Terrorists

Greetings good citizen,

The ‘nonsense markets’ are off to a fine start, you can’t explain/justify the Dow being over 14,000 but it’s there regardless.

Which only sends up one more ‘red flag’ concerning the stability of our civilization.

So it is that today’s offering once again asks the question of ‘why are they telling us this?’

On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyberwarriors.

The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.

An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.

Further along the article explains how Coca-cola was hacked by these, er, ‘professionals’…which might give us a clearer picture of why our ‘proxy’ in the Far East is ‘keeping an eye on the competition’.

Yes, the conspiracy to destroy our civilization is global but no, it is not (yet) universal…and you’d think the guys at Coke would be on board but I guess some companies were too successful to suborn quickly and quietly…thus the subterfuge.

But it still doesn’t explain why they are pointing to this particular situation.

Does our shadowy global elite ‘own’ the Chinese government? Of course it does! (At least the parts that matter.)

So why give the unwashed rabble a ‘peek under the skirt’?

So when the ‘surprise’ cyber-attacks begin we can rule the Chinese out…because everybody knows about them?

Um, it is disconcerting to sit here and ‘speculate’ about an obvious global conspiracy but there is NO OTHER ‘explanation’ for what’s going on.

History’s ‘accidents’ are anything but.

It if waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s not a mongoose!

But that’s not what the conspirator owned media is going to tell you.

In fact the ‘truth challenged media’ has become a standing joke among anyone paying attention, making us all ‘conspiracy theorists’.

We all know something nasty is afoot and it’s not ‘state sponsored terrorism’ as our truth challenged media would have you believe.

While the pundits sit and complain about the effects of money in politics, we have done nothing to reign in this ‘loose cannon’ on civilization’s decks.

(Because the conspirators OWN the media!)

Here’s a news flash to no one: we won’t enjoy ‘factual reporting’ until NOBODY ‘owns’ a media outlet!

The owner has an agenda and gets to decide what is and isn’t news!

Until that stops we are all well and truly…

So why did the ‘conspirators’ decide to share the source of cyber attacks on US companies?

I suspect it is so they can hide ‘in plain sight’…or more sinisterly, so when someone reports an attack they can pooh-pooh it pointing to the news article and saying, would they do that since we know they’re doing it?

And the answer is YES!

Just because we know doesn’t mean they are going to stop!

Just as the ‘war on terror’ is being executed by the world’s largest terrorist group!

No irony should be lost on that (bad) joke!

When a recruiting commercial for the Armed forces comes on do you look in the face of that earnest young person and imagine it barking at you to lay down or I’ll blow your head off from the other side of your living room window?

Just as YOU can’t make informed decisions without accurate information, neither can they.

So what do you think they are going to do when their superiors ORDER them to arrest innocent civilians whose only crime is to protest their abusive treatment at the hands of some corporation?

What would YOUR kid do if he or she were on the team that comes to get YOU?

Talk about ‘scarred for life’…

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

Voting with their wallets...

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Saturday! (A day of ‘respite’ in the bad old days of the seventy plus hour week without any ‘overtime’ pay.)

How sad is it that these days you can’t get 40 hours and paying overtime will get some managers fired! (Weirdly, that part hasn’t changed…)

And yes, thanks to the ‘elimination’ of the Blue Laws (seems the founders didn’t completely separate the Church from the State, the Church, up until forty years ago, kept ‘Sabbath’ legislation in place.

We won’t even go into the ‘coincidences’ (The Jews celebrate the sabbath on Saturday and the ‘Sun-worshippers’ keep ‘Sun-day’ as their sabbath!)

How the Christians, who are basically Jews that believe their ‘savior’ has already come…(and now anxiously await his return.) As opposed to the orthodox Jew, who is still waiting for the savior to arrive for the first time…

Well, how did those two groups ended up shifting the sabbath from Saturday to Sunday remains pretty much a mystery.

Maybe they wanted to ‘break from tradition’…and this from a guy who has no truck with ‘Spirit in the Sky’.

The ‘good’ and the ‘evil’ are BOTH within YOU!

Since I didn’t start off writing a post about superstition (although the main topic borders on it…) I need to ‘re-wind’ and start over.

While the pundits on both side of the issue have prostrated themselves, attempting to convince the rest of us that ‘guns’ should be ‘restricted’

The public in general is (in typical capitalist fashion) ‘voting with their wallets.’

TOP NEWS
Sales of Guns Soar in U.S. as Nation Weighs Tougher Limits
By MICHAEL COOPER

The rapid growth in gun sales began after President Obama's re-election and surged after the Dec. 14 shooting at a school in Newtown, Conn.

The ‘anti-gunners’ will claim this is the knee-jerk reaction of ‘a few’ loony radicals, saying the numbers aren’t high enough to prove conclusively that ‘everybody’ (or even a majority of the population) is ‘girding their loins’.

But have you checked out the prices on weapons lately?

They sure aren’t giving them away…Which is to say the ‘heat or eat crowd’ may WANT to ‘improve their security picture’ but for the most part can’t.

Even a battered Saturday Night Special represents a week’s worth of food for people living on the edge (of starvation.)

The people buying guns can be divided into two groups. These are people who have ‘talked about’ getting a gun for a long time but haven’t done anything about it because they couldn’t justify the expense. (Never mind hit the broad side of a barn, but that’s another issue entirely!)

These are the ‘would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it’ crowd.

The second group are people who have been considering ‘upgrading their firepower’ since their initial purchase of a weapon after (one of) the recent massacres.

9 mm have loads of penetration power but almost no knock down power, that’s why police forces have been switching to 10’s.

Most people can take a couple of 9mm slugs and still keep running…for a while (and those fat boys want you to stop!)

Which brings us to the second part of our, er, ‘discussion’.

Who is ‘safe’ to be armed?

The front page of the local rag could be re-named to read as the daily exploits of ‘Cops behaving badly’.

Hardly a week goes by without somebody in uniform (and half the time it’s the Chief!) getting caught doing something outside the bounds of or in direct conflict with their position of authority and the public trust.

I think we’d all breathe a sigh of relief if we started by disarming those clowns (making the job like that of the English Bobby) but you know that ain’t going to happen.

Take away the guns and you might as well declare ‘open season’ on the banks!

And I will remind you once again that the police force IS NOT there to protect YOU. It exists to protect THE ONE PERCENT(s)! (Er, ‘interests’, it’s their bank you’re robbing or their plant you’re pilfering from!)

But I digress…

Now we cross into the delicate area of military veterans and the stunning number of them who parrot the deeply disturbing credo ‘my country RIGHT OR WRONG!’

Is it just me or is this evidence of our leadership’s determination to harvest the youth of this nation and convert them into mindless killing machines?

Is anyone else disturbed by the high number of mentally stressed soldiers who return from (pointless) foreign service on the very edge of snapping?

War isn’t a career choice…but that isn’t how the reckless and self-centered ‘One Percent’ sees it.

If not for the military, our ‘unemployment problem’ would be even worse than it is!

And what is the One Percent’s ‘solution’ to the unemployment problem?

More War!

Let’s back up a step and re-examine ‘why’ there is a ‘surge’ in the number of people purchasing personal defense weapons.

You don’t suppose they see what I see, do you? A society coming ‘unraveled’ before their eyes?

Could it all be as simple as ‘Gun Rules’ (The one with the gun makes the rules…you’ve all seen enough suspense movies to know how this one ends. How sad is it that the one with the gun has seen the movies too…making him that much more likely to kill you before that incredible lucky break happens that allows the 'hero' to overpower him.)

How ironic is it that you don't need a gun until you do? (Worse, when this need presents itself, usually it is desperate!)

Bang, bang, good citizen.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Class confusion...

Greetings good citizen,

Were someone to ask you what you thought (believed) your ‘class membership’ was, how would you answer?

Tragically, many of you would mistakenly identify yourself as ‘middle class’, hell that’s the catch phrase all of the politicians use…(so it must be true!)

If you’re homeless you MIGHT suck it up and admit to being ‘poor’ (not that this helps or proves anything, circumstances change all of the time.)

Unsurprisingly, there is just as much confusion/mis-identification when it comes to accurately classifying the ‘upper classes!

Life Among the Plutocrats -- What Unimaginable Wealth Does to a Person
They control our politics, shape our societies, outsource our jobs.

January 4, 2013 |

Reviewed:Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, by Chrystia Freeland (Doubleday, Canada 2012)

Last year the Occupy movement brought the subject of inequality into public debate, and especially the inequality between those of us in the 99 per cent and the happy few in the one per cent. But Chrystia Freeland has been studying the happy few for years, and has spent many hours talking with some of their most famous and powerful members.

The result is a book full of surprises and insights. Today's plutocrats are the latest variation on an old theme, and at the same time they're strikingly new in many ways.

Societies have supported plutocratic classes at least since ancient Rome, and the Gilded Age of the US after the Civil War presaged our own: A rising class of self-made men, imaginative exploiters of new technology and wider trade. Then it was the telegraph and the railroad; now it's the internet and the container ship.

So, now we have ‘plutocrats’ being (mis) identified by their tychoonish traits rather then their inherited and very much ‘entrenched wealth’.

So Joe Bootstrapper is a ‘plutocrat’ (which is antithetical to the term ‘self-made man’.)

It is not my intention to kick the author in the shins for abusing a term, I regularly do it myself.

My point, such as it is, is how muddy the waters of ‘class’ have become. Most people ‘self-identify’ as being ‘middle class’ whether they are or they aren’t.

Like I said, you only ‘might’ get a homeless person to admit to being poor, just as you’d be equally as hard-pressed to get a ‘well-born’ individual to admit he was a ‘plutocrat’.

S/He’ll readily admit to being ‘upper class’ but vehemently deny being a ‘One Percenter’ (given the amount of bad press associated with the term recently.)

While the real fox in the hen house is the ONE TENTH of One Percent!

What do we call them (besides peckerheads) if not ‘plutocrats’?

Most would agree that ‘plutocrat’ is pretty much interchangable with ‘oligarch’ as both terms exemplify entrenched wealth AND power…both political and legal…(such as it is.)

Perhaps it is my personal conviction that ‘all money is funny’ that is giving me this quaint ‘comprehension problem’…

While money has often been equated in the ignorant person’s mind with power, money is actually meaningless. Tens of trillions of it can be whipped up instantly with the stroke of a pen! (Our failed banking industry has proven that by ‘conjuring’ a quadrillion dollars US into existence out of thin air!)

Just because the bought and paid for corporate owned media ignores this doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Nope, the ‘real problem’ is our house is burning down around us and while we all know this, nobody is doing anything to put the fire out…

Soon all that will be left are ashes…and memories.

Why is this seeming unthinkable thing happening?

Could it be because we have surrounded ourselves with traitors (who are in it for themselves) and our so-called ‘academics’ don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground?

How stunningly stupid is it that the ‘smartest guys in the room’ are running around with their hair on fire?

Re-directing once again, I am compelled to ask how we can expect to solve the problem if we can’t agree on the cause?

The OWS movement put the One Percent into the crosshairs…but failed to pull the trigger.

Now we have works like this one attempting to muddy the waters by calling innovators ‘plutocrats’ simply because they’re rich…

Mr. Zuckerburg is ‘rich’ but he’s hardly the ‘menace to society’ most of his ‘cousins’ at Harvard are.

In fact you have to wonder just how successful Facebook would have been if it hadn’t gotten its start in the ‘plutocracy’ (entrenched climate of wealth and power) that IS Harvard?

Money does not a ‘plutocrat’ make.

In the end it’s about old family ties and the ability to bend reality to your liking that makes one a ‘plutocrat/oligarch’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Safeguards

Greetings good citizen,

Today we take a journey to find the birthplace of stupid.

RH: Your book is based on the idea that most of us don’t understand the true roots of political differences. What are we missing?

Haidt: People often assume that politics is primarily about self-interest. They wonder why someone would vote for a candidate who’s going to raise their taxes or cut their benefits. But politics, especially at the presidential level, is more like religion than a shopping excursion. Despite all the individualism and materialism within our culture, our group affiliations matter deeply to most of us. Politics begins to make more sense when you understand it as a tribal phenomenon.

RH: So, in politics, group membership trumps individual need?

Haidt: Yes. The more we care about our ethnic group, our city, our state, our occupational group, the likelier we are to vote for politicians who we believe will advance those interests, even when they diverge from our individual interests. For example, it’s striking how many liberal parents with children weren’t more opposed to forced school bussing in the 1970s. Politics is largely about moral missions for the nation, and the president is expected to be the high priest of the American civic religion. It can be illuminating to see the left and right in this country as practicing different civic religions, and looking to very different high priests.

In yet another ‘book review’, Alternet has provided a useful starting point for examining the issue of why rationality is so rare when it comes to politics.

While it is plain to see that these ‘wedge issues’ abound, the majority of the ‘body politic’ is fundamentally on the same page.

The Mexican standoffs displayed by conservative politicians are for the benefit of the One Percent and their bought and paid for Corporate owned media.

The vocal minority, otherwise known as ‘the Right wing noise machine’ provides the ‘illusion of popularity’ that the corporate owned media uses to hoodwink their viewers.

I suspect the authors findings point to a far more dire outcome…that the phenomenon known as ‘emotionally hard of hearing/deafness’ is more widespread than currently believed.

With its more chilling implication of ‘incurability’.

How do you ‘manage’ a society where a full fifth of its members are ‘certifiable’?

Short answer…you don’t.

Interesting to arrive full circle at the same problem the founders faced two centuries ago (when the Church kept most of the loons in check.)

How unfortunate is it for us that the founders established our current system BASED ON THE BELIEF that the system (of quasi religious dominance) would remain ‘intact’?

More disturbing is how modern conservatives mistakenly believe the system can be restored by more vigorous support of outmoded beliefs. (Thus their ‘partnership’ with the evangelicals.)

(It don’t have to make sense, all you have to do is ‘BELIEVE’!)

I don’t know about you good citizen but the sooner we start testing for this disturbing genetic defect (and isolating those who test positive) the better off we will all be.

Left unaddressed is how many of our fifth ‘learned’ their behavior from their crazy parents/siblings?

If we don’t test we won’t know.

Worse is the danger of this exercise in wisdom turning into a witch-hunt. The whole process, like government, relies a bit too heavily upon ‘honesty’.

Brings us full circle to the question of if it is even possible to rid ourselves of the psychopaths if we fail to reform money first?

Psychopaths are far more resourceful than we give them credit for…which has the potential to create really big trouble.

And they have zero problems with sacrificing the rest of us just to save their own worthless neck.

While the ‘safe’ thing to do is simply ignore the problem, we have arrived at a point in history that won’t allow us to pretend anymore…

Worse, too many of the unbalanced have seized positions of power capable of destroying civilization.

Which for some of them has always been their ‘goal’. (Remember, these people are not just insane, they are incurably insane and view the rest of us as the ‘enemy’!)

Did I mention that our current method of ‘screening’ for socially sensitive positions is woefully inadequate (if not wholly non-existent in most cases!)

But I belabor the obvious, don’t I good citizen?

Which is why the ONLY way to advance under A Simple Plan is through ‘testing’…which tests BOTH your job knowledge and your ‘psychological fitness’ to hold the job!

Given the ‘complex’ world we inhabit, you have to marvel at why we don’t have such safeguards in place right now?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fact, Fiction and News...

Greetings good citizen,

Once again you just can’t make this shit up! Which is to opine that the truth really is ‘stranger than fiction’.

Naturally our evidence comes from the twisted thinking of the bought and paid for shills of the corporate owned media…making it all that much more hilarious!

We begin with the ‘Everybody Knows story of the week:

Your Money
Piecing Together a Tax Plan’s Effects
By RON LIEBER

The recently concluded federal budget agreement could raise the tax bill for people with incomes over $250,000 by thousands of dollars.

Graphic: How the New Limits on Deductions and Exemptions Might Work
A Gigantic Sigh of Relief as Tax Uncertainty Ends
Lawmakers Gird for Next Fiscal Clash, on the Debt Ceiling

The fucking Dow tacked on 300 points yesterday due to ‘relief from tax uncertainty’…can you give me a WTF! ?

How much more ‘divorced from reality’ does it need to get before you are convinced that the idiots in charge of the financial markets are robbing us all blind?

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg:

Some Breaks for Industries Are Retained in Fiscal Deal
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and MATTHEW L. WALD

Hollywood, the railroad industry and rum producers benefited from some obscure provisions that survived the deal between the White House and Congress.

What do stories like this prove? It proves that our ‘elected representatives’ don’t take the time to READ (and therefore comprehend) what they are voting on. (Supposedly an ‘aide’ does the heavy mental lifting but if a lobbyist cleans that aides plumbing he/she might be inclined to give a less than honest/accurate report of what a piece of legislation does or does not contain. Thereby forcing the legislator to commit treason because he/she is too fucking lazy to read their own stuff!

Um, I make no secret of my loathing for ‘representative politics’, it is little different than monarchy, where the few decide for the many…often against their well known wishes.

I would view ‘representative politics’ more kindly if the representative were ‘held accountable’ for their misdeeds, er, ‘actions’.

Vote against the wishes of your constituency and face the hang man…that would foster a modicum of ‘trust’ in the process.

We can appreciate that this would lead to an ‘unusual’ number of ‘abstain votes’ so one would have to extend the rule to cover this contingency as well.

Abstain when the people of your district are decided and face the hangman…which would (rightly) make the majority of modern politicians ‘rethink’ their career choices.

Naturally Gegner is an anarchist with a small ‘a’ who believes in direct democracy and desires to scrap the political process entirely.

Our next news item is another ‘reminder’ of just how badly broken our political system has become:

Media Decoder Blog
Al Gore, a co-founder of Current TV, which will be shut down by the Qatar-based news organization Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera Seeks a U.S. Voice Where Gore Failed
By BRIAN STELTER

Al Gore’s low-rated cable channel will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms.

Is it just me or do you detect a note of hostility in the way this headline is worded? The euphemism usually used in this situation is ‘bought out’ not ‘shut down’…but I guess it depends on who is doing the buying, eh?

Is our corporate owned media that fearful of having a different perspective offered to US viewers? They don’t (to our knowledge) muzzle the BBC.

But what do we know about the motivations of our media?

5-Hour Energy says users will not experience letdowns later.
Energy Shot’s ‘No Crash’ Claim Is Disputed by Watchdog
By BARRY MEIER

An advertising watchdog group says it told the distributor of 5-Hour Energy years ago that a claim that the drink did not cause a letdown once the effects wore off was unfounded.

Dunno, never touch the stuff myself…weird that kids go for it though…
And yet more evidence of (false) ‘economic growth’ through increased market share…

DealBook
Hormel to Buy Skippy Peanut Butter
By JEFFREY CANE 27 minutes ago

The Hormel Foods Corporation said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy the Skippy peanut butter business from Unilever for $700 million.

What do you suppose the end result of that move will be? Could it be Hostess all over again?

More Americans Seek Jobless Benefits
By REUTERS 55 minutes ago

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 10,000 last week, the government said, but the data was skewed by the holidays.

Again, nobody is commenting on the badly broken global economy that benefits too few. Unless we look at stories like this one:

Bank Lending in Euro Zone Slumped in November, Data Show
By JACK EWING 7:12 AM ET

The report could fuel expectations of an interest rate cut when the European Central Bank meets next week.

Left to our feeble imaginations is what good cutting already negative interest rates is going to do, economically?

Maybe it’s the ‘psychological benefit’ they’re trying for…maybe it will make the investors ‘feel better’.

How fucking sad is it good citizen that there are no ‘concrete benefits’ to be reaped by cutting already too low interest rates…

Did I mention you can’t make this shit up?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Re-think

Greetings good citizen,

As we start a New Year it might be helpful to re-think some of our beliefs (because the people pitching so-called ‘solutions’ have their heads up their asses!)

Thus is today’s offering a vivid example of precisely that phenomenon (I’ll explain after the excerpt.)

Robots Don't Destroy Jobs; Rapacious Corporate Executives Do

Worrying about automation distracts us from the real problem: misuse of corporate profits.

December 31, 2012 |

Americans are understandably upset about profits without prosperity. Corporate executives seem to be the big winners, while the middle class is declining and young people face a bleak economic future. How did this happen? It's easy to blame technology, especially the automation that supposedly displaces workers. But that's not the real story. The fact is that automation creates jobs. It's the misuse of corporate profits that is destroying them.

There was a time when high corporate profits meant bright employment prospects for most members of the US labor force. That relation between profits and prosperity was strongest in the immediate post-World War II decades when US corporations led the world in manufacturing, provided workers with career-long employment security, and reinvested profits in productive capabilities in the United States. For the past three decades, however, the pursuit of corporate profits has been at the expense of prosperity for an ever-growing proportion of the American population.

This disconnect between profits and prosperity began in the 1980s with permanent plant closings that cost production workers their middle-class jobs. It increased in the 1990s as major US corporations scrapped the career-with-one-company norm that had prevailed for salaried employees, and it became common even for college-educated people with a couple of decades of work experience to find themselves on the wrong end of the pink slip. Then in the 2000s, as US corporations accelerated the globalization of production activities, the jobs of all members of the US labor force, no matter what their level of educational attainment, became vulnerable to competition from qualified people in lower wage areas of the world.

The article ‘essentially’ asserts the truth, although it is a stretch indeed to think how automation ‘creates’ jobs (it always ends in ‘net’ job destruction, otherwise it wouldn’t be doable.)

Um, again, the sights are set a bit too low as far as pointing to the true culprits here as well. The front line supervisors do what they’re told, just as unit managers are merely glorified ‘yes men’.

You need to venture into the boardroom and then follow the link to Wall Street, that’s where these irresponsible marching orders originate.

It’s also where the legislation that permits such foolishness starts.

Want to find out who destroyed the US economy…look at who was behind NAFTA…and its primary champion, Ronald Reagan.

Funny how much of what is wrong with today can be traced back to the Reagan Revolution…and the ‘rise of the >One Percent.’

More disturbing are the commercials trying to sucker you into going back to school for a job that most likely doesn’t exist.

Have you seen the college ad that speculates we could ad 20 million new jobs if we only ‘prepared’ for them?

Sort of short for the fucking 230 million working aged people who need work, isn’t it?

This is what I mean, we need to strengthen our grip on ‘reality’ before we become reality’s ‘road kill’.

I’m pretty sure good citizen that the only place on the whole net that you will find pointing to this factor is right here…everyone else either clueless and doesn’t care or assumes you already know and have come to terms with it.

Speaking of the origination of irresponsible concepts we could ‘follow the money’ into the Ivory Towers of Academia to learn who is behind the Randite/Friedman school of economic idiocy.

Rumor has it ‘twas the renowned monopolist Rockefeller…funny (and not necessarily ‘humorous’) the things you can do with ‘money’…

Which only strengthens my case against the current laws governing the uses of money today.

In a ‘more equitable’ world assholes like Rockefeller would be unable to ‘buy legitimacy’ for his pet prejudices.

In a more equitable world you wouldn’t be able to buy the truth either…

But, naturally, I digress…
If I were to share one thing with you good citizen it would be the ‘awareness’ that those who lord over us as our ‘betters’ stopped caring about the welfare of society long ago and focus only on what is good, to and for, THEM.

The ‘fatal myopia’ that I have warned of repeatedly has become so widespread and rampant as to become uncontrollable.

Small comfort that will be when the preppers go on the offensive after squandering their store bought existence…

Again, money gone horribly wrong (but you won’t hear that from Faux News.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Seriously?

Greetings good citizen,

Sunday night and I’m just getting around to posting…because it snowed, then it rained and then is snowed again…and then the whole shebang froze, making for a miserable clean up.

But my frostbitten backside really gets burning when the ‘disarm-niks’ sit on their high horse, claiming mass murder ‘doesn’t happen’ in cultures that have banned guns.

Naturally these assholes ignore the bombings that replaced the gun attacks.

And if the One Percent decided they wanted us, er, ‘defenseless’ we wouldn’t be talking about their ‘right’ to instruct their lapdogs to collect all of the registered guns, we’d be talking about how long it would take for them to criminalize the ‘unexplained loss’ of a weapon.

Because that’s what ‘bans’ do, they create criminals.

Let’s see what zipperhead has to offer regarding the ‘impossibility’ of tougher weapons legislation as we wonder what side of the political fence ‘Fair Vote’ rides on… Aren’t the Republicans overly concerned with ‘stolen elections’?

Why America Can't Pass Gun Control
Hint: It's not the NRA or a gun-loving culture.
December 24, 2012 |

This article originally appeared at The Atlantic.

The horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., is the latest grisly episode in what has become a muted debate in the United States: what to do about gun violence and well-armed mass murderers. But we will make a prediction: Even in the face of this national tragedy, President Obama will have little success enacting substantive gun control.

Here's why: Obama can read the political map as well as anyone, and he knows that, just as in the past after previous brutal tragedies, the politics of gun control rest on complicated terrain. Many gun control advocates blame the lack of policy action on America's gun-loving culture and the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA), but that's too simplistic. Already in the wake of the Newtown carnage we have seen aslew of pundits drawing the wrong conclusions, just as they have after previous tragedies.

Sure, Americans like their guns more than other nations, but polls often have shown majority of Americans wanting more gun control, with two-thirds calling for more regulation following the Columbine massacre in 1999. But the political system - including the Democratic Party -- has failed to respond. And it's not because Democrats and Obama are afraid of the NRA's deep pockets, as so many pundits are wrongly concluding. Quite the contrary, the NRA has money because it is powerful, not the other way around. And the NRA is powerful because it is clever at working the clunky architecture of our political system, which gives immense clout to a tiny slice of swing voters in a handful of congressional districts. [snip]

[About the author:]

Steven Hill (www.Steven-Hill.com) is a political writer, cofounder of FairVote and former director of the political reform program at the New America Foundation. Besides Alternet, his articles have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, The Nation, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Ms., Sierra, American Prospect, Truthdig and many others, and he has quoted and interviewed by media around the world, including the BBC, Democracy Now, C-Span, Fox News, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio, Sirius and many others.

Robert Richie is the executive director of FairVote.

At the end of the day this has NOTHING to do with guns. The shooters in every case didn’t do what they did BECAUSE ‘they could get their hands on guns!’

They did what they did because they had a problem with how they were being treated and saw no other way draw attention to the matter.

EVENTUALLY (because it almost happened this last time…until buttheads like Steve Hill turned up, pointing in the wrong direction, as usual.)

And what almost happened this time? We ALMOST acknowledged that the common thread between the massacres and that was the desperation a sense of nothing left to lose by the perpetrators.

Adam Lanska went into that school knowing ahead of time he was going to blow himself away, making him no different than a suicide bomber.

And, as usual, these ‘desperadoes’ are dismissed as ‘loner lunatics’. Isolated cases that won’t happen again…until next time.

How bad does it have to get good citizen, we are barely making it a month without some new incident of somebody ‘going postal’ because they’ve had enough (of being treated like they are human debris.)

Yeah, it’s pretty sick to be using this type of social backwash to hype my own agenda but don’t you think it’s beyond time for a change?

And I mean real change and not Obamaesque ‘lip service’.

It is only a matter of time before you (or worse, someone you love) becomes capitalism’s ‘collateral damage’.

When a ticking timebomb set off by a capitalist socio-path blows your world away, what are YOU going to go after, the tool the perp used OR THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM?

Make no mistake about it good citizen, the longer they ignore this the worse it has become…

And just think this is the DAY BEFORE New Years Eve!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Et tu?

Greetings good citizen,

Hope you had pleasant holidays. The cranky old man made out better than usual this year for reasons unknown…perhaps the need became too great to ignore.

And the list of stuff we ‘need’ (as a family) grows unabated (the refrigerator is a disaster waiting to happen and the water heater is right behind it! Oh and we have yet to replace the blown out idiot box.

The reason for all of the above is ‘lack of funds’.

And while I am crying ‘bonanza’ here in the gift department, the single most expensive item I received was a badly needed warm coat that must have cost all of $25.

The rest can be listed on one hand and I’d still have fingers left over…(normally all I get is one gift. Like a DVD of a movie the kids liked.)

But wait good citizen, before you dismiss my grumblings as a self-absorbed ‘pity-party’ have a gander as to what has slipped into common civil discourse

Her musings were suddenly interrupted when her date asked a decidedly unromantic question: “What’s your credit score?”

“It was as if the music stopped,” Ms. LaShawn, 31, said, recalling how the date this year went so wrong so quickly after she tried to answer his question honestly. “It was really awkward because he kept telling me that I was the perfect girl for him, but that a low credit score was his deal-breaker.”

The credit score, once a little-known metric derived from a complex formula that incorporates outstanding debt and payment histories, has become an increasingly important number used to bestow credit, determine housing and even distinguish between job candidates.

It’s so widely used that it has also become a bigger factor in dating decisions, sometimes eclipsing more traditional priorities like a good job, shared interests and physical chemistry. That’s according to interviews with more than 50 daters across the country, all under the age of 40.

I’ve always been something of a Neanderthal when it comes to matters romantic and there were certain things you didn’t look at when considering a potential mate…but fucking credit scores?

Anthropologically speaking good citizen were scroomed!

Looks like this ‘insensitive lout’ got what he deserved (kicked to the curb!) but still, has it all come down to something as artificial as credit score?

Understand good citizen, the fucking thieving One Percent don’t worry about their credit score. Anyone stupid enough to downgrade their credit wouldn’t survive to see the sun rise again. (They largely DON’T pay so their ‘credit’ should suck! Why do you think they are ‘rich’ in the first place?)

In fact, you won’t find the One Percent picking their children from the bottom of a test tube, they can ‘afford’ mates of prime breeding age that don’t need to jump through hoops to conceive.

This, species-wise, is a decidedly disturbing development.

Maybe once we ‘regress’ to Banana Republic status our breeding pool will ‘level off’ (return to where it ‘should be’.)

Of course, this will do little to relieve the over-population crisis, which is at the root of all of our social ills.

Yes, good citizen, it is even behind the incredible shrinking dollar.

The nabobs who have set themselves above us don’t possess the intestinal fortitude to deal with the problem, so they ignore it while it festers.

How sad is it that they are correct in their assumption that the problem will be ‘self-correcting’?

Because the coming disease and death is totally unnecessary.

But, as has been demonstrated amply in the past, our betters don’t think…it hurts their little heads too much.

Is it frightening to you that these paragons of logic believe mother nature will contrive to have some of our species survive a killer plague (despite other species being wiped out completely in the past?)

It’s a risk they’re willing to take (although SOME of them are preparing to avoid the plague entirely…again with crossed fingers.)

In fact, some have confined themselves to their ‘safe havens’ already. They (and theirs) will not venture forth until the ‘Old World’ has passed.

The weak link here is whether or not the Haven is self-sufficient. If they are having goods imported from the outside to maintain a so-called ‘modern lifestyle’ they are as dead as the rest of us.

Which is to opine that stupidity can’t be stopped with dollar signs…or credit scores.

Et tu, good citizen?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

No Men

Greetings good citizen,

Today will be one of my ‘free form’ pieces where I don’t use any Corporate Owned Media reference points…although I will use topics I found in today’s online posts, both friend and foe.

Let’s start with the not too helpful observation that, to date, all ‘rampage shooters’ have been male.

So instead of outlawing guns maybe we should just outlaw men and be done with it…

No men, no killing. (Which ignores a long and tragic history of murderous women, but the author doesn’t hold woman blameless, she merely points out the obvious, that women ‘don’t prefer’ to go on shooting rampages (although they might learn to like it if they only gave it a try…)

A couple of articles later and the teachers (unionized teachers no less) are declared the ‘heroes’ of Sandy Hook…

Um, apparently tragedy provides the opportunity to drape your favorite hobby-horse in the cloak of ‘heroism’ when, at the end of the day, there were NO heroes at Sandy Hook, just frightened people doing whatever occurred to them during moments of extreme duress.

No heroes, only victims and survivors. This compulsion to glorify the participants in what was really a tragic social backlash borders on the sociopathic…

It is not the kind of behavior you need or want to encourage.

If we start celebrating ‘victim hood’ the next thing you know we will be taught to ‘cherish’ our slavery (as a proud part of who we are…in the minds of the >One Percent!)

Short hops or as the Soviets liked to call it, ‘gradualism’.

Which only belabors the obvious on my part, we must be very wary of the ‘for profit’ media.

Look at the mess they have made of the relatively benign playground politely called ‘entertainment’.

Nothing ‘too intellectual’, we don’t want them to think…or worse, ask questions! Then we don’t want them to, er, ‘dwell’ on their own wretchedness so we have to have reality shows drawn straight from the casting couch of ‘the Beverly Hillbillies.’

How ironic that most viewers of the relatively new ‘Alaska, the last frontier’ watch it with a degree of ‘envy’.

More ironic is how the show Yukon men displays what happens when too many people decide to live ‘off the grid’…

Mother Nature can’t support that many predators, which is why the farmer supplanted the hunter/gatherer.

Now we need to take farming to the next level…because we didn’t stop growing.

IF there is a second season of Yukon men it will show the ‘rugged individual’ choking on his ‘self-sufficiency’. If you watched the first season with a jaded eye you can see it is happening already.

Then there are the, er, comedic escapades of the Gold Rush crews…I wouldn’t follow Todd Hoffman across the street, never mind to the Klondike!

Like Sr. in American Chopper, apparently Fred (the claim jumper of Porcupine creek) doesn’t care how he comes across on TV.

Or maybe reality TV runs on assholes…it’s hard to tell.

I don’t think I’m alone in believing that in order to have your own ‘reality show’ you must first be a selfish jerk…which is not true on all cases. Otto on Alaska the last frontier and the rest of the Kilcher clan are not ‘full of themselves’…(although the bozoes of the Amish Mafia appear to be.)

Parker Schnaubel is the only worthwhile figure on Gold Rush (even in the throws of ‘gold fever’ he retains his sense of self and what’s important (far better than many of the so-called adults on the show! And his Grandpa is the true ‘salt of the earth’ type who is always pleasant to deal with.)

But you don’t need me to expound upon the wasteland that has become ‘primetime TV’…you see it for yourself.

And these days everybody with a keyboard is shaking the finger of shame at the corporate owned media…which is having zero effect, in case you didn’t notice.

What I find particularly disturbing is the trend of ‘off-shoring’ (so far mostly ads) to Bollywood, although there are some ‘test ballons’ flying right now of Bollywood produced ‘sitcoms’…as if they weren’t already pitiful enough!

(Take a closer look at the stars if you don’t know which ones…)

Um, the NYSE has opened since I started writing this, let’s have a peek at how the other end of the ‘entertainment industry’ is faring…

And the US market opened and headed straight for the basement…must be time for some ‘profit taking’ (given the recent irrational rise in share prices…)

Yurp is still in the green and the markets to the South of us haven’t tanked…yet, but it’s still early.

Um, this is why I don’t do ‘unscripted’ very often…it produces rambling pieces…which is not a good thing if you consider the range of my ‘normal’ posts…

Um, that said I will leave you to parse this mess as best you can,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fooked!

Greetings good citizen,

We are now three weeks away from the Fox News sponsored Mayan Apocalypse and it’s looking like another ‘fizzle’ (although it is rumored they have their eye on a rogue neutron star that (might be) headed this way.)

Otherwise the destruction of our civilization proceeds ‘on schedule’:

DealBook
Citigroup to Cut 11,000 Jobs and Take $1 Billion Charge
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG 15 minutes ago

The cuts will reduce the bank’s work force by roughly 4 percent and come after the chairman, Michael E. O’Neill, engineered the ouster of Citi’s former chief executive.

It remains to be seen if Mr. O’Neill isn’t revealed to be the world’s biggest chump/patsy for his alleged ‘ouster’ of Citi’s boy Vikram. The ‘Pandit’ didn’t do the ‘perp walk/frog march’ to the downtown lock-up so he wasn’t exactly ‘extracted’ from his perilous perch as many though he should have been. But whatever…

Freeport to Buy Plains Exploration and McMoRan
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 9:38 AM ET

The transactions will create a natural resources titan worth about $60 billion, including debt, and will reunite Freeport with McMoRan, the oil exploration company it spun off in 1994.

If any of you have been paying attention you may have been wondering how capitalism keeps ‘growing’ while the number of players keeps shrinking and the answer to that question lies in ‘market share’.

Above is just one more example of the ‘cannibalism’ that is so common under capitalism. What will happen to the thousands of people made ‘redundant’ by this, er, ‘unanticipated merger’? They’ll hit the streets…and making themselves ‘useful’ again becomes their problem.

As fewer and fewer people are successful at this task it is going to become YOUR problem! (Mark my words!)

Spending Data Point to Continuing Woes in Euro Zone
By DAVID JOLLY 56 minutes ago

Retail sales in the 17-nation bloc fell 1.2 percent in October and 3.6 percent from a year earlier, adding to worries about recovery.

Um, is it just me or did the first thing that popped into your mind happen to be the question ‘what recovery?’ too?

We see that ‘recovery’ in this instance is phrased in the context of ‘potential for recovery’ rather than an ongoing one which no corporate owned media outlet will deny is aggressively underway (at least in the minds of their bosses…)

But the truth of the matter remains that regardless of how hard you try, you can’t spend your way out of debt!

Zimbabwe is a great example of what happens when you try to.

Why nobody goes Zim on the US is a different question altogether despite the fraud being precisely the same!

Austerity in Britain Will Stretch to 2018, Osborne Says 8:49 AM ET
Greece Slips in Corruption Rankings 10:12 AM ET

What makes the, er, minister of the exchequer so optimistic? Dunno, totally baffled by this one.

Except to say that there won’t be a ‘recovery’ until there is a whole lot of ‘reform’…and there isn’t going to be ANY REAL REFORM until AFTER the revolution…

Europe Fines Electronics Makers $1.92 Billion
By JAMES KANTER 7:47 AM ET

Seven companies were accused of fixing the price of picture tubes for television and computer screens.

Like the baby on the E-Trade commercials, you’re going to have to conjure your own mental image of my ‘shocked face’…

Seriously good citizen this surprises who?

Markets Uneven in Early Trading
By REUTERS 20 minutes ago

Wall Street was mixed as a 15 percent drop in shares of Freeport-McMoRan offset optimism about a global economic recovery spurred by comments from China’s new leader.

How fucking sad is it when Hu Jin Tao’s replacement can ‘jawbone’ a global economic recovery into existence by simply spreading more capitalistic bullshit?

Talk about ‘wanting to believe’…

Rhode Island Judge Has Stake in Pension Case Outcome
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

The dispute is also being closely watched as a first major test of whether, and how, financially strained states and cities can cut the benefits of their workers and retirees.

Um, how disturbing is it that judges, of all people, can ‘retire’ whenever the fuck they want to AT 100% OF THEIR SALARY! Yet many judges die on the bench? Go figure?

How fucked do you suspect these poor pensioners are going to be when the primary qualification for a seat on the federal bench is a willingness to disregard the ‘public good’ so our capitalist cannibals can be saved from the consequences of their own actions?

Like most posts I could go on forever about the ‘defects’ in our current social model but that doesn’t seem to spur people into seeking an alternative.

So, all of the above was from today’s NY Times…read it…and weep…if you aren’t ‘emotionally deaf.’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Bad to the Bone

Greetings good citizen,

As I approach my second (full) year of unemployment (this most recent odyssey started in 2011.) it occurs to me that it might be easier for me to see the unraveling of our civilization more clearly than the rest of you because I’m caught in the center of the storm.

It is important to point out that I am not alone on my perch that provides me a ‘birds-eye view’ of the situation, there are millions of us (if not billions…depending on how far you cast your net and there is a disturbing tendency to ‘stop’ when one reaches the number of people in YOUR country, like the rest don’t matter.

Part of the problem with the ‘banking crisis’ is people don’t understand these trillions of dollars…are owed by nations with populations the size of a small US state!

Adding to this ‘cognitive dissonance’ is the purposeful ignorance on how these systems ‘interact’ (because of the need to fudge the fuck out of certain factors most people never consider.)

today’s offering attempts to provide us with a glimpse of that larger, more than somewhat fuzzy, picture:

Any reforms which seek to address growth in the context of private sector debt deleveraging and demographics ought to be made with a focus on increasing the economy’s capacity to produce real goods and services today and in the future, rather than on ensuring positive actuarial balances through eternity. Unlike the case with individuals, social policy can provision for the future in real terms—by increasing productive capacity in the intervening years. For example, policies that might encourage long-lived public and private infrastructure investment could ease the future burden of providing for growing numbers of retirees by putting into place the infrastructure that will be needed in an aging society: nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, independent living communities, aged-friendly public transportation systems, and senior citizen centers.

(Screeching, ear-splittingly loud, halt!)
Read the above again, slowly and let it sink in.

Makes sense doesn’t it? EXCEPT for the ‘how do we pay for it?’ part, it’s all too beautiful!

Did you notice the blinders on the topic of ‘over-capacity’? Our economy is at FULL STOP because the consumer can’t afford any more debt…why don’t these boneheads devise a solution that deals with this problem first?

It is articles like this one that basically prove that tired old ideas are not the path we can follow into the future…(but you can’t tell the One Percent that, they don’t want to hear it.)

Education and training could increase future productivity. Policies that maintain high employment and minimize unemployment (both officially measured unemployment, as well as those counted as out of the labor force) are critical to maintain a higher worker-to retiree ratio. Policy can also encourage seniors of today and tomorrow to continue to participate in the labor force. The private sector will play a role in all of this, but there is also an important role to be played by government.

Um, back to the ‘cognitive dissonance’ problem (which is not limited to us mere peasants.)

The creators and issuers of ‘funny money’ are the ONLY ONES capable of fixing this problem…that the PRIVATE SECTOR CREATED!

If you read between the lines here you will see that ‘Libertarians ‘R’ Us’ sees the private sector filling it’s usual role of collecting rents and oppressing the general welfare for its own safety.

But I digress…

On balance, if we were to focus on only one policy arena today that would best enhance our ability to deal with a higher aged dependency ratio tomorrow it would be to ensure full employment with rising skill levels. Such a policy would have immediate benefits, in addition to those to be realized in the future. This is a clear “win-win” policy, unlike the ugly trade-off promoted by both parties, who only differ in the degree to which today’s workers and future seniors are to pay for the mistakes of the banksters through misguided proposals to “reform” entitlements and put our future on a “fiscally sustainable” path.

Do you see the ‘win’ good citizen or has the gloss worn off that old banner promoting ‘unlimited, perpetual growth’?

Make no mistake about it good citizen, it is precisely this belief in ‘voodoo economics’ (also known as ‘wishful thinking’) that has led us to where we are today.

A sustainable future does not consist of turning our former manufacturing facilities into (fake) ‘state of the art’ assisted living facilities (and training ALL of our kids to be candy stripers and orderlies…)

You can’t pay for extended care if you earn minimum wage and your taxes don’t cover the nut either.

All economies are LOCAL.

That’s were it starts and that’s the key feature behind A Simple Plan, creating robust local economies that nurture a healthy, well educated public.

But you have to read and understand it before you can successfully advocate for it!

You not only will be doing yourself a favor but your kids will thank you for freeing them from the cycle of exploitation YOUR PARENTS condemned YOU to!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Ten Points

Greetings good citizen,

Um, in tandem with today’s ridiculous stock market performance (Dow + 173) we have this article from today’s Alternet

Basically, none of what Alternet reveals is particularly shocking, it’s a rehash of what I’ve been telling you for decades now (This all started in the nineties.) Most of the uber wealthy are BORN into it!

What should sicken most of you is their great-grandfathers made it and even if their grandkids spend it stupidly they can’t spend it all!

But I’ll let you decide which aspect raises your hackles:

1. Only THREE PERCENT of the very rich are entrepreneurs.
According to both Marketwatch and economist Edward Wolff, over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business accounts, the stock market, and real estate. Only 3.6 percent of taxpayers in the top .1% were classified as entrepreneurs based on 2004 tax returns.

2. Only FOUR OUT OF 150 countries have more wealth inequality than us.
In a world listing compiled by a reputable research team (which nevertheless prompted double-checking), the U.S. has greater wealth inequality than every measured country in the world except for Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark, and Switzerland.

3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.
The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.

4. Corporations stopped paying HALF OF THEIR TAXES after the recession.
After paying an average of 22.5% from 1987 to 2008, corporations have paid an annual rate of 10% since. This represents a sudden $250 billion annual loss in taxes.

5. Just TEN Americans made a total of FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS in one year.
That's enough, according to 2008 estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN's World Food Program, to feed the 870 million people in the world who are lacking sufficient food.
For the free-market advocates who say "they've earned it": Point #1 above makes it clear how the wealthy make their money.

6. Tax deductions for the rich could pay off 100 PERCENT of the deficit.
Another stat that required a double-check. Based on research by the Tax Policy Center, tax deferrals and deductions and other forms of tax expenditures (tax subsidies from special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, and loopholes), which largely benefit the rich, are worth about 7.4% of the GDP, or about $1.1 trillion.

7. The average single black or Hispanic woman has about $100 IN NET WORTH.
The Insight Center for Community Economic Development reported that median wealth for black and Hispanic women is a little over $100. That's much less than one percent of the median wealth for single white women ($41,500).

8. Elderly and disabled food stamp recipients get $4.30 A DAY FOR FOOD.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has dropped significantly over the past 15 years, serving only about a quarter of the families in poverty, and paying less than $400 per month for a family of three for housing and other necessities. Ninety percent of the available benefits go to the elderly, the disabled, or working households.

9. Young adults have lost TWO-THIRDS OF THEIR NET WORTH since 1984.
21- to 35-year-olds: Your median net worth has dropped 68% since 1984. It's now less than $4,000. That $4,000 has to pay for student loans that average $27,200. Or, if you're still in school, for $12,700 in credit card debt.

10. The American public paid about FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS to bail out the banks.
That's about the same amount of money made by America's richest 10% in one year. But we all paid for the bailout. And because of it, we lost the opportunity for jobs, mortgage relief, and educational funding.

Make no mistake about it good citizen, the (in relative terms) ‘fabulously wealthy’ have been with us since colonial times, the thing that’s ‘different’ between now and then is the uber-wealthy are no longer content to be far and away richer than everyone else.

Nope, today the uber rich want to flex their ‘money muscles’ and show the, er, ‘ingrates’ that they rob blind with impunity who is REALLY ‘The Boss’.

How tragic is it good citizen that the last time the uber wealthy decided to prove what everyone only suspected (that they were bone stupid) the end result was the Terror of the French Revolution?

Now what does today’s ‘irrational rise’ in stock prices mean to you and I? It means our purchasing power is being pissed down the drain…while the super rich ‘float’ in place.

Well, how long can you ‘tread water’ good citizen?

Sadly the answer is not long enough. If you don’t revolt against those who are robbing you blind you and yours will drown in an ocean of debt, inflicted upon you by criminals (that are the uber rich!)

But once again I belabor the obvious…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Dream On!

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while the ‘Libertarian Book Review’ stumbles upon a worthwhile article usually defined by the articles willingness not to kick capitalism in the chops too hard. [Libbies LOVE capitalism!]

I can only assume they have to run a couple of articles like this one to throw off the stench of rabid conservatism that lies just beneath their faux liberal sympathies.

Worse, they hate liberals so much they don’t use the term! The call themselves 'progressives' instead...(like the Nazis.)

But that’s another matter to be dealt with later. On with the article!:

5 Ways Most Americans Are Blind to How Their Country Is Stacked for the Wealthy

1. Americans believe that the poorest 40 percent own about 10% of the wealth.

Most people greatly underestimate the level of inequality in our country, guessing that the poorest 40 percent own about 10% of the wealth, when in reality they own much less than 1% of the wealth. Out of every dollar, they own a third of a penny.

2. Entitlements are the problem.

No, they're not. The evidence is overwhelming. Social Security is a popular and well-run program. As summarized by Bernie Sanders, "Social Security, which is funded by the payroll tax, has not contributed one nickel to the deficit, and according to its trustees, can pay 100 percent of all benefits owed to every eligible American for the next 21 years." Dean Baker calls it "perhaps the greatest success story of any program in US history." [Truth be told, good citizen, if it weren’t for ‘government handouts’ we WOULDN’T HAVE AN ECONOMY!]

3. Welfare benefits are a drag on the economy.

Critics bemoan the amounts of aid being lavished on lower-income Americans, making dubious claims about thousands of dollars going to every poor family. But despite an ever-growing need for jobs and basic living necessities, federal spending on poverty programs is a small part of the budget, and it's been that way for almost 50 years, increasing from 0.8 percent of GDP in 1962 to 1.2 percent of GDP in 2007. [SEE ABOVE: WELFARE BENEFITS ARE THE ECONOMY!]

4. The American Dream is still alive, if you just work hard enough.

The Horatio Alger tale has been a popular one for conservatives, but the OECD, the Economic Policy Institute and the National Journal all came to the same conclusion: the future earnings of a child in the U.S. is closely correlated to the earnings of his or her parents. This lack of mobility is more prevalent in the U.S. than in almost all other OECD countries. [George Carlin, may he rest in piece, nailed this one, “you have to be dreaming to believe in the American Dream!”]

5. Prison puts away the bad guys.

Despite a falling violent crime rate in the U.S., there are now, as noted by Adam Gopnik, "more people under 'correctional supervision' in America -- more than six million -- than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."

Um, good last point but you know that premise is faulty because I saw a politician on the TV just last night (and he wasn’t wearing prison orange!)

Like I said, the writer makes a good point (and the only reason the LBR ran it is because he did everything but point at the ‘cause’ of all of these woes…capitalism and it’s mismanagement of money/resources!)

Scarier still all of a sudden the LBR is brimming with ads for ‘doomsday preparations’.

When 12/21/12 comes and goes (as most of us expect it will) we can only wonder what will be the next ‘doomsday trigger’ that will jump out of the woodwork.

Another ‘chicken little’ perhaps? (killer asteroids are everywhere!)

Worse, this doomsday bullshit is becoming BIG business…fostered, once again, by predatory capitalism!

Ironically, it’s bullet point number 4 that most of us have become ‘disenchanted’ with…NOBODY believes the claim that we all have a ‘million dollars in each arm, all we have to do is work it out!’

It doesn’t take long even for the morons among us to work out that you will NEVER get ‘rich’ working for somebody else!

How many of you DIDN’T know that?

Good, stupid people aren’t welcome here.

Everybody knows but nobody does anything about the stranglehold the criminal wealthy have on the resources we all need to live…until now.

Life itself has forced our hand good citizen. Will we just stand there while the selfish rich kill our children?

I think not…but I could be proven wrong, TV and movies have you all shaking in your socks because the One Percent ‘know all and see all’…their ninja assassins are prepared to strike down anyone who challenges their rule.

The hapless objector will never see it coming nor will his/her murderer ever see ‘justice’…(because ’right & wrong’ are the sole domain of the One Percent.)

Like the Israelis, no one has the authority to tell them they’re wrong…not even ‘spirit on the sky’, because they are his ‘chosen people’…thus are they free to ‘murder at will’ AND claim it is ‘divine vengeance!’

I don’t know about you but it seems to me we got a little problem here…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Cascading Systemic Collapse

Greetings good citizen,

We can be sure the unmentioned and therefore ‘inconsequential’ drop of the Dow below the 13,000 point level will be laid at the feet of ‘Superstorm Sandy’

But other evidence points in in a more disturbing direction

The ‘Euro-Zone’ has officially returned to ‘recession’:

Official figures Thursday showed that the eurozone contracted by 0.1 percent in the July to September period from the quarter before as economies including Germany and the Netherlands suffer from falling demand.

The decline reported by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, was in line with market expectations and follows on from the 0.2 percent fall recorded in the second quarter. As a result, the eurozone is officially in recession, commonly defined as two straight quarters of falling output.

"The eurozone economy will continue its decline in Q4 and probably well into 2013 too — a good backdrop for another debt crisis," said Michael Taylor, an economist at Lombard Street Research. Because of the eurozone's grueling three-year debt crisis, the region has been the major focus of concern for the world economy. The eurozone economy is worth around €9.5 trillion, or $12.1 trillion, which puts it on a par with the U.S.. The region, with its 332 million people, is the U.S.'s largest export customer, and any fall-off in demand will hit order books.

Um, hope you have your waders on good citizen because that tune you’re hearing in the background is Lenny Cohen’s ‘Everybody Knows’.

Isn’t it interesting that the Corporate owned media is telling us that the US exports anything? Although it shouldn’t surprise us in the slightest that corporate USA still PRETENDS its Chinese subsidiaries are just insignificant divisions of US, er, ‘based’ corporations.

Like fucking Apple!

How many of you sooth your consciences with the thought ‘at least it’s not American workers committing suicide due to the unbearable demands of their supervisors’ as far as Foxcon is concerned?

Is it a good thing because they used to be the jobs us workers did, that this is the technology that US engineering perfected?

But hey, what is the US when we living in a ‘globalized’ world? The Chinese would have done it themselves…eventually…once we showed them how.

But wait a minute slim, why is the global economy broken?

Or more succinctly, why has ‘innovation’ stopped dead in its tracks?

Is our badly broken justice system stifling creativity? Why bother breaking new ground if your idea will be stolen and you won’t get anything for it?

(You can’t sue the thief if you aren’t already a gazillionaire…sad simple fact.)

Which is to say the ravenous capitalists will make a fortune and if you’re very lucky, you might get credit for it…somewhere.

Let’s just say that the greatest argument against ‘socializing’ the workplace fairs no better under the largely lawless ‘free markets’.

And under a socialized workplace at least innovation can be pursued, bizarrely the capitalist isn’t interested in killing yesterdays ‘cash cow’ a minute before it is absolutely necessary.

Take a good look at the stagnant, job-starved marketplace and tell me this is a ‘good thing’.

Because civilization itself is on the verge of tearing itself apart, largely due to the abject failure of innovation.

But, again, the capitalist doesn’t give a flying fuck about civilization, oddly the idiot also fails to understand that they only prosper during times of peace (and relative plenty…)

Which is to point out that if this stuff doesn’t piss you off, it will never get addressed…

And if it never gets addressed then we are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes, over and over again…because we will keep failing to punish the perpetrators and they will keep right on taking advantage of what has proven to be our ‘stupidity’.

Even now there are those among you who don't believe in ‘decisive and irrevocable’ punishment, nor do you connect today’s debacle with the failure of our grandparents to prosecute the criminals who trashed the global economy the last time!

That’s why it keeps happening…because they keep GETTING AWAY WITH IT!

But by now most of you have convinced yourselves I’VE got a problem/fixation with punishment.

And to a degree you’d be correct!

Sad as it may be SOMEBODY has to stand up and do the right thing because the fearless and unpunished fuckers don’t even pretend to be sorry for what they’ve done!

But, naturally…I digress.

So, do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?

Who gives a fuck?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Energy Independence!

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets around the globe are bleeding from the eye sockets this morning as investors allegedly cope with fear of new taxes.

(Like the problem ISN’T all of the money in our economy is sitting in the bank accounts of the uber wealthy, doing nothing.)

Well, that ain’t the half of it good citizen…seems as though the psycho’s on Wall Street now believe that the US will soon replace Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest energy exporter.

And what the hell, like the Arabs, WE (here in the economic desert) won’t be using it! good thing for the Chinese, huh?

Even if it never crossed your mind to wonder how the Arabs felt about foreigners sucking all of the oil out of their country, you’re about to find out how just it feels!

That increased oil production, combined with new American policies to improve energy efficiency, means that the United States will become “all but self-sufficient” in meeting its energy needs in about two decades — a “dramatic reversal of the trend” in most developed countries, a new report released by the agency says.

“The foundations of the global energy systems are shifting,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based organization, which produces the annual World Energy Outlook, said in an interview before the release. The agency, which advises industrialized nations on energy issues, had previously predicted that Saudi Arabia would be the leading producer until 2035.

The report also predicted that global energy demand would grow between 35 and 46 percent from 2010 to 2035, depending on whether policies that have been proposed are put in place. Most of that growth will come from China, India and the Middle East, where the consuming class is growing rapidly. The consequences are “potentially far-reaching” for global energy markets and trade, the report said.

Um, the important thing to keep in mind here good citizen is this is NOT a ‘yippee-ki-yay motherfucker event.

Nowhere in this article does it say we will return to the days of ‘cheap & abundant energy’. Neither the oil shale nor the tar sands are A.) easy to extract or B.) economical to process.

Which is to point out that scarce and expensive energy (which will further shrink markets) will be ‘exportable’ by virtue of its ‘unaffordability’ by the average 'peasant' in the nation that produces it. (But assumedly by then 'puny things like countries' will be 'irrelevant' [to the uber rich.])

Perhaps now you can see the foolishness of allowing the self-interested to control the value of your money!

Maybe now you can see the wisdom in that notion that certain things should never be ‘monitized/commodified’.

But you idiots will pay for water and think nothing of it!

How long will it be before you are buying ‘designer’ air?

We could really go off the reservation over water and our long history of fighting over it but that is not the subject of this post. We are parsing the ‘common good’ vs., the predations of capitalism…because it is capitalism and capitalism alone that allows the capitalist to claim for his (or her) own what belongs to us all.

And guess how we landed in this sorry state of affairs?

By deferring to Kings and Queens…(who put their own interests ahead of the people’s…)

By now the capitalist is foaming at the mouth, raving about the ‘injustice’ of being attacked by an obvious ‘godless commie’ (who would have you all work for the same pay and force you to ‘give away’ the ‘fruits of your labors’ [rather than let the generous capitalist buy them from you for a fraction of their worth…] which is why the capitalist is rich and you can barely pay your bills, which isn‘t the capitalist‘s problem…it‘s yours!)

First point, Anarchy is in NO WAY related to communism, it is a political philosophy, not an economic system…and A Simple Plan is in no way ‘communist’ (which you’d know if you bothered to read it!)

But again I digress…

What does it take, good citizen, to get you to stop shooting yourself in the foot?

Is it that ‘heat of the moment thing’ when the New Boss pulls that last minute change out of his hat, just when victory is within your grasp?

In something that would make a wonderful farce, if it weren’t so tragic, we have perpetually witnessed crushing defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, repeatedly throughout history.

Mostly because the ‘forces of evil’ (a.k.a. greed) never sleep.
Worse, it seems our would be saviors aren’t immune to its influence, and if they are they get killed.

So is it a battle we ‘can’t win’…?

Definitely not…because soon circumstance will dictate that we either choose to start doing things the right way or we head down the path towards extinction…

Which brings us full circle to the growing effects of climate change and the desperate need to stop consuming as much fossil fuel as we can scrape out of the ground and throwing it into the atmosphere.

It is time for A Simple Plan and the sweeping lifestyle changes it will bring.

Simply put good citizen, the ultimate goal of A Simple plan is to make crime no longer pay…across the board.

No more getting fucked by employers, no more getting fucked by merchants, no more getting fucked by politicians and no more getting fucked by criminals…because there is no more money! (read cash)

Your money truly is ‘for you’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Parting thought: Energy Independence (under capitalism) will be virtually meaningless to YOU.

We are long overdue to stop using this badly broken system as the basis of governing our society…which, in case you haven’t noticed, no longer counts YOU…

Like the song says: There ain’t no commies and there ain’t no yanks, just common criminals, with guns and tanks!

Sustainable Future

Greetings good citizen,

Here, in the ‘aftermath’ of the election we find some disturbing indications regarding what it means to be ‘progressive’

Mind you this divisive mindset ISN’T coming from the decidedly twisted conservative side of the fence…it comes from the (Libertarian leaning) ‘progressive’ politicos.

If you aren’t ‘down with brown’ then you’d best find someplace to hide, honky! (because you’re about to be made politically irrelevant…)

And one would have to admit, this isn’t how, er, ‘democracy’ is supposed to work.

Just one more reason why we desperately need to overhaul what we do and why we do it.

The latest ‘cage match’ between the Conservo-loonies and the Tax & Spend Libruls is all the proof anyone needs to see that we are going off the political rails into ideological warfare…a war only the very rich can A.) win and B.) afford.

And our source of ‘intellectual reflection’ (C.K. Michaelson) points out, the issue is deeper than just the stewardship of our one and only home, it is about the survival of our (entire) species (and not just the few who have laid clam to what we all need to live!)

To that end any new social model needs to be ‘sustainable’…which could explain why the current pinheads are driving our civilization over the cliff.

They are indeed trying to kill off as much of the ‘surplus population’ as they think they can get away with.

YOU have been led to believe that the planet is ‘over-populated’ rather than grossly mismanaged.

Most of you believe we need to reduce the human ‘footprint’ to a more manageable level…and are you aware of what is behind that backwards kind of thinking?

A deeply entrenched desire to ‘preserve’ (predatory) capitalism!

Worse, it is the, er, ‘desire’ to make money, er, ‘meaningful’ once more!

While I have failed to sell A Simple Plan to the general public on the basis of Justice and Equality, maybe I could garner some support by drawing on one of the other ‘pillars’ of its creation…sustainability.

By design A Simple plan dramatically reduces energy consumption…by, er, ‘making it unnecessary’ to commute. It will also build new structures designed to conserve energy by using geo-thermal building techniques, reducing the usage of both heating and cooling resources.

Note how I avoid the term ‘cost’…because NOTHING ‘costs’ ANYTHING! The ONLY real costs are ‘opportunity costs’ and squandering those should be avoided by careful planning!

How difficult is it to understand that we could reduce what the world spends on ‘anti-terror’ to ZERO if we’d simply treat people better?

Worse, why is that concept a ‘non-starter’?

Am I a ‘dreamer’?

I don’t think so…I (perhaps mistakenly) believe most people think as I do but their ‘practical side’ gets in the way of their (very weak) desire to ‘do the right thing’.

We must stop voting for ideologies (especially the ones that preach hatred!) and start voting for equality and justice!

Albeit those abstract concepts are difficult to quantify even if they are universally understood.

And this is where we run into problems. When people start to ‘quibble’ over the definition of universally understood concepts.

It is not unusual for these quibblers to become ‘lawyers’ (a profession that is outlawed under A Simple Plan.)

It is the current failure to evaluate the common good from what’s good for the self-interested that has led us to where we sit today, on the verge of social collapse.

We can’t continue to allow the self-interested (read >One Percent) to decide what is ‘good’ for the rest of us.

Good luck finding someone who disagrees with THAT statement of fact (that ISN’T a freakazoid Libertarian!)

Correct me if I’m wrong good citizen (because if I am wrong and the majority of our species is ignorant and greedy then we are already doomed!)

But (fortunately) this is not the human race I encounter every day.

So the problem must be confined to the ‘people (wrongly) in charge’.

And it has been, unfortunately, my experience that people elevated to that level of trust are usually shiftless and untrustworthy.

So what should be a simple exercise of doing what is IN YOUR BEST INTEREST becomes an exercise in not wanting to be the ‘odd man out’!

(So get back in the corner as start fucking yourself, like everyone else is!)

It seriously doesn’t get much sadder than that good citizen,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Web of Lies

Greetings good citizen,

Under the damn it, did it again! category, I just went to post this and found that I skipped the whole ‘intro’ portion of the post…

So now I have to duck back into my mail and check how the stock market did, and it was another weird one. Markets around the globe did, er, ‘okay’ today…except for the US which headed further into the basement.

Counterintuitively, yesterday’s dogs haven’t yet turned into tomorrow’s foxes…but you know its coming, especially for the ‘only game in town’.

But that is not the topic of tonight’s post, nope, tonight I use one of my precious 'ten clicks' to bring you this neglected topic from the corporate owned media which asks why neither candidate is addressing the issue of the West’s sinking standard of living.

Which should put tonight’s title into perspective for you…

What is the solution to this thicket of economic forces?

That question is the one that Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are trying to convince voters that they can best answer. They both accept that the government and the market have a role, but they put a different emphasis on those roles.

It is hard to see how either globalization or automation can be stopped. The proposed solutions instead tends to involve managing them. [This is true. Even A Simple Plan uses automation for its ‘intended purpose’ of shortening the work week rather than trying to go back to the ‘old way’ of doing things…although the coming energy scarcity is going to force our hands in that department.]


If the economy can be made to grow fast enough, incomes can still rise across the board, as they did when the unemployment rate fell below 5 percent in the 1990s and briefly below 4 percent in 2000. If educational attainment rises, more people will be able to get jobs that benefit from technology and global trade, rather than suffer from it. [Huge pipe dream and fucking whopper of a lie!] And if inequality continues to soar, the government could choose to use the tax code to ameliorate it — a solution that Democrats favor and Republicans say will hurt economic growth. [Not that you didn’t notice but you know it was 'fucking around with the tax code' that got us here in the first place. Time to fix it for good and do away with taxes altogether…by eliminating the reason for taxes, ‘private ownership’.]

Maybe the biggest reason for optimism is that there is still a strong argument [by greedheads] that both globalization and automation help the economy in the long run. This argument remains popular with [improperly trained] economists: Trade allows countries to specialize in what they do best, while technology creates opportunities to extend and improve life that never before existed.

Let’s finish that last sentence because we all know it is incomplete…

The ONLY way technology ‘extends and improves life’ is IF you aren’t on the ‘wrong side of it’…and most of us ARE!

Read my lips: ALL ECONOMIES ARE LOCAL. No exceptions!

Need further clarification? Try living in an ‘economic desert’. (A place whose ‘economic engine’ has been exported.)

There is proof all around us the ‘myopia’ is often fatal, especially when that ‘tunnel vision’ afflicts the misguided and overly greedy decision-maker.

Whole regions of the US have been lain waste by the reckless decision of the greedy few.

Decisions that could have been prevented if those we elected to ride herd on the greed heads HAD DONE THEIR FUCKING JOBS!

But no, instead they are all guilty of treason and all need to be, er, ‘punished accordingly’.

And how many of our ‘One Percenter’ representatives…(now there’s a disturbing little factoid the corporate owned media often overlooks, that you can find a whole boatload of for real ‘one percenters’ wandering the corridors of Congress.)

Could THAT be the reason we can’t seem to alter our disastrous course?

Because we CAN’T elect people who actually have SOMETHING IN FUCKING COMMON WITH US?

This is the ‘ILLUSION OF PARTICIPATION coupled with the ILLUSION OF EQUALITY’.

Which brings us back to the decidedly disturbing reality of the political ‘sniff test’. Where those who, er, ‘oversee’ the ‘party apparatus’ get to decide who they will AND WON’T endorse.

The entire pool of political candidates comes from BEHIND CLOSED DOORS!

You get to choose from only a pre-selected pool, this keeps the riff-raff and the radical ‘non-capitalists’ off the ballot.

But it’s time to throw ALL of that nonsense on the scrap heap and cut to the chase.

From here on out we only vote DIRECTLY on the laws, which shall, by definition, be few. Fuck this bullshit of somebody deciding for you without ever asking you how you feel on the issue…or IF it is even an issue to you!

So where were we? Oh yeah, standing athwart the march of history screaming ‘halt!’ like a bunch of Luddites!

Or at least that’s what the conservo-loonies think.

This isn’t a contest between ‘personal prosperity’ versus the general welfare as the conservo-whackos have made it into.

This is about truly elevating the circumstance of ALL mankind, the ‘rich’ should be indistinguishable from the average individual, honestly.

If one is ‘truly exceptional’ they will ‘stand out’ in ways other than accumulating massive fortunes (that in turn ultimately decimate society.)

Money is a tool, not an end in itself.

How many of you are sighing right now and muttering ‘good luck with that’ under your breath?

Not that our salvation requires universal acceptance of this truth…but until we become hardcore about managing the use of money within our society, it will continue to do more harm than good.

This is why under A Simple Plan your money is for you. Only YOU can make it and only YOU can spend it…when you spend it, nobody gets it, it is simply erased. When you die your money dies with you. Everybody is on their own…in a society that meets your every need, from the cradle to the grave.

You no longer need to worry about your kids, they’re all set!

A Simple Plan, an idea whose time has come, and we could do it tomorrow (if the fucking greed-heads would roll over and play dead…)

Ironically, it IS ‘in their interest’ to do so!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner