 2011

Financial Circumstances Remain Unstable and Threatening

U.S. Dollar Is in Serious Trouble

Retail Sales Gain Was Statistically Meaningless and Largely Reflected Inflation

Trade Data Suggest Downside Pressure on Upcoming GDP Revision

You all know that the above bullet points are true; you are also aware that NONE of them made headlines…

Such trivial matters are beneath your notice.

The sad truth here is they are beyond your ability to change/compensate for them…

Which will prove tragic in the end.

Like this article which pretty much proves the old axiom ‘ignorance is bliss’

[Considering the second factor,] people do not understand how much wealth has been withheld from them. The average person has never personally experienced or seen the excessive wealth and luxury that the mega-rich live in. Wealth inequality has grown so extreme and the wealthy have become so far removed from average society, it is as if the rich exist in some outer stratosphere beyond the comprehension of the average person.

As the Guardian report states:

“… having little daily contact with the rich and little knowledge of how they lived, they simply didn’t think about inequality much, or regard the wealthy as direct competitors for resources. As the sociologist Garry Runciman observed: ‘Envy is a difficult emotion to sustain across a broad social distance.’… Even now most underestimate the rewards of bankers and executives. Top pay has reached such levels that, rather like interstellar distances, what the figures mean is hard to grasp.”

In fact, the average American vastly underestimates our nation's severe wealth disparity. This survey, featured in the NY Times, reveals that Americans think our society is far more equal than it actually is:

“In a recent survey of Americans, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States. While recent data indicates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all wealth, people estimated that this group owned just 59 percent – believing that total wealth in this country is far more evenly divided among poorer Americans.

It is true that most of us ‘satisfy’ ourselves with our lot in life, it is our ‘ignorance’ of how badly we are being ‘ripped off’ that keeps our collective outrage in check.

I have repeatedly pointed at the, er, ‘injustice’ of what makes the wealthy, wealthy but most of you could care less, you’ve got yours so you don’t begrudge them theirs…

And this is because you turn a blind eye to what this ‘indiscriminate robbery’ results in for the stratums below your ‘okay place’ on the proverbial ‘totem pole’.

In fact, it is these ‘unfortunates’ that make you ‘grateful’ your circumstances aren’t worse than they are…(how sad is THAT?)

In this respect YOU are responsible for THEIR suffering! YOU are condoning being ripped off by blindly accepting the ‘excuse’ that the ‘unfortunate’ brought their circumstances upon themselves…

Weird little circle there, isn’t it?

I hope it leaves a mark, a permanent one on your soul! (Leave aside the debate of whether or not atheists believe in immortal souls, the jury is still out on that one…)

Understand good citizen, there is and always has been only one solution to the crisis of ‘inequity’ and that is intolerance!

But no, it seems the grasping and the greedy have deluded themselves into thinking they can hide it from the rest of us or perhaps more laughably, fight us all off!

If you’re going to start shooting to ‘protect’ what you think is yours, you’d better have enough ammo to kill all of us!

You know, this blog was originally titled ‘it’s all in how you look at it’, well, once again we see that your entire perspective changes depending on your ‘point of view’.

It is even more ironic to note what we ‘tolerate’…

Worse, it is positively chilling to contemplate what we willfully ignore.

Go along to get along has had some very tragic consequences especially if we look at it from the perspective of our children’s future.

I am NOT wagging my finger in your face and this definitely isn’t a ‘holier than thou’ speech.

It IS a ‘I can’t do it alone’ rant…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

2 years after…yes, it was 2 years ago today.

More valuable than gold!

Greetings good citizen,

For time out of mind (as far as the West is concerned) people didn’t bother to steal food as the punishment far outweighed the short-term benefit.

Although we can only speculate what would happen to a ‘first time’ offender if he were nabbed for, er, ‘hijacking’, that isn’t quite an accurate desciption of what took place here.

In late March, they contacted Allen Lund. The broker carried out a standard series of checks, including verifying the company’s federal registration and its insurance coverage. Then it assigned the company to pick up a load of tomatoes from a shipper in Miami on Monday, March 28.

Over the next four days, working through Lund and three other freight brokers, E&A Transport picked up four more loads of tomatoes, a load of cucumbers and a load of frozen meat from shippers across Florida, including in the Miami area, Palmetto and Punta Gorda.

At each pick-up, a driver working for E&A showed up at the wheel of a tractor with a refrigerated trailer. The shippers loaded the pallets of tomatoes or the other goods into the trucks and the driver drove off. None of the loads got to their destinations.

The load of frozen meat, worth about $48,000, was picked up from a meatpacker north of Miami. It was bound for Salem, Ore. It is missing, too.

“This was definitely a smart organization,” said Mr. Holland, who was the broker on the load of meat. “They were smooth as silk.”

The thieves sought out loads headed for Detroit, Hartford, the Hunts Point market in New York, Los Angeles and Sacramento. Mr. Holland said that gave them time to carry out multiple thefts before the alarm was sounded, since in each case it would be from two to four days before the loads were due at their destinations. Brokers and shippers suspect the thieves had a buyer for the produce.

In this case nobody got a gun stuck in their face. Contracts were drawn up and what appears to be a legitimate trucking company was contracted to pick up the goods and deliver them to their respective destinations.

So, in a case of what looks like fraud, what would a first time offender be facing, punishmentwise?

If he had a real good attorney, he could probably get away with probation and community service.

But that’s beside the point, isn’t it?

The point, the real story here is a combination of ‘who took the food’ and why?

The theory put forth here is the food was stolen for resale…although the dollar figures don’t seem to justify the risk involved.

You can indeed speculate that the loads were ‘insured’ (although for how much will remain unknown.) in the beginning insurance is ‘attractively priced’ something that changes quite quickly as the ‘risk’ (losses) mounts.

Why food and why now?

Should we be on the lookout for a big time pasta fest (with 4 truckloads of tomatos comprising the bulk of the missing cargo?)

Hard to say good citizen, you know the uprisings across the Middle East have more to do with food shortages than ‘freedom’ but the rat-bastard capitalists don’t want you even thinking about what they will soon inflict upon you in the not too distant future.

Yeah, there was a blurb in today’s paper about inflation being ‘up slightly’ due to the relentless increases in food and gasoline.

Using the ‘New (Republican) math’ inflation is only up a few hundredths of a percent. But measured the ‘traditional’ way, (without all of the fudge and bullshit) inflation is running around nine and a half percent.

Make no mistake about it good citizen, food (in times of scarcity, regardless of the cause) is more valuable than gold!

Something to keep in mind after the collapse of civilization, a hoard of food is just as likely to get you killed as quick as a pile of gold will. Maybe even quicker given that the only thing gold will be marginally good for after the collapse is buying food…but that ‘assumes’ a seller (stupid enough to take troublesome ‘yellow metal’ over any number of vastly more useful items.)

But we still drift off topic.

One can assume this story attracted media attention because of the ‘slickness’ of the crime, four or five truckloads of food that have ‘disappeared’ after being legitimately contacted for.

Left to our imaginations is how much more food and toher items are simply ‘never making it to its intended destination’ that doesn’t get reported (to anyone beyond the trucker’s insurance carrier?)

I’d posit this puzzle is much larger than it appears and could account for the absence of food riots that should have broken out among the tens of millions of newly homeless created by globalization.

Not that such an untoward occurance would be considered ‘newsworthy’ by the coporate owned media. Which is to say if there were food riots it is doubtful we’d see it on the six o’clock news, even as a sidebar.

Did I mention the rat-bastard capitalists?

Four truckloads of tomatos makes for a curious mystery…throw in a truck load of mystery meat and it sounds like you have a Roman festival in the works…the only thing missing is the truck load of pasta.

And that may have slipped through the net…probably on purpose.

Just as mercenaries make no sense in a ‘free’ society, neither does stealing food in a land where more than a third of the population is on some form of food assistance.

Again, the numbers are ‘households’ and not individuals.

If prices get much higher it is only going to make the ‘theft’ problem that much worse…a circle without end.

And speaking of ‘ends’, I leave you here to ponder the true nature of this story.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Liberty

Greetings good citizen,

There are a few topics that piqued my interest this weekend, such as the kerfuffle over the Iranian election results…where US pundits pointed out if they had only cut the margin down to a slim few percent, it would have been enough to keep the ‘losers’ quiet.

Interesting observation to make, no?

Which brings us to a couple of other ‘observations’, such as how the Conservatives have only 20% of registered voters while Liberals regularly poll in the 50% range…yet our elections, of late, have all been ‘squeakers’.

Here’s a rhetorical question for you: Do you suppose Mr. Obama would have won if he had competed for the job using the Republican agenda he has so firmly embraced on the economy?

How would either candidate have faired if they had been compelled to present a blueprint for solving the economic crisis before ‘earning’ the Presidency?

Obviously, after eight years of tax cuts, Mr. McCain ‘failed’ to prove he had a viable, workable economic recovery plan…but he didn’t lose by a particularly large margin either.

Sadly, Mr. Obama ‘talked a better game’ but the actual results of his administration’s actions have yet to produce a positive outcome.

Back to the subject at hand, The president of Iran is a figurehead position with no real power (all real decision-making power rests in the hands of the Ayatollah and the ‘Islamic Council’.) So allowing the public to vote for this puppet serves what purpose again?

Oh yeah…it’s the same ‘exercise in futility’ that we partake of over here. It’s known as the ‘illusion of participation’.

We elect the guy (or someday, gal) that presents themself as the one to do the job…but then they don’t do it…and there isn’t a thing we can do about it.

Our ‘say’ is done so we have to wait another four years before we get another chance…which has so far produced unsurprisingly identical results.

The Guy/Gal knows what to say but they never do any of it once they are elected.

More disturbing is how every time we fall for this ‘sucker’s bet’, we end up worse off than we were.

This is not the type of game any rational, free society should be subjecting itself to.

The economy has lost millions of jobs, many of them well compensated positions and we all know the truth, NONE of them are coming back.

If you shrink the amount of money circulating within a society, there will be less for everyone.

Which brings us to the severely ‘twisted’ Stock Markets that no longer tell us anything about the economy or economic performance.

Since hitting their ‘March lows’ the stock market has gained some 35% and is finally ‘positive for the year’…but what does that really mean?

The losses suffered by your 401k ‘started’ at the 14,000 level. The fact that the markets are back up in the 8,700 range means you retirement account has revived a little over the past three months.

Like I said, jobs will not return nor will the prices that boosted stocks up to the 14,000 level EVER return in your lifetime.

Businesses will not ‘expand’ because their customer base is broke, there’s no one to sell to, so there’s no reason to hire more employees.

Worse, the, um, ‘inventory’ of highly qualified people will remain at a very high level for a real long time, reducing the ‘incentive’ to pay the qualified any more than absolutely necessary.

And in case you haven’t noticed, ‘prevailing wages’ are dropping like a rock as current employees are trading today’s income for tomorrow’s job security.

So where are those ‘green shoots’ they keep blabbing about? It’s a Chimera good citizen, so far all of the ‘green shoots are numbers that have been ‘less bad’ than ‘expected’.

Which leads us right back to the ‘tight-rope’, good citizen. If we wait long enough, eventually the ‘year over year’ numbers will ‘improve’, if only due to population growth.

Can you see the future? We need only look at Japan to see what our economy is doomed to become.

Most of us that are ‘lucky’ enough to find work will find it as ‘contractors’, where the employer pays us a salary and nothing else. Job security will be considered a luxury of the past and employers will ‘replace’ you periodically with people willing to work cheaper/longer than you…and there will be nothing illegal about this.

As Joe is fond of pointing out, this will be a return to the McKinley era, a time when the boss was king and did whatever seemed good to him. (including beating the hired help.)

If that’s not bad enough for you, we will also see the return of child labor as beleaguered and besieged communities either seriously curtail or do away with public education programs entirely.

If they can repeal Glass-Stegal then they can repeal the education act.

Which will be a bit bizarre as one in every three jobs will be ‘police/security related’ and they will ‘somehow’ find the funds to pay for that.

For all of their squawking about the Constitution, protecting your ‘liberty’ is the last thing these vultures are concerned with. Liberty is for them, not the ‘unwashed riff-raff’.

Do you think I’m being overly pessimistic?

All of these conditions existed right here in the US a little more than a hundred years ago.

The fact that it was ‘worse’ elsewhere is somehow not particularly comforting.

‘Liberty’ the ‘freedom from oppression’ is a precious thing, a thing to be guarded zealously.

History shows that only those found ‘worthy’ of liberty enjoy the freedom it provides. Both the Greeks and the Romans could not ‘conceive’ of a civilization without slavery…an idea that has ‘persisted’ to this very day among our ‘elite’.

If you weren’t born into the tyrannical system of ‘income streams’ that make the elite who they are, you are on the outside looking in.

Simply put, if you weren’t born with a trust fund, you can forget about even becoming one of them unless you were gifted with an intellect so enormous that you can create something only you understand…so it can’t be stolen from you.

Consider tonight’s post as a ‘warning’, the ‘experiment’ of social equality is drawing to a close. Battle lines are being drawn and this time there will be no offers of ‘appeasement’, this time it will be a battle to the death.

Understand that the ‘new deal’ was indeed ‘appeasement’. Starting with the Reagan Revolution, the New Deal has been systematically dismantled.

And now it’s time to see who’s going to return to bondage peacefully and who, if any, will fight for their freedom.

Let me assure you of one thing good citizen, there is no way in hell we can ‘vote’ our way out of this…we stand no more chance of that than the Iranians do.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The 'Common' Good

Greetings good citizen,

After posting last night I came upon this piece over at The Economist’s View which asks the question whether or not economics, as it is taught today, is a ‘failure’ and what (if anything) can be done to remedy this problem?

It is not an unfair question and in part illustrates the nature of the problem. Especially when we consider that the number of non-economists that accurately predicted this crisis dwarf the number of professionals that even suspected something was amiss.

Naturally, this unseemly outcome is the product of the ‘assumptions’ upon which both sides based their ‘models’.

With that said, why do you think a large majority of the population remained ‘blind’ to what in hindsight was a slow motion train wreck of epic proportions?

Once again, I posit that the error resides in most people’s basic assumptions. How did so many people get it so wrong? We have to rewind to the beginning for the answer.

Every Democratic Republic on the planet was founded primarily to protect the ‘Common Good’, yet as we gaze out upon the scorched earth that is the world economy, there is so much poverty and neglect that it is obvious the world’s Democratic Republics have failed miserably at their ‘founding principle’.

Some people have done well at the direct expense of the rest. So it becomes obvious that the definition of ‘common’ has become corrupted.

This is why so many people didn’t suspect that there was anything wrong with exporting the bulk of our economy because they ‘assumed’ the government was ‘protecting’ the common good.

Employers enjoyed lower labor costs/benefit obligations while consumers ‘enjoyed’ (kinda sorta) lower prices and everybody wins! Except when they don’t.

As we can clearly see today, it is (and was) absurd to claim that no one ‘foresaw’ the ultimate outcome of such a policy. Why didn’t anyone point out that reducing the size of the labor force would naturally produce a huge unemployed population?

What happened over the last two years was we reached the ‘tipping point’ where the number of workers made redundant over ran the number of consumers necessary to support economic growth.

You’d think the ‘credit bubble’ would have been enough to wake people up to the fact that the government had failed to protect our interests. I mean, when it becomes necessary to spend more than you make just to keep your head (temporarily) above water, obviously ‘somebody’ has dropped the ball.

People, a vast majority of them, foolishly believed the government ‘had their backs’ because they believed that the government existed to protect ‘the common good’.

What should strike everyone as odd is there has never been a public dialog regarding what, precisely, constitutes ‘the common good’.

Which is not to ignore that there has been no shortage of people making proposals for ‘the common good’. Every proposed new piece of legislation has the ‘common good’ as its foundation…even if it is not particularly ‘good’ for all members of the public.

Understand good citizen the government is a ‘shield’ that is supposed to protect the interests of society from the rapacious appetites of the powerful…but that’s not how things have worked out, have they?

The banks ‘lobbied’ the government to repeal ‘restrictive legislation’ that prevented banks from being engaged in what can best be described as monetary activity that posed ‘dangerous’ conflicts of interest.

That done, the banks immediately proceeded to engage in precisely these activities; in less than a decade they managed to ‘re-create’ the conditions that brought about the last Great Depression’.

Only this time it’s worse…those toxic asset the banks (knowingly and willfully) created, well, most of them ended up in your retirement account! (How’s that for the perfect ‘trash for cash’ scheme?)

Now that a majority of the world’s pension funds are worthless and this is being used as a ‘justification’ to hand the banks taxpayer funds!

The government knows who perpetrated this ‘heist’…you’d think they’d outlaw these toxic, unregulated assets and ‘claw back’ these funds…but that’s not happening!

In fact good citizen, it’s become pretty obvious that ‘our protectors’ are no longer looking after our interests.

While the Neo-cons wail and gnash their teeth at the prospect of ‘nationalizing’ even one bank, all of these criminal enterprises (Investment banks) should be put permanently out of business and everyone above the level of file clerk should be arrested and charged with felony fraud! (With no bail possible.)

Let us subtly change gears here so we can address the central issue, which is, don’t you know, the degree to which what passes for ‘our’ government is now a ‘criminal enterprise’.

Perhaps the first thing to address is the issue as to whether or not the government, as established, was EVER intended to serve ‘the common good’.

If you examine our government’s structure (even casually) you will notice that it is specifically designed to limit the input of the, um, non-powerful. Whether this is a ‘flaw’ or an ‘oversight’ is immaterial as nobody has bothered to correct it in over 200 years.

The next ‘loose board’ in our political building is the total absence of a meaningful accountability lever. The most a citizen can do if their elected official acts against their interests is not to vote for them once their term expires…and by then the damage is done.

Californians succeeded in ‘recalling’ their governor but there are no such provisions to recall people elected to Federal Office.

It is no coincidence that most states don’t have recall provisions in their constitutions either.

It’s a fairly new initiative and its being fought tooth and nail by…gee, once again the finger is pointed at the neo-cons!

We stand as much of a change of ‘persuading’ a sitting member of congress to endorse a federal recall measure as we do of finding one that will champion the most basic right of us all, the Human anti-exploitation law.

These are two very sad failings indeed because they both act to keep the common person powerless to defend themselves. Not only is it impossible to dump corrupt politicians but you can’t sue the government for its criminal acts!

Here I am compelled to enumerate the criminal acts of, um, this government.

1. The abject failure to protect the jobs of this nation’s workers.
2. The abject failure to prosecute criminal fraud in the financial sector.
3. The ‘pardoning’ and overturning of convictions of politicians and political appointees.

We could add the failure to even investigate the lack of oversight or accountability of various government agencies.

Um, I am in full agreement with the notion that poverty is not the ‘natural condition’ of mankind. Hundreds of millions of US citizens have been ‘marginalized’ in a vain attempt to maintain the ‘status quo’.

This condition is aided and abetted by a government that ‘shields’ the right of the wealthy to profit unjustly at the expense of the population at large.

When a government goes this ‘bad’ it is time to clean house and replace it with a system that reflects our new ‘realities’.

Infinite growth is neither possible nor desirable. The only way to successfully derail the drive for endless growth is to put an end to the incentives that make raping society ‘profitable’ for the owners of resources.

This locking up of ‘common resources’ for private gain is directly responsible for the mounting wave of impoverishment that threatens to return our civilization to serfdom.

The ‘common good’ is no different from the ‘greater good’ yet there isn’t a Democratic Republic on the entire planet that places the needs of the majority of its citizens ahead of the desires of their wealthiest citizens.

It should be obvious that Democratic Republicanism is no different from economic dictatorship, the government exists to protect the interests of the wealthy and only the interests of the wealthy.

I don’t know about you good citizen but this is NOT what I signed up for.

I did not sign up for this ‘illusion of participation’ that is used to prop up the corresponding illusion of freedom.

You have no say and therefore you have no choice…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner