Postcards from the 'economic desert'

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, let’s take a look at the flip side of what living in the ‘economic desert’ has produced:

A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told The Associated Press.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You couldn’t get a ‘straight answer’.

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

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

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

Short answer, no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some fucking choice, isn’t it?

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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

PRIVATIZED!

Greetings good citizen,

How can our civilization be collapsing while we are still achieving technological breakthroughs like this one ?

“This is, I think, going to be recognized as a significantly historical step forward in space travel,” SpaceX’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said during a news conference. “Hopefully the first of many to come.”

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

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

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

Because you’d be correct, it isn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sustainability

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fried (as in cooked)

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

How do you argue with a broken mind?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What caused them? Slashing taxes!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big surprise, huh?

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Done Deal

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facebook Stock Falls Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that includes ‘lawmakers’ at all levels.

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

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

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

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

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

But such is the game of ‘retribution’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Capitalism 2.0

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

Until we implement the Human Anti-exploitation law, no one (except the owners) is safe:

Our economy is dominated by a monoculture business model, Kelly says, driven largely by publicly traded corporations that have built in pressure from Wall Street for maximum short-term earnings. But a healthy, living economy needs biodiversity. We can find this if we begin to look around -- across the U.S. and the world -- where there are businesses designed not for maximum profit, but with a mission-driven social and economic architecture. One of these models is the "social enterprise."

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

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

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

Do YOU see ANYTHING ‘new’?

Short answer, no.

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

Yup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How fucking stupid can you get?

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

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

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

So what’s left?

Fucking whacko Libertarians! (Pretending to be Democrats)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to the subject at hand.

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

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

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

The ‘answers’ lie within A Simple Plan

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Dumb and Trusting

Greetings good citizen!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet we have this tripe to contend with

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTHING!

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

WTF!

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

Never happen!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The decision, as always, is yours.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner