M & A

Greetings good citizen,

As it has for the past quarter century, the global marketplace continues to shrink and the capitalists continue to call this ‘progress’.

Now let’s conduct a thought experiment to see how many of you understand what’s happening.

You all know what the objective of the game of monopoly is, don’t you?

And nothing yet invented demonstrates capitalism in action better than this straight-forward board game!

The objective is to ‘bankrupt’ all of the other players.

Now marvel for a moment, once over the game’s popularity and marvel again that it is the WORLD’S primary operating principle!

NOT that you had any say in this…our self-professed ‘betters’ laid out the ground rules and have ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ regarding who gets what, when so nobody (except the hired help) really ‘loses their shirt’.

What do you make of this headline?

TOP NEWS
DealBook
With Confidence on an Upswing, Mergers Make a Comeback
By PETER LATTMAN

Merger activity has suddenly roared back to life, with the latest megadeal being the Berkshire-led acquisition of Heinz.

Berkshire and 3G Capital in a $23 Billion Deal for Heinz

Are you ‘happy’ that you are being pushed closer to insolvency by being denied yet another choice?

The Heinz ‘merger’ is bad enough but after losing Eastern and United now we see American Airlines ‘merging’ with US Air…and what do you suppose the first thing they’ll do will be?

Why it will be ‘eliminate redundancy’!

Tens of thousands will lose their jobs and my, oh my what a fine job market it is to be cutting thousands of ‘service industry’ jobs in!

What do you suppose corporate controlled Washington will do about this?

Same thing they’ve always done, of course…launch more drones and have the cops beat more protesters!

Here I am, protesting ‘monopolies’ when, under A Simple Plan there will only be one, er, ‘airline’ (But you can fly for free! Restrictions apply…) just as other public utilities will be operated ‘monolithically’ to better serve mankind.

The difference between monopolistic ownership and no ownership is the ‘profit’ angle.

Under A Simple Plan, public utilities (like Airlines) exist to ‘serve the public’, under capitalism they exist solely to enrich the capitalist.

The ‘affordability’ of airfare never even enters the calculation (under the current system.)

If you’ve gotta get there quick, they’re the only game in town and you’ll pay what they tell you to pay…until the pool of paying customers shrinks to the point where it can no longer support the industry, then the industry will collapse catastrophically!

But that’s capitalism for ya!

(Actually it isn’t ‘for you’; it’s for them!)

Back to the original question, does the sudden appearance of the Heinz merger mean the M&A drought has ended?

HA!

Seriously?

Well, you can believe what you like but Bubba, there isn’t enough ‘market share’ out there to fill a thimble, but knock yourself out…try to buy more!

We can only assume the ‘logic’ behind the take-over of Heinz is not only is it a condiment, it can double as a soup!

Heck, hit it with some Italian seasonings and you’ve got spaghetti sauce, who knew!

Which represents the ‘danger’ of capitalist tampering. The drive to maximize applications often ruins the product across the board.

Which is to say after ‘cost reducing’ the production process the product will taste like watery tomato juice and there will be no ‘going back…’

Am I belittling one of the fundamental processes of the free market? You bet I am!

If you’ll allow me the liberty I would backstep to yesterday where we discussed money’s one useful function.

And yet Heinz will be ruined in a futile attempt to squeeze more ‘money’ out of the basic set up.

If you like your ketchup, best to head out and buy a few cases now, before they wreck it chasing ‘imaginary’ gains.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pillars (1)

Greetings good citizen,

It is not unusual for the news cycle to ignore the issues we should be discussing, so it was today when I couldn’t find an ‘appropriate’ article that would allow me illustrate (one of) the pillars of A Simple Plan.

Thus today’s ‘lecture’ will be on ‘what are the ‘pillars’ of A Simple Plan?’

The first pillar is equality, without equality there is no justice…

Naturally, nature doesn’t do ‘equal’ and NOBODY is qualified to ‘adjust’ perceived ‘natural inequalities’.

So it is, for our purposes in this discussion, 'equal' refers to the principle of ‘equal treatment under the law’.

This is not ‘new’ however, like anarchy it also has never been tried, never mind achieved.

Because the concept of equal treatment (under capitalism) stops exactly there, at the courtroom door…because that’s where ‘equality’ under capitalism (allegedly) exists…in the courtroom, everywhere else, class war reigns.

(And you KNOW our current inoperative economy is the way it is because the elite ‘own’ the courtroom too…so there goes ‘equality’…)

Which would be to opine that equality is non-existent, under our capitalist rubric at any rate.

Thus the base of the first pillar under A Simple Plan is the Human Anti-exploitation law.

How does equality figure into ‘anti-exploitation’?

What applies to one applies to ALL, that is equality.

So the Human anti-exploitation law makes it illegal for one human to make his/her living from the ‘sweat’ of another human.

This, in fact, outlaws the entire employer/employee relationship.

It also bans selling as a means of making a living. (Your ability to buy cheap and sell dear exploits the buyer.)

So if you can’t buy and sell and you can’t hire anyone (for a profit) how do you make a living?

You cut out the middleman and work for society.

Yes, good citizen, humanity is the customer and the resources to make what humanity needs belong to all of us…so this ownership nonsense should have gone out the window with the collapse of monarchy…but it didn’t.

Now we have a worse situation on our hands…we may have rid ourselves of ‘absolute rulers’ of the lands we live in but we still have them ruling our places of employment!

Worse, this is happening in a time when there aren’t enough jobs to go around!

How do we fix this?

Under (every owner a king) capitalism, we can’t! (Short of the Lord Creator [of Christianity] appearing in the sky and commanding it, it ain’t gonna happen!)

Imagine if Allah appeared in the heavens over Washington DC? What do you think the Israelis would do?

But I digress…(although certain ‘thought experiments’ are irresistible! I also feel compelled to remind you that Gegner is an atheist so the only thing Gegner expects to appear in the sky is rain…in its various forms.)

While the capitalist defends the indefensible by insisting it’s not their fault there isn’t enough ‘market share’ to drive ‘full employment’, this merely flips the problem on its head.

Their unwillingness to pay their employees is what is driving the global ‘demand drought’. (We need not even go into the massive mismanagement issues that are evident through out the commerce system world-wide.)

So how ironic is it that the solution to our broken economy lies in the ending of predatory capitalism?

What the clueless among you (and those damn Libbies really are clueless) need to understand is much of what we do NEEDS DOING (and we’d do it regardless of if we got paid to do it!)

Again, STUPID Libbies would interpret that as an argument against paying because they don’t understand money’s ONE (count ‘em) ‘useful purpose’.

Money is a ‘regulator’; it restricts access.

Without money you’d never get within a hundred yards of a restaurant…although the ‘lack of help’ (nobody would work there for any amount!) might make you give up your booth.

Ironically (again) the (stupid) Libbie’s solution to this problem is slavery, which they are perfectly cool with (until the chains are slapped on THEM!)

Then it’s ‘tragically unfair!’

So under the pillar of Equality, you would work ‘for society’ and your money would be for YOU! When you went to procure the necessities of life NOBODY (not even society) would receive your ‘money’, it would simply be erased from your account, having served its one useful purpose!

Um, I didn’t intend to expend an entire essay on a single pillar but the first is the ‘foundation’ of A Simple Plan.

Without ‘equality’ there isn’t a civilization that is worth squat…and the only way we know that is by the ‘success’ of past races.

While our education is ‘Euro-centric’ in this nation, the most successful civilization on the planet to date was the Native (North) Americans.

Native American history is an embarassment of riches yet we shun it in favor our blood-thirsty European heritage…at the behest of the capitalists among us.

(Full Disclosure, Gegner is NOT [to the best of his knowledge] even ‘part’ Native American, my admiration of their culture is completely unbiased.)

No irony should be lost on the fact that the Native peoples used banishment as a punishment for bad behavior, so Exile is rooted in ‘custom’ as a sensible solution.

And then, like now, the assumption was that you couldn’t be ‘fixed’…so your genes were excluded from the gene pool.

Sort of makes you wonder where humanity would be today if it had adhered to this passive ‘process of elimination’?

How sad is it good citizen that the genes that should be eliminated from our society belong to the powerfully stupid?

No irony should be lost on the fact that this is where the idea that criminals were ‘salvageable’ was born.

Which opens a different door, many of today’s criminals have done no wrong, while many who have done wrong haven’t been prosecuted for their crimes (Thanks to their criminal relatives!)

Which is all leading to the second of our three pillars, justice.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. We cannot address the world’s problems if we are unwilling to face the world as it really is.

While it appears I advocate certain unorthodox beliefs, it is the casting out of these beliefs that coincides with the disintegration of the fabric of human society.

Like the Libertarian/Republican insistence that there is no such thing as a human social contract.

Peculiar because this is how slavery became widespread.

While the capitalist points to our (ever) diminished ‘faith in God’ (as the reason our society is failing), the realist points to Justice!

Funny how the capitalist is the first one to defend and invoke ‘god’s right’ to retribution.

If I’ve done wrong, let God punish me! (Knowing full well it won’t happen.)

I say it’s time we give the capitalist God the helping hand he has always needed.

When the capitalist is thirsty for justice he has no patience with God. When the shoes are reversed, it’s the other way around.

SOTU

Greetings good citizen,

Well, the SOTU speech last night has us all scratching our heads, because it was nothing we haven’t heard a thousand times before.

Maybe it was comforting when more competent leaders told us we were in the process of rectifying longstanding wrongs…but in my mid-fifties, I’ve heard all of this crap before and guess what, it’s getting worse!

Isn’t insanity defined as doing the same act repeatedly, each time expecting a different outcome?

Pray tell, explain to me how throwing money at an education system that trains our kids for jobs that aren’t here any more is going to help?

This is nearly as ludicrous as letting banks ‘audit’ themselves. Given the, er, ‘integrity’ of modern banking, just how ‘trustworthy’ would these self-audits be?

I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a fifty-foot pole!

But I digress, back to the ‘how we doin’ speech…

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"Every day, we should ask ourselves three questions as a nation: How do we attract more jobs to our shores? How do we equip our people with the skills to get those jobs? And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?"

PRESIDENT OBAMA, in his State of the Union address.

I’d start with a different first question. I’d start by asking how much longer are we going to put up with this BS?

Because the answer to the first question is moot. There used to be a lot more jobs here BUT our sell-out politicians signed ‘free trade agreements’ with every Banana Republic on the planet, pauperizing the nation as a result.

So don’t ask STUPID QUESTIONS like ‘How do we ‘attract’ more jobs to our shores?’ when you already know the answer.

We have to ‘out Banana Republic the Banana Republics’ and throw our STANDARD OF LIVING IN THE TOILET…(so ‘a few’ can be rich.)

Worse good citizen, you’d all have to be blind not to see that this is exactly the direction we are headed in!

Good for the capitalist, not so good for you and yours.

I’d use a stronger adjective than ‘good’ but this has to go on an unfirewalled page too.

Left unchecked good citizen our civilization is headed the way of Easter Island…all because nobody has the courage to stand up to ‘the insane money men’ and tell them ‘no!’

I do it regularly but as you can see a single voice has no effect…all I do is annoy them. (Even that remark is ‘vanity’, it far more likely they don’t know I exist!)

But we left two statements ‘unchallenged’, let us return to our ‘quote of the day’…

Our number two ‘mission’ is to how do we ‘equip’ our people to do the ‘jobs of tomorrow’?

Again, stupid question, we do it the ‘old fashioned way’…ON THE JOB TRAINING!

Our numbskull politicians would have you believe the people who perform commerce’s heavy lifting learned to do what they do in college.

We old people know better, AFTER college, your new employer TRAINS YOU on how THEY WANT IT DONE!

To the point that most college grads wonder why they bothered taking on all of that debt only to be spoon-fed everything they do.

But they don’t say anything because they write it off as ‘the cost of the job’. They invested tens of thousand in an education that will pay them back a million over the course of their career.

Without the degree (that they don’t use) they wouldn’t have gotten the job.

Simple.

But they want YOU to believe it was hard…when nothing changes.

Now we arrive at the last, er, ‘assertion’, which is as comical as it is farcial!

How do we ‘insure’ these new jobs pay a living wage?

How sad is it nobody has an answer to the second half of that statement (What is ‘a living wage?’)

Once upon a time after Europe was desolated by WWII and the last man standing was the US, a living wage was a ‘middle class’ income. Where the multiple redundant ‘middle manager’ made enough money to swing that (modest) home in the suburbs, put his kids through school and sock away enough for retirement all before reaching age 55!

Jr. got his twenty year mortgage in his twenties so it was paid off by the time he turned forty(ish) and he had the last twenty years to sock away cash to retire ‘in style’.

Now things are different.

There are no ‘middle managers’ just as there is no ‘redundancy’, the ‘market’ is supposed to take care of those trifles…if a void presents itself, the market will fill it (despite the enormous cost.)

The few have already waxed richer than their needs, pauperizing the rest of the world. Now we have enormous sums with no place to go and the global economy is locked in a dead stall…all so a few could be rich.

Since the rest of us have been condemned to death by this reckless action of our politicians, let us pray the rich are enjoying their wealth…and will enjoy doing their own heavy lifting after we’re gone.

Although I doubt we’ll vanish completely…

Stupid is as stupid does.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

(This post is ‘related’ to the larger series examining our civilization and how to repair/replace it.)

Government

Greetings good citizen,

In our ongoing series to highlight how we can change the world we discussed (briefly) the economic changes that need to be made in order to return society to prosperity.

What we didn’t do was touch upon the social ‘third rail’…not out of fear but due to the great degree of ‘ignorance’ that surrounds what politics should be about.

We have a landscape populated with starving, unemployed homeless people and all our politicians can talk about is gay marriage and gun control (along with Federal subsidies to get more cops and build new schools.)

Worse, politicians (and people with political ambitions) don’t see the need to change the conversation from what it was 200 years ago when the hot button was States rights Vs Federal rights.

Our new government, er, (bear with me) will be (as opposed to ‘should be') centered on Human rights.

How did our (Slaving) founders get it wrong? They had to avoid the issue of human rights so as not to offend the ‘monied interests’.

Worse, the founding of the US was seen as the birth of a ‘capitalist utopia’…which they rapidly learned would not work! But you have to give the capitalists credit, they are persistent if nothing else…(like intelligent, for example.)

Here it is two hundred years later and they are trying to pull the same stunt in China (which I predict will go horribly and catastrophically wrong.)

They tried to ‘capitalize’ the former Soviet Union and it blew up! (Just to give you an idea how toxic capitalism really is.)

So if capitalism is so toxic, how have we survived it for two hundred years?

Well, not all of us did. The death toll keeps rising as capitalism continues its death spiral.

Make no mistake about it, 99% of the murder rate is tied directly to capitalism.

And while it (again seems like) I am digressing, I am not. Capitalism is so ingrained in how we manage our society as to be inseparable.

And THAT is what I mean when I point to ‘ignorance in politics’.

Politicians regularly separate politics from commerce when, under capitalism, they are the same thing.

Ironically under A Simple Plan there are no politics…and political parties will be illegal.

I’ll go you one better, the ‘lie machine’ will be shut down too.

People who make their living molding public opinion will have to find a ‘real job’.

But now I digress, the ‘fourth estate’ is the subject of its own essay.

Under the new way of doing things we will have ‘direct democracy’…which means YOU will get to decide what is or isn’t illegal (within reason.)

Understand that our ‘leaders’, who will ‘earn’ their positions, will be in charge of the day to day business of keeping our society running. YOU will get to decide on the guidelines they’ll operate under.

Unlike today, leadership will NOT be in charge of the justice system. It will be an independent body charged with protecting society with a focus on preserving personal liberty.

These days money buys favorable legislation while ‘short-circuiting’ existing prohibitions. That will no longer be the case because we will not have ‘elected’ officials.

Our leaders will ‘win’ their positions by demonstrating they are the best candidate for the job via the tests!

Better! The tests are open TO ALL!* (Yeah, there is an exception that needs to be included here despite this being a far from definitive layout of A Simple Plan architecture.

(* You will not be permitted to test IF you are accused of an exile offense…and since false accusation is an exile offense we would hope nobody would bring such charges ‘frivolously’.)

IF we are to get ‘money’ out of the management of our society we need to put an end to political process designed to make candidates ‘beholden’ to the money interests.

And if we are to put human rights where they belong (number one) we must eliminate the influence of greed that routinely crushes compassion and understanding.

Spoken like a ‘true liberal’ wouldn’t you say?

Makes me wonder how many conservative heads explode reading my exhibits?

Because a true conservative doesn’t care about humanity or an uneven playing field, all a true conservative cares about is themselves.

Well our streets are full of hungry, homeless, unemployed people who are the ‘by-product’ of ‘compassionate conservatism’.

“We’re gonna end these folks suffering by farming out their jobs!”

Then we’ll cut their welfare and let them eat Democrats!

This, good citizen, is what ‘politics’ in the US has devolved into.

If you think it’s time for a change, I’m pointing the way.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. Just an observation but today's post on 2/12 is number 1212...coincidence?

And no I didn't take Sunday off to make it fit!

Indebted

Greetings good citizen,

Took a mental health day yesterday but the madness just keeps on coming…with the difference being I didn’t write about it.

Hopefully today’s topic will prove therapeutic. Instead of just pointing to the problem, today I’m also going to provide the solution!

So we begin with something that has been drummed into your head since childhood, the concept of ‘debt’…and how others take advantage of this ‘mis-education’.

Thought debtor prison ended in the 18th century? Think again.
February 3, 2013 |

Editor's note: America has a long history of treating the poor like criminals, from legislation banning the transportation of poor people across state lines to anti-vagrancy laws that could land you in jail if you didn't have a job or a home. We've come to rely on the criminal justice system to deal with the poor, even as more and more Americans fall into poverty. The following is part of a series that looks at the diverse ways poverty is criminalized in America, such as laws targeting the homeless, the surveillance of welfare recipients, the re-emergence of debtor's prisons, and extreme policing tactics like stop-and-frisk.

Let’s consider for a moment something you have been taught was impossible, imagine (if you can) a world without debt.

It actually should be easy to do. MOTHER NATURE DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER!

The (alleged) ‘owner’ of resources doesn’t have to pay for them so why should you?

(Stupid question, the owner makes his money selling what you need to you! (If nobody needs it what’s the point in owning it? Talk about carts and horses!)

EVERYTHING ON THIS PLANET is ‘free’…but it is not ‘infinite’…and that’s where they get you!

Money is the ‘regulator’ that is supposed to insure everybody gets their ‘fair share’…but that’s not how it works, does it?

Especially when money is used to ‘penalize’.

[Note: This can get real confusing quite quickly so I’m going to intentionally keep the variables to a minimum.]

The truly insidious part comes in when pay is linked to the ‘class’ of a worker as opposed to the kind of work they do.

A woman is paid less than a man and a colored is paid less than a white.

When neither one has anything to do with anything except the prejudices of (…mostly, the personnel department!) Why they are not prosecuted for their crimes remains a mystery…

But the desperate need to redefine the term criminal is the subject of another essay!

Possibly the next essay.

So debt is created when one’s source of income does not meet one’s needs. Which makes for a pretty damning statistic when 45% of the nation’s households qualify for and receive SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance…program.)

But this isn’t the EMPLOYER’S problem…it’s YOURS! (For not preventing the employers from buying the politicians...)

And no, that time I didn’t digress.

So who among us treats you like a criminal if you owe them money? It’s the employer’s financial partner, the Banker.

Now the employer owns the politician and the banker owns the employer…which makes for a pretty ‘unholy alliance’ doesn’t it? Remember the politicians control public servants and public servants control the justice system along with who does (or doesn’t) become a judge.

Does anyone else see a problem here…considering current ‘conditions on the ground’?

So how do we solve this ‘daisy-chained’ problem? Lawyers are Judge wannabes and politicians are nothing more than greedy actors and bankers…let’s not go there because there’s no ‘reason’ behind a bankers actions that can’t be chalked up to a single motivation…greed.

Because money makes this whole circus go round, how do we put the brakes on this rampant corruption?

We put an end to ‘elected officials’. They only exist to keep YOU out of the decision making loop!

Now let’s ‘solve’ the debt problem (and unemployment while we’re at it.)

Since the ‘purpose of commerce’ is to provide ‘the public’ (and that means ‘all’ of the public) with the goods and services it needs to live as comfortably as possible. (Yeah, my definition is a little more ‘generous’ than the typical ‘more for me’ capitalist is comfortable with. But that’s what we’re trying to solve, isn’t it?)

Debt should be (and will become under A Simple Plan) illegal. You won’t be able to pay anyone for anything because there won’t be any cash to pay them with.

Which is to point out that we would also ‘solve’ crime in one fell swoop and marvel at why we didn’t do it sooner…and the method is to outlaw ‘cash’ and all of its ‘substitutes’.

If you’re caught using ‘script’ you’ll be exiled.

IOU’s, Walnuts, acorns, seashells…they’ll all buy you a one way trip to the badlands if you’re caught trading them! (Just don’t do it.)

YOUR MONEY IS FOR YOU! You will be paid to do what you do by the profession you have chosen to work for…just as EVERYBODY ELSE will be paid by their profession SO THERE’S NO NEED FOR YOU TO PAY THEM TOO!

The proverbial ‘stack of lumber’ will be a ‘gimme’. Maintained by the people who do that for a living…at no cost to you!

How can we do this? MOTHER NATURE DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER! It’s all FREE!

We do what we do because it needs doing…why oh why should we allow a few pinheads to get rich while the rest of us bust our backsides to make ends meet?

And it all starts with throwing the politicians out of office! [I’m all for making the lot of ‘em ‘take the walk’ too but throwing them out and making them all get honest jobs SHOULD BE punishment enough.]

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Revolting

Greetings good citizen,

Seems as though the only people visiting the new page are the folks who ensure you’re complying with the terms of service…which doesn’t bother me at all.

Truth be told I ‘catch’ myself (when I’m composing) all the time. The angst that I let flow freely behind the firewall doesn’t like being ‘redirected’ into, er; ‘less provocative’ terms.

However, the time has come (and for my longtime readers I add ‘once again’) to discuss the ‘purpose’ behind this blog.

While I am very ‘opinionated’, I don’t try to tell you what to think. I feel I have my work cut out just trying to provide you with things to think about.

So the focus here is not ‘what to think’ but merely to think…as in ‘at all’.

One of the obstacles I encountered in trying to popularize A Simple Plan was nobody felt the need to learn a better way of doing things. Their parents taught them what to do and they’d teach their kids, worked for them and it will work (sort of) for you.

No irony should be lost on the fact that YOU dear reader, are the first generation (since the founding of this nation) that this strategy WILL NOT work for.

You CAN’T tell your kids what your parents told YOU because THIS ISN’T THAT WORLD ANYMORE!

The now famous “Go along to get along” advice is more likely to get your children killed than to help them move ahead in life.

What advice DO YOU give your children these days?

Sorry, can’t help you out because if WE don’t derail this crazy train there won’t be anything left to save!

Sort of brings us full circle to the need to discuss ‘alternatives’ to the way things get done now.

Your parents didn’t have to worry about such things, survivors of the Great Depression and TWO ‘wars to end all wars’; they know what worked and how to make the world ‘tick’.

But that’s not the world their kids have left for yours.

The New Deal planted a rather insidious seed in the minds of the privileged few…and the fact that they nearly destroyed the world’s economy AND THEY WEREN’T PUNISHED FOR IT wasn’t lost on these people born with a sense of entitlement.

Oh how their parents ‘suffered’ paying those workers all of that money they would have had to pay the tax man! (And that’s the only reason companies ‘competed’ for help…they don’t do it in Banana Republics because the government doesn’t dare tax them the way the New Deal Democrats taxed the Wall Streeters!)

Now it’s a hundred years later and we’re right back where it all began! Only this time there is nobody on the side of the downtrodden and destitute.

Because the One Percent has added a ‘lead lining’ to the go along to get along canard. You either do what they tell you or they’ll find somebody who will (and YOU’LL never work in this town again! A ‘hangover’ from the old days.)

While this tactic is the main ingredient opposing armies are made of; nobody has the backing to field the force these battalions of the ‘dispossessed’ can bring to bear.

Thus do the ‘entitled’ continue to press their advantage.

While whole armies of the dazed and confused remain clueless as to what to do about it.

Because nobody remembers that our government was designed by the very same ‘entitled people’ we are unable to wrest control from now.

Not that most of you need any convincing that we have some dangerous if not downright ‘feral’ people in charge of, well, the world as it turns out right now.

If we, the governed, don’t clip their wings (and soon) we will be unable to.

Although the ‘bad news’ is we don’t have the tools to clip their wings with…and you’d think the people who had just fought a bloody revolution would have thought about that but no. The ones who get to decide what comes next get to toss out any ‘limitations’ on their ambitions!

Thus do we have an empty toolbox.

We shouldn’t feel bad, everybody else has a system modeled after ours…so they’re tool-less to!

Which brings us to the topic of what are we fighting for and what can we ‘replace’ the current broken system with?

Because if we only change who’s in charge, our kids will find themselves faced with the same problems we face today.

It’s not ‘who’ runs thing but HOW THEY ARE RUN that MUST BE changed!

And that’s what the next series of posts will touch upon, an ‘alternative’ to how things are currently done.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Exceptional

Greetings good citizen,

As the snow flies outside (first serious storm of the season) the stock markets of Fantasyland have resumed their relentless upward march.

Besides someone sneezing, it appears those who cook our nation’s economic books have outdone themselves:

U.S. Trade Deficit Shrinks
By REUTERS 8:58 AM ET

The trade gap shrank in December to its narrowest in nearly three years, the government said, suggesting that the economy did better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.

Chinese Imports and Exports Soar in January 6:11 AM ET

I’m guessing the intention is to confuse the average reader but the headline tells us our trade deficit is shrinking while the footnote tells us our trade partner is going gangbusters…

I guess it makes sense if you flip it over and ignore the first part.

Which is to point out that the Chinese are NOT back on track for double digit growth, which drove them into the number two spot globally a couple of years ago.

The part that, er, puzzles me is how stupid the corporate owned media thinks the rest of us are? (We know it’s pretty dang stupid but the average clown on the street knows China’s double-digit growth was due to the capitalists of this country ‘exporting’ our jobs to the world’s most populous labor pool.

Once that stopped, the ‘growth’ disappeared’…so today’s decidedly false claim is once again a matter of ‘context’…

So no good citizen, it is just plain foolishness to claim the ‘economy’ (anywhere on the planet) is ‘booming’.

The Chinese economy may be doing ‘better than expected’ but you need to temper that with ‘expectations’ barely exceeded ‘death warmed over’.

Which brings us to our second offering of this snowy Friday

The continuing saga of American Exceptionalism!

America Is Far from #1

The latest Global Competitiveness Report comparing 144 countries shows the sorry state of our country's development.
February 7, 2013 |

"The Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013,” by the World Economic Forum, is the latest annual ranking of 144 countries, on a wide range of factors related to global economic competitiveness .

On each of their many rankings, #1 represents the best nation, and #144 represents the worst nation.

Gross Domestic Product is the only factor where the U.S. ranks as #1, which we do both on "GDP” and on “GDP as a Share of World GDP.”

Health Care has the U.S. ranking #34 on “Life Expectancy,” and #41 on “Infant Mortality.”

Education in the U.S. is also mediocre. On “Quality of Primary Education,” we are #38. On “Primary Education Enrollment Rate,” we are #58. On “Quality of the Educational System,” we are #28. On “Quality of Math and Science Education,” we are #47. On “Quality of Scientific Research Institutions,” we are #6. On “PCT [Patent Cooperation Treaty] Patent Applications [per-capita],” we are #12. On “Firm-Level Technology Absorption” (which is an indicator of business-acceptance of inventions), we are #14.

Trust is likewise only moderately high in the U.S. We rank #10 on “Willingness to Delegate Authority,” #42 on “Cooperation in Labor-Management Relations,” and #18 in “Degree of Customer Orientation” of firms.

Corruption is apparently a rather pervasive problem in the U.S.

On “Diversion of Public Funds [due to corruption],” the U.S. ranks #34. On “Public Trust in Politicians,” we are #54. On “Irregular Payments and Bribes,” we are #42. On “Judicial Independence,” we are #38. On “Favoritism in Decisions of Government Officials” (otherwise known as governmental cronyism), we are #59.

On and on it goes, good citizen.

The whole article makes rather disturbing reading although it isn’t particularly ‘shocking’. I am far from being the sole ‘voice in the wilderness’ decrying the downfall of our hijacked and badly mismanaged civilization…

And you won’t ever see the criminals stepping aside and offering up the controls with a sarcastic ‘think you can do better?’ They know they’ve got it wrong…but they’re getting filthy rich doing it.

Which is why they’re disinclined to stop…until they break something important or we make them stop (and it will probably take a combination of both. Because once the machine stops giving milk the new ‘top priority’ will be ‘covering their tracks’.)

Considering they’re being none too careful about how they loot, the obvious solution will be to ‘destroy’ the record keeping equipment.

Now how would you go about a monumental task like that?

Let me give you a hint, it also produces a flash that is said to be ‘brighter than a thousand suns’.

Put a few of those puppies into the hands of the criminals who kill with drones and let me know what you come up with…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: We need a ‘hero’ who can put a few megaton ‘frag’ on Washington DC AND Wall Street.

If not, the senseless deaths worldwide will continue.