Shadows

Greetings good citizen,

It’s one thing for me to repeat (ad nauseum) that our civilization is on the verge of collapse and quite another to present the evidence that proves it.

Thus it is my pleasure to present to you the ever popular Shadow Stats!

No. 505: January CPI, Real Retail Sales and Earnings, Existing Home Sales, Subscription required February 21st, 2013
• Real Earnings Fall Year-to-Year • January Year-to-Year Inflation: 1.6% (CPI-U), 1.5% (CPI-W), 9.2% (ShadowStats)
• Aside from Not Measuring Constant-Standard-of-Living Inflation, The Chained-CPI Is Too Unstable for Setting Cost-of-Living Adjustments
• Outlooks Unchanged for Ongoing Economic and System-Liquidity Crises and for Inflation Crisis to Develop in Year Ahead More ...

Yes good citizen, while all of the picky pundits continue to insist the problem will be ‘deflation’ and not hyper-inflation, the central banks of the world are running the presses in ‘hyper-drive’.

WHEN (not if) the global supply chain shuts down we will instantly be faced with ‘too much money chasing too few goods’…typically notable by the frantic ‘bidding up’ of prices…also known as ‘hyper-inflation’.

No. 504: January 2013 Housing Starts, PPI and PPI and CPI Revisions Subscription required February 20th, 2013
• January 2013 Housing Starts 61% Below High of January 2006
• Annualized January PPI Headline Inflation of 2.5% Was 7.1%, Before Seasonal-Adjustment Muting
• *Revised Seasonally-Adjusted Inflation Data Suggestive of Instabilities in Monthly Headline Reporting More ...

Inflation is still in ‘runaway mode’ while the government continues too ‘cook the books’ (just like they do with the unemployment numbers.)

*Note Mr. William’s subtle nod at the accountant’s difficulties keeping the data, er, ‘credible’.

No. 503: January 2013 Industrial Production
Subscription required February 15th, 2013
• Annual Production Growth in January Slowed to Pre-Recession Levels
• Monthly Production Decline Was In the Context of Continued Volatile and Unstable Reporting
• Production Benchmark Revision in March Should Show Weaker Activity Than Previously Estimated More ...

‘Pre-recession levels’…so how’s that recovery (that nobody but the pundits and the financial sector has been able to see) coming?

You know as well as I good citizen that there is no recovery. There isn’t going to be one. The plunge stopped (temporarily) to let the economy ‘adjust’ to the new normal. Then it will plunge again.

In this case the ‘it’ in question is the economy and the global one if you want to be more specific.

No. 502: January 2013 Retail Sales
Subscription required February 13th, 2013
• Retail Sales Continued to Stagnate, Reflecting Intensifying Structural Liquidity Issues for the Consumer More ...

A single (harrowing) bullet point but what does it point to, eh, good citizen?

Anyone? (Bueller) Anyone?

(and the geeky kid in the back says,) “It’s pointing to the failure of capitalism!”

Does the teacher hand the kid an ‘attaboy’ or detention?

What would YOU do?

No. 501: December 2012 and Annual Trade Balance, Consumer Credit Subscription required February 8th, 2013
• Little Changed for the Year, 2012 U.S. Merchandise Trade Deficit Still Reflected [the] Cumulative Loss of 6.6 Million Jobs
• December Trade Reporting Suggested Upside Contribution to First Revision of Fourth-Quarter GDP
• New ShadowStats Graph of Consumer Credit Outstanding More ...

Not that there was much of a ‘choice’ (The whole system is designed to provide an ‘illusion of participation’) but where was this data during the run up to the election?

Or were conservo-whackos worried that bad jobs numbers would bite THEM in the backside…because we all KNOW who is responsible for destroying the economy.

No. 500: SPECIAL COMMENTARY U.S. Government GAAP-Based 2012 Financial Data
February 5th, 2013
• GAAP-Based Federal Budget Deficit Hit Record $6.6 Trillion in 2012
• Five-Year Average Annual Shortfall at $5.2 Trillion
• With U.S. Facing Mortal, Long-Range Solvency Issues, Hyperinflation Remains a Virtual Certainty More ...

I don’t know what to tell you good citizen, there is obvious fraud in the markets and impending collapse in the supply chain, both of which spells disaster for our species.

What needs to be understood up front is both are the result of mis-management…to the degree of criminal negligence.

There is profit in crisis and the capitalists intend to inflict the ‘long emergency’ upon the rest of us.

This WILL lead to civil unrest and revolt.

DUMP CAPITALISM NOW!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner.

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

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

United

Greetings good citizen,

Good news, the weekend is here! But that doesn’t stop the bad news and, if we pause to consider that most of what they tell us serves to distract us from other issues, the bad news only becomes that much more poignant.

These are headlines drawn from the front page of today’s NY Times:

As Suicides Rise in U.S., Veterans Are Less of Total
By JAMES DAO

The convergence reflects the fact that suicide numbers are rising slightly among both veterans and everyone else, but has increased more in the general population.

How does this headline sit with you good citizen? I’d opine that my favorite hobby horse, ‘desperation’ is on the rise and this is proof.

If you don’t go on a rampage, ‘the alternative’ is to destroy yourself.

Is this the kind of society we want to hand over to our children? Increasingly, Hollywood (or more correctly Bollywood) has focused on an endless stream of dystopian futures.

I watched Looper last night and I have to admit, it was beyond grim…although the ‘lynchpin’ of the story (by my way of thinking) will always be ‘impossible’ because the past doesn’t exist! We remember what happened but that doesn’t mean it’s still there. Same thing with the future, it doesn’t exist (yet) so it is impossible to ‘travel’ there because we live in the perpetual ‘now’. It was now a moment ago and it will still be now in a couple of seconds but you can’t rush it. Time (as mankind understands it) is a mental construct…that has some very detrimental side effects for the environment.

Man (read capitalists) foolishly believes that given enough time the environment will ‘repair’ itself…not true.

But, as usual, I digress.

Don’t believe in God, don’t believe in time and I definitely don’t believe in money so what DO I believe in?

I believe in YOU (and by extension, myself.) May not be much but it’s all we’ve got.

The keyword there, good citizen, is ‘we’.

Speaking of words we come upon this one often enough but it is so context sensitive and flexible that it’s hardly useful:

BUSINESS
As U.S. Growth Lags, Some Press the Fed to Do Still More
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Federal Reserve officials believe the bank could do more to increase the pace of inflation and aid growth. They simply are not persuaded that the benefits outweigh potential costs.

While not necessarily a ‘one time’ trick, the idea is to skin everybody in the economy via inflation. Last time they did this trick it cost me fifty percent of my purchasing power.

Purchasing power that I have never regained.

Now they are contemplating doing it again…and here we are on the cusp of an energy crisis.

Needless to say the death toll will be horrendous considering the unemployment situation. (40% + of the population on some type of ‘food assistance’ because their jobs pay poverty wages AND OUR POLITICIANS DON’T THINK THIS IS AN ISSUE!)

Once again I propose that we ‘string ‘em up’ but it seems nobody likes that idea…

Yet somehow just letting them walk away after what they’ve done just doesn’t seem proper.

Unless that walk leads them to a peaceful and contemplative place where they had all of the time in the world to weigh the impact of their bountiful deeds. (The one way walk nobody survives, a.k.a. ‘exile’.)

But I’m doing it again, ain’t I…

The thing is we have no way to stop them from ‘poisoning the well’, something they’ve already done. Thanks to the funniness of money they have been able to keep the economy ‘alive’ (on life support) which has the exact same effect as ‘inflating away’ our debts.

The problem here is the tens of millions of people who don’t have an income stream to tap.

Part of the ‘inflate away’ process is raising everybody’s pay (literally absorbing) a portion of the inflation while they raise prices.

Most people get fooked in this process, their paycheck doubles but their expenses quadruple.

And the bailed out bankers (the cause of this whole mess) happily hand out loans to the soon to be bankrupt workers.

Then the economy crashes (like it did on Carter) and another Reagan comes along with more ‘voodoo economics’ and things get better…for the one tenth of one percent.

Needless to say, given our starting point, this is how you wake up one morning to realize you’re living in a Banana Republic!

In fact, you’re three quarters of the way there already.

Understand good citizen, nobody is keeping the ‘tyrants’ in check. They’re going to run you down and you have no place to turn to but your neighbor.

How pathetic is it that there’s a fifty-fifty chance they are in ‘denial’ that anything’s even wrong (thus would they be disinclined to help you.)

United we stand but united we aren’t good citizen…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Handwriting

Greetings good citizen,

While you’re busy making sure nobody grabs your gun out of its holster (thereby distracting you from other things happening right under your nose.)

A barrel of oil has crept back up to $96 a barrel while the price at the pump hovers around $3.50 a gallon locally (funny how those two numbers, the price per barrel and the price per gallon keep becoming ‘disconnected’, yet another ‘distraction’ considering ALL MONEY IS FUNNY! The price is whatever they want it to be because THEY certainly don’t need the money! And for the pinheads out there, the ‘they’, in this instance, refers to the >One Percent.)

But wait, there’s more! How many of you noticed that the Dow is within spitting distance of setting a new record?

Which really makes you wonder why they (same they) bother because we all know the number is total fiction?

Tomorrow they could claim the Dow hit 44,000 and nothing would change (besides the fact that the rest of us would all become poorer relative to the nation’s shareowners.

Well, how unfortunate for the rest of us that articles like this feed the notion that the One Percent is planning to kill most of us off.

That same month, the online publication Market Oracle reported that “ [t]he new ‘water barons’—the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires—are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace.” The report reveals two phenomena that have been gathering speed, and that could potentially lead to profit accumulation at the cost of communities and commons —the expansion of market instruments beyond the water supply and sanitation to other areas of water governance, and the increasingly prominent role of financial institutions.

In several instances this has meant that the government itself has set up public corporations that run like a business, contracting out water supply and sanitation operations to those with expertise, or entering into public–private–partnerships, often with water multinationals. This happened recently in Nagpur and New Delhi, India. In most rural areas, ensuring a clean drinking water supply and sanitation continues to be a challenge. For-profit companies such as Sarvajal have begun setting up pre-paid water kiosks (or water ATMs) that would dispense units of water upon the insertion of a pre-paid card. It is no surprise that these are popular among people who otherwise have no access to clean drinking water.

With climate change, however, the water crisis is no longer perceived as confined to developing countries or even primarily a concern related to water supply and sanitation. Fresh water commons are becoming degraded and depleted in both developed and developing countries. In the United States, diversion of water for expanded commodity crop production, biofuels and gas hydro-fracking is compounding the crisis in rural areas. In areas ranging from the Ogallala aquifer to the Great Lakes in North America, water has been referred to as liquid gold. Billionaires such as T. Boone Pickens have been buying up land overlying the Ogallala aquifer, acquiring water rights; companies such as Dow Chemicals, with a long history of water pollution, are investing in the business of water purification, making pollution itself a cash-cow.

Understand good citizen this story would be about air if they thought they could get away with it.

Under Manslow’s hierarchy of needs, you will only survive a couple of minutes without air, a couple of days without water and roughly a month without food. Shelter is a slider depending on the hostility of the environment. In a mild climate it comes last but in a harsh one it can supercede water!

You’d think history would have taught mankind the ‘futility’ of hoarding anything, water in particular.

It also provides us with a definitive example of one of the things that shouldn’t have a ‘price tag’ attached to it.

Yet the capitalist thinks everything has a price…and they think nothing of exploiting a situation.

Worse, they are the first ones to cry, “it’s not personal, it’s business!”

Let’s take a step back and look at this for a moment…the ‘businessman’ says he’d love to help you out BUT there’s MONEY involved here. (Keep in mind that ALL MONEY IS FUNNY!)

Stick a gun in his face and all of a sudden HE’S THE ‘VICTIM’!

Did I mention the need to redefine the term ‘criminal’?

The water is no more ‘his’ than it is yours but who is the (criminal) court going to believe?

Which brings us to another ‘marvel’, the fact that you will find humans living in even the most inhospitable environments this planet has to offer.

And despite capitalist insistence that this is due to ‘rugged individualism’ it is in fact due to the overwhelming desire to escape the rabid capitalists!

How can you be ‘free’ when those who run our society do their worst to nickel and dime you for everything they can?

YOU know Mother Nature doesn’t have a cash register (and so do the creeps, that’s why EVERYTHING requires a ‘permit’ under capitalism and guess what? Those permits aren’t FREE! Worse, they can be arbitrarily ‘denied’.)

But I digress, the ‘real bad news’ here is it is only a matter of time before the combination of water and energy scarcity erupts in civilization ending ‘class war’.

Under the ‘judge for yourself’ category, real estate ads have started touting a location’s remoteness as a ‘selling point’ and some even use the term ‘bug out’.

What does that tell you?

Think handwriting on the wall…(especially when they try to play the ‘who knew’ card…)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

White-washed

Greetings good citizen,

As I have opined before, nothing will be ‘fixed’ if we rely on the fools who broke it in the first place to cobble up the repairs.

So we have this story, served up cold by the Corporate Owned Media, thereby making it suspect from the get-go…

Fair Game
Making Them Pay (and Confess)
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Mary Jo White, the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has a chance to scuttle the practice of letting companies settle cases without admitting fault.

Talk about your voice in the wilderness, I haven’t hear that complaint from any sector of the C.O.M. over the past couple of years, even while there has been a rash of ‘wrist stinging’ fines doled out by federal regulators. Who let the perps just walk away afterwards without admitting guilt…although since they paid, I don’t think anybody needed to sign a ‘confession’, the check is its own guilty plea.

Which is to ask, is saying ‘sorry’ enough?

I mean if sorry was enough we wouldn’t have anyone in prison! They’re all ‘sorry’ (they got nailed, ‘dead to rights’.)

Which is to go one step further and opine that we won’t see ‘justice’ done until the ‘responsible parties’ are handed STIFF prison terms.

(Or in the case of a simple plan, exile. ASP doesn’t condone imprisonment (It’s inhumane...to the prisoners AND the guards!)

Exile, which is a sort of ‘you made your bed now you’re gonna lie in it’ deal.

This is justice, served very, very cold.

Exile is one-way trip that you make the same way you arrived in this world, buck-naked.

The theory is most people won’t survive exile because exiles are usually lacking in the ‘cooperation’ department.

The concept of having to be a friend to have a friend is lost on them. These rugged individuals try to go it alone.

And should they try to win the cooperation of their fellow inmates, they have nothing to offer in return and these people usually don’t have a ‘normal’ sense of value. If you could smuggle some gold in one of your body cavities you may be able to strike a bargain…So, how much gold can you stuff up your poop chute?

But the guards would have to be mighty dumb not to scan you before placing you on the departure table.

Did I mention exiles are rendered unconscious before being released into a world where they are free to do whatever they want?

How did you think we were going to get ‘em naked? We’re going to cut their clothes off and scan (and surgically remove if necessary) any metal from their bodies before they are placed in the release pen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, am I not?

Our reporter with her thumb on the pulse of global business has asked that the newly appointed prosecutor MAKE THE CRIMIANLS ADMIT THEIR GUILT!

Apparently this will be enough. All we have to do is ‘SHAME’ a few of them and the rest will fall into line!

Now I can sympathize with her position. She can’t be too aggressive because the criminals she’s railing against cut her paycheck.

I have already pointed to the ‘propaganda machine’ as a ‘primary target’ come the revolution.

Those whose power relies on lies NEED the re-enforcement of officialdom!

Without the lie machine the criminals are lost!

But I digress again!

The focus of the article is the White-washing of Wall Street and they have wheeled out a hand picked patsy to do the job.

The people responsible for breaking the global economy have no interest in fixing it. At best we will see some mock trials and some small time players thrown under the bus while the investigation leaves criminals like Paulson, Geithner and Greenspan unmolested.

Worse, it will also stop well short of the politicians who executed the orders of the captains of industry and swept their dirt under the rug of National Security.

How sad is it good citizen that the goal of creating (and sustaining) a nation where justice prevails and freedom reigns remains so elusive?

How successful were the founders, who met in secret to draft the constitution? You don’t think they realized even back then that they were dooming their heirs to live under a web of lies?

Which leads us to wonder what the ‘original’ constitution actually says as opposed to the one we’ve all read that doesn’t seem to have any basis in reality?

Why do these elected chuckleheads keep defying the constitution they are ‘sworn to uphold’?

Maybe the real deal is so contemptuous of the common people that it has never seen the light of day.

Because sometimes it sure seems just like that…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Only in America!

Greetings good citizen,

In yet another jaw dropping example of capitalism at its finest we have a citizen using his garden hose as a flame-thrower after a nearby fracking operation contaminated his water well.

Which is not nearly as disturbing as what the EPA did when confronted with this, er, ‘intelligence’.

I cannot stress enough that the loss of control over our justice system indicates the loss of control over our society itself, and the extent to which treason has permeated the public realm.

(The people elected to serve us are NOT serving the public but those who funded their election, the One Percent…and that is ‘treason’…which has a long standing punishment.)

Again I ask what is it going to take before you reject this greedy grasping and punish the criminals who have impoverished the rest of us for so long?

How long must we suffer before you are willing to act?

The case isn't the first in which the EPA initially linked a hydraulic fracturing operation to water contamination and then softened its position after the industry protested. A similar dispute unfolded in west-central Wyoming in late 2011, when the EPA released an initial report that showed hydraulic fracturing could have contaminated groundwater. After industry and GOP leaders went on the attack, the agency said it had decided to do more testing. It has yet to announce a final conclusion.

Hydraulic fracturing — often called "fracking" — allows drillers to tap into oil and gas reserves that were once considered out of reach because they were locked in deep layers of rock. The method has contributed to a surge in natural gas drilling nationwide, but environmental activists and some scientists believe it can contaminate groundwater. The industry insists the practice is safe.

Range Resources, a leading independent player in the natural gas boom, has hundreds of gas wells throughout Texas, Pennsylvania and other mineral-rich areas of the United States. Among them is a production site — now owned by Legend Natural Gas — in a wooded area about a mile from Lipsky's home in Weatherford, about a half-hour drive west of Fort Worth.

Geez, what a surprise, the EPA backed off once the conservo-loonies got into the act!

Color me shocked…(yawn.) Welcome to midnight in America, and they say the darkest hour is just before dawn…so you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Understand good citizen it is precisely this practice (of contaminating groundwater) that is projected to put the US back on top of the energy exporting world…because we won’t be using it here! (Or at least that’s the plan.)

Which is the ‘sidebar’ to the bizarre predictions of the worlds first country to tap out its energy reserves will suddenly ‘resume’ its role as the world’s biggest energy exporter.

What does that tell you about the rest of the world?

It should be teaching you a boatload about the ‘funniness of money’. You won’t have enough to of it to buy energy but others will (cuz they is keepin’ massa’s factories running!)

Does ANYBODY see the ‘end game’ here?

How about a little taste of today’s business headlines?

Wednesday, January 16, 2013 Last Update: 10:30 AM ET

Deepening Crisis for the Dreamliner
By HIROKO TABUCHI and BETTINA WASSENER 6:41 AM ET

The two largest Japanese airlines said they would ground their Boeing 787 aircraft after a string of problems was capped by an emergency landing in western Japan.

Yet more proof of the stunning failure caused by globalization mixed with a generous portion of unbridled greed!

And speaking of unbridled greed:

DealBook
JPMorgan Cuts Dimon’s Pay, Even as Profit Surges
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG 37 minutes ago

JPMorgan Chase touted a strong quarter, but still chose to sharply cut the pay of the chief executive, Jamie Dimon, in light of a multibillion-dollar trading loss last year.

DealBook: JPMorgan Report on Trading Loss Takes Aim at Top Executives 50 minutes ago

Funny how we start off with corruption in government and it leads us straight to the now defunct engine of the US economy:

DealBook
Goldman Sachs Earnings Soar
By SUSANNE CRAIG 49 minutes ago

Goldman Sachs reported a fourth-quarter profit of $2.89 billion, or $5.60 a share, beating analysts’ estimates.

DealBook: Goldman Profit Blows Through Expectations 8:56 AM ET
Stocks Pull Back Despite Bank Earnings 53 minutes ago

Does anyone else find it curious how the customerless banking sector manages to make record profits as the global economy founders helplessly?

Share prices keep rising but for no discernable reason…is it theft, fraud or both?

Which leads us to the next article:

Walmart Plans to Buy American More Often
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

The retailer’s 10-year commitment, totaling $50 billion, comes as it is under pressure over its overseas sourcing following a deadly fire in November in Bangladesh.

So a little ‘bad press’ and Walmart is suddenly humble and contrite are they?

Somehow I don’t think it would be that easy, just like the idiots who believe peaceful protests are the solution.

If we don’t start burning things down, nothing is going to change (and if we don’t burn most of it down what does change will be all bad!

American Airlines Reports a Profit
By JAD MOUAWAD 55 minutes ago

Lower costs helped the airline, which is operating under bankruptcy court protection, post a profit, compared with a loss a year ago.

And how did AA post a profit? They did it the ‘old fashioned way’ they wrung the savings out of their employees!

Lastly we have this story that begs the question of who thought it was a good idea to rescue these idiots in the first place (sadly, it was Hank Paulson and his successor Lloyd Blankfein!)

A.I.G. Seeks Approval to File More Bank Suits
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

A.I.G. must win a court fight with an entity run by the New York Fed, which the insurer says is blocking its efforts to go after banks that harmed it financially.

Only in America, good citizen could you read such a litany of woe and not think the bottom was going to fall out tomorrow due to public outrage…and believe you-me, the public is plenty outraged…they just can’t narrow it down to who…yet.

But fear not! The corporate owned media will offer up a scapegoat quicker than you can say debt ceiling! (Another grossly mis-reported story of politicians playing the public for chumps with the ‘assistance’ of the bought and paid for media.

But I have kept you beyond your time, good citizen and for that I apologize.

Try and remember when ‘Only in America’ was a good thing…(despite it being a lie then too.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Me First!

Greetings good citizen,

This morning’s news caused me to do a double take because it is that incredible, like we need more ‘evidence’ of which letter SHOULD come after the incumbent’s name…

WASHINGTON — When President Obama nominates Chuck Hagel, the maverick Republican and former senator from Nebraska, to be his next secretary of defense, he will be turning to a trusted ally whose willingness to defy party loyalty and conventional wisdom won his admiration both in the Senate and on a 2008 tour of war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The choice of Mr. Hagel, the first Vietnam veteran to be nominated for the post, would add a prominent Republican to Mr. Obama’s cabinet, providing some political cover for the president’s plans to exit Afghanistan and make cuts to a military budget that has roughly doubled since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

But Republicans made clear on Sunday that they would give Mr. Hagel a rough ride on his path to the Pentagon, questioning his support for Israel, his seriousness about the Iranian nuclear threat and his commitment to an adequate defense budget. And Mr. Obama may also face difficulties from some Democrats who are wary of negative comments that Mr. Hagel made more than a decade ago about gays.

Quick point before we smack ourselves silly with disbelief would be, you don’t suppose the corporate owned media HAD TO throw in that BS about Mr. Hagel’s past ‘anti-gay’ comments, do you…I mean who gives a fuck?

The infamous ‘they’ handed the election to Obama because appointing their boy Mitt would have created too much backlash. You’d have had open revolt in the streets.

While I am tempted to shout ‘see, he really is a DINO!’ I had ‘forewarned’ that this day was coming.

And it doesn’t satisfy me in the slightest to be both correct and to have NOT voted for the lapdog. (At least the girls got arrested for protesting their exclusion from the presidential debates!)

Naturally the curious part will be seeing the ‘rubber stamp’ in action as the One Percent’s will is fulfilled, as commanded.

Sort of redefines the term, ‘so let it be written, so let it be done.’

Never mind all of the ‘criminals’ who have skated for the past (3)5 (yeah, that’s thirty-five!) years (probably longer.) I am sure I’m not the only one who finds this ‘homogenous’ government (that acts in lockstep) disturbing.

Barking like rabid dogs until something the One percent favors comes along then it is rubber stamped without even the pretense of debate and it back to being ‘mortal enemies' again!

Are we ‘over the edge’ good citizen? Is it the corporate owned media’s intention to infer that we are all insane because we refuse to acknowledge the inconsistencies (that they routinely gloss over…)

More disturbingly is the ‘revolving door’ of the ‘usual suspects’ being awarded cabinet posts by members of the opposite party.

Does party affiliation mean ANYTHING anymore? (Or are those piddling trifles only of concern to the ‘riff-raff’ and the rabble?)

Worse, we’re being told the same thing we are getting mighty sick of hearing…and that is ‘What are YOU going to do about it?

And we all know the answer to that one, don’t we?

Nothin’.

The criminals are in charge and there isn’t a thing we can do about the mismanagement of our civilization...and you'd think by now somebody would have come up with a solution to that problem.

And we have…it's just not one the criminals ‘like’…but since when are the criminals supposed to be ‘okay’ with justice?

Isn’t it their reckless disregard for the common good that marks them as criminals in the first place?

They know this and try (uselessly) to move the ‘goalposts’ of justice further down the field…by inventing improbable scenarios…like the GWOT.

It takes a truly sick mind to invent something so nebulous…and now we have our national leaders appointing said fabricators to top cabinet posts!

FULL STOP

WE ARE FACING A CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION ENDING IMPORTANCE

But it’s being handled dead wrong!

I will once again point out that MONEY does not equal INTELLIGENCE.

Although it is a sad indictment of our society to feel compelled to point that out because too many people make that erroneous connection.

(Jack Ass is rich so Jack Ass must be smart!)

The ‘criminals’ are protecting their ‘privileges’ at our expense.

It is time we jail the criminals and their co-conspirators in the legal and financial communities.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Kindness?

Greetings good citizen,

As usual, when the opportunity to flog one of my pet concepts presents itself I hop on it.

How sad is it that the opportunity comes wrapped in ‘nice gesture’ that is likely to end in tragedy?

A California lawyer is giving up his fully-furnished home in Los Angeles for a homeless family to live in for a year, according to the New York Daily News.

Tony Tolbert, 51, says that his act of kindness just feels like the right thing to do.

“You don’t have to be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Oprah,” Tolbert told CBS News. ”We can do it wherever we are, with whatever we have, and for me, I have a home that I can make available.”

Tolbert will move back in with his mother for the year and continue working. It was in his mother’s house that Tolbert says he learned to be a giving and caring young man.

While I laud the Esquire’s noble gesture, I deplore its necessity. Push come to shove I’ll bet Tony doesn’t like it either.

He’s probably going to find himself in a real difficult place once the year passes and the folks he ‘gifted’ his home to are forced to return to the streets.

(One would hope the ‘advantage’ of having an address could be parlayed into a steady job. The homeless frequently cite that not having a ‘real address or a phone number’ prevents them from getting a ‘good’ job.)

I have both but still can’t find work…and the jobs I apply to be still begging for help…must be conservo-whackos!

AS A SOCIETY, we must ask ourselves why we don’t shelter all members of our species and why we don’t make room for them to contribute and be a part of our community?

Sadly good citizen, the answer to that terrible question is capitalism and it’s ‘fuck you, pay me’ mode of operation.

This is what comes from allowing ‘a few’ people to ‘own’ what we all need to live.

A Simple Plan erases that ‘inequity’ of capitalism and restores the economic balance that is destroyed by ‘fuck you, pay me!’

Think about it good citizen, the ‘exit door’ from the nightmare that has been your life until now is beckoning!

What do you suppose the nice Mr. Tolbert is going to do when it comes time to return the unfortunates to the street?

Will he have to sic the cops on ‘em?

He’s an attorney and obviously smart enough to have his beneficiaries’ sign a quit agreement nullifying their ‘squatters rights’.

How friggin’ sad is that?

Sadder still is this entire masquerade. Mr. Tolbert should not sacrifice his home nor should there be any homeless people in the first place!

Shelter is a human right.

In fact capitalism denies us all many of our rights (so the capitalist can enrich themselves at the public’s expense.)

The part that SHOULD surprise you good citizen is how the capitalist KNOWS what they are doing SHOULD BE a criminal act…but isn’t because they are in cahoots with law enforcement!

And you wonder why you can’t catch a break?

You’ll never catch a break if you play by THEIR RULES…and you will NEVER prosper working for somebody else.

Mathematically impossible…although there are some extremely well compensated ‘toads’ out there.

While they are not criminals themselves, they do the criminals bidding (while fueling the plot lines of many a writer’s speculative scripts!)

Sadly it is the actions of these toads that are responsible for our species’ deplorable state.

But I digress.

While it is ‘wonderful’ that this individual is willing to help the needy, it is tragic that he feels compelled to do so.

We can play the ‘what if’ card here and speculate, ‘what if the people he initially ‘helps’ succeed in improving their circumstances. Has he ‘done his share’?

Libertarians and conservo-whackos would both opine Mr. Tolbert has gone too far and that these people should find their own way to prosperity…because the word ‘gratitude’ is lost on either brand of ‘psycho’.

But let’s suppose that through judicious selection of who receives aid, let’s suppose a ‘few’ families get back on their feet, thanks to the ‘loan’ of Mr. Tolbert’s house.

Should he stop?

Is he ‘poisoning the well’ and wrecking the hired help? (By giving them what capitalism refuses to?)

That is a question society will have to decide…sooner than you think in an energy starved world…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

After posting I encountered this 'must read' article over at Jesse's crossroads cafe...enjoy!

Brinksmanship

Greetings good citizen,

What a week to round out a year spent waiting for the other shoe to drop, eh?

Seems we aren't the only ones incapable of rolling back the tax structure:

French Council Strikes Down 75% Tax Rate
By SCOTT SAYARE 11:33 AM ET

A council opposed a plan to impose a 75 percent marginal income tax rate on the wealthy that would have applied to annual income above 1 million euros, or about $1.3 million.

Like I said in yesterday’s post, this ‘criminal elite’ shit transcends the ‘Nation State’ (via the global banking cartels.)

Which, ironically, leaves us here:

If a deal is reached, votes in the Senate could begin Sunday.

Obama Urges Senate Leaders to Put Together a Tax Deal
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ANNIE LOWREY 12:03 PM ET

In his weekly address, President Obama again urged lawmakers to find a last-minute solution to avert a fiscal crisis that would begin Jan. 1.

As many of my contemporaries point out, the ‘fiscal cliff’ only exists in the ‘neocons’ heads.

It is being used as an excuse to extend tax cuts the wealthy should never have received and to cut desperately needed social programs as the global economy continues to tank.

The question none of our so-called ‘betters’ is prepared to answer is what they intend to do about the badly broken and now largely rogue criminal banking sector.

It CAN’T be ‘repaired’ (and certainly not by the criminals currently in charge!) so it has to be ‘replaced’…and none of the chiselers has given this predicament a single moment of thought.

So we get bullshit stories like this:

Several of Walmart's suppliers had used the factory in Bangladesh where 112 workers died last month.

As Walmart Makes Safety Vows, It’s Seen as Obstacle to Change
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and JIM YARDLEY

After a deadly factory fire in Bangladesh stirred soul-searching around the apparel industry, critics say Walmart has not done enough to improve safety standards.

And naturally those ‘critics’ will be dismissed as being ‘anti-capitalist’ and ignored.

Business always does the right thing (for the company, if some employees become collateral damage, so what?)

There was an interesting story in the local rag praising a recent government decision to make restitution to the families of workers who unwittingly handled highly hazardous material (which proved fatal for almost all of them!)

And the decidedly conservative local rag was praising the government for doing the ‘right thing’…while totally ignoring the private sector employer who murdered these people (by failing to disclose, never mind failing to provide adequate safeguards so these workers might have had a fighting chance.

Again it is being swept under the rug under the mantle of ‘state secret’ and the situation does involve The Manhattan Project and how the uranium was processed.

And the private sector contractor didn’t pay these people a single cent extra…(probably terminated them when they got sick!)

(I know, nothing personal, it’s just business! Where are your fucking ‘job creators’ when people die because of their recklessness? Sadly the twits are still thumping their chests, damn proud of what they’ve done!)

Stupid is as stupid does…

Did I mention capitalism is a bad idea? How about another example:

Utility workers in Seaside Heights, N.J., making pole repairs after the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy.
Hurricane Sandy Alters Utilities’ Calculus on Upgrades
By DIANE CARDWELL, MATTHEW L. WALD and CHRISTOPHER DREW

It is typically much cheaper for a utility, and its customers, to skip prevention measures and just clean up the mess after a catastrophe, but Hurricane Sandy has changed that thinking.

This particular headline sends a chill up my spine because of what’s implied here. The US no longer ‘needs’ its robust power infrastructure (as our ‘betters’ continue to export our jobs wholesale.)

Will our ‘private sector’ power companies take the ‘cheap out’ once again and only replace what is needed to restore service, even if that means reduced capacity?

What the hell, the peasants don’t need it (and can’t pay for it anyway…)

Have you ever wondered what would happen if our mostly imported economy stopped?

Unlike the fiscal cliff, the fuckers in charge bowed to the longshoreman’s demands…partially anyway.

Ports in Newark and more than a dozen other cities will stay open after longshoremen reached an agreement with shipping companies to avert a coastwide strike.

Partial Deal With Union Averts a Strike at 14 Ports
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Shipping companies and dockworkers reached a deal on their main dispute, and the longshoremen’s union agreed to drop its threat of a strike this Sunday.

Probably just a mistaken perception that ‘brinksmanship’ has become the watch-word of the day. Fiscal cliff on one hand with a shutdown of the real economy looming on the other.

Yeah, it just ‘looks like’ they’re playing ‘hardball’ (because if they really try it there can be ‘no escape’ for most of them.)

And stiffing so many of their minions would leave them in a bad way when it came to cleaning up the mess the peasants are going to make.

Yeah, life can really suck when you look down on everyone like they’re beneath dirt.

Just something to ponder as we head off the non-existent ‘fiscal cliff’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Super-Weapon!

Greetings good citizen,

Money is ‘omnipresent’, I don’t need to remind anyone that money makes the world go round because it does.

What I DO need to disabuse you of is the notion that money is wisely managed and our global economy is ‘safe’…it is NOT.

Uh, most of you tune out when I hop on this particular hobby horse so if you want to check out early, consider this ‘fair warning’

For decades (sadly, A Simple Plan is 20 years old…) I have been pointing to the One (tenth) of One Percent and accusing them of plotting ‘genocide’.

And idea that is roundly scoffed at…(at the disbeliever’s peril.)

Every once in a while a story comes up that supports my seemingly spurious claims:

At the heart of the Libor scandal is the simple, primary function of banks: facilitating the borrowing and lending of money. They do this job and still turn a profit using a nifty little trick called interest rates, which essentially means if I borrow money from a bank, I pay back a little extra for their service. Simple? Sort of, except once again the banks have fixed this simple game so that--as in a casino--the house always wins.

As Robert Reich at Business Insider explains:

How is this interest rate determined? We trust that the banking system is setting today’s rate based on its best guess about the future worth of the money. And we assume that guess is based, in turn, on the cumulative market predictions of countless lenders and borrowers all over the world about the future supply and demand for the dough.

But suppose our assumption is wrong. Suppose the bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money you lend or repay them – bets that will pay off big for them because they have inside information on what the market is really predicting, which they’re not sharing with you.

That would be a mammoth violation of public trust. And it would amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportion – trillions of dollars that you and I and other average people would otherwise have received or saved on our lending and borrowing that have been going instead to the bankers. It would make the other abuses of trust we’ve witnessed look like child’s play by comparison.

Some would dismiss this as corruption and collusion between ‘a few bad apples’…but they ALL ‘went along with it!’

Which is to point out, good citizen, that this went on for YEARS and nobody opened their mouths (thanks largely to a GLOBAL ‘neocon’ takeover.)

The One Percent, through their minions, effectively eliminated ALL oversight…so when the bottom dropped out, the only one left to catch it was the public.

And there was no one to complain to, justice, as we have witnessed, became a wholly owned subsidiary of the criminal class.

And since I’m literally screaming ‘off the reservation’ now, the only way to ‘fix’ this is full out civil (class) war.

And it will be war, good citizen, those who have ‘taken liberties’ with commerce won’t willingly stand trial for their ‘misdeeds’.

Especially when their best defense is ‘everybody else was doing it!’

Does anyone else find it curious that we are (five years AFTER the Global financial markets collapsed) standing on the edge of a so-called ‘fiscal cliff’?

Did I mention that the One (tenth) of One Percent is plotting mass genocide? A feat they intend to accomplish through ‘cascading systemic collapse.’

Guess what the ‘trigger event’ is going to be?

Worse, for idiots in the truest political sense (the word literally means ‘political know nothing’ a.k.a Republican…) it is happening on the Democrat’s watch…like any such animal still exists.

We have Republicans and Libertarians pretending to be Democrats…and the befuddled and dazed masses who (rightly) believe both parties are bat-shit crazy.

But this is what happens when the One Percent usurps the power of the State for itself.

They bite off considerably more than they can chew.

And now they are going to be faced with the consequences of their actions.

They stymied attempts to bring them to justice peacefully so now they have built their own ‘trap’…and they’re inside with the rest of us.

The ride is almost over good citizen and the fiscal cliff hitting in the dead of winter is no coincidence either…they did this for ‘maximum carnage’.

But no one wants to believe the One Percent is capable of such a vicious act (yet they witness their heartless cruelty on a regular basis!)

It blows the mind to see such duplicity!

Perhaps that is the human condition, we are forever ‘projecting’ our personal values where they don’t exist.

Let us hope this foolishness doesn’t lead us to extinction…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Still here!

Greetings good citizen,

Aren’t you sick and tired of being treated like an idiot? And not just by everybody but by the one source you should be able to trust…the fucking media.

Gunplay aside, how do we deal with nonsense like this?

TOP NEWS
Obama Presses Stripped-Down Plan to Limit Tax Increase
By JACKIE CALMES and JONATHAN WEISMAN

President Obama, conceding that a "grand bargain" for deficit reduction with Speaker John A. Boehner is unlikely, called for Congress to approve a more modest measure by year's end.

Video: Fiscal Cliff Looms

Seriously good citizen, if there were any such thing as a ‘fiscal cliff’ we would have fallen off/over it five years ago when the financial markets seized solid!

As I have stated many times before, our global financial markets are bankrupt and nothing short of the ‘reset button’ can save them…

So what the fuck have the thieves been doing for the past five years?

(Actually they’ve been doing exactly what you suspect they’ve been doing, living good while the fraud lasts!)

It brings us full circle with the issue of, “If the >One Percent took over, would they tell us?”

Why many of you would opine the answer would be yes, they have no compelling reason to…just as Voldemort was perfectly content to let the rest of the world believe he didn’t exist, so it is with the One Percent.

I keep pointing to the ‘ease’ with which the ‘masters of all they surveyed’ stepped down from the throne (and locked themselves in their treasuries) without a fight.

The greatest gift they ever gave themselves is the illusion of someone else being ‘in charge’.

Think the ‘kings’ are gone? Think again.

Where has the law gone? It has gone to the men whose word IS law…a world we rebelled against long ago…but failed to extinguish the poisonous roots of a persistent and noxious weed.

Again, it was mistakenly ‘assumed’ that ‘dethroning’ them was all it took to remove them from power.

Not so because even ‘deposed’ royalty still has, er, ‘followers’ (mostly those who owe their positions to the royals.)

Odd how denouncing the old ways is enough to protect what loyalty gained for the shiftless…and being shiftless, they play both ends against the middle, switching allegiance as necessary.

Under A Simple Plan these ‘shifting allegiances’ won’t help because power will be in a constant state of flux.

Those who have it this year will be somewhere else next year…by design.

Naturally, only the mentally competent will be permitted to become citizens under A Simple Plan, it you test positive for the gene that causes ‘zero-empathy’ you will be, er, ‘isolated’ from society, placed where you can not harm others or yourself.

Sounds harsh but there is no cure…and no amount of ‘coaching’ can change that.

(If we fail to cull the predators from among us our civilization will be consumed…how’s that for your ‘dry, intellectual opinion’?)

How do I get you to respond to the gravity of the situation?

I can’t.

Are you scared?

You damn well better be!

The psychopaths in charge will soon run what passes for our civilization off a cliff and, as we have seen, it won’t be a financial one, per se.

News Analysis
Events Recall a More Bipartisan Era, and Highlight Gridlock of Today
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

A political opposition that is still bitter about President Obama's victory remains unwilling to compromise on social policy, economics or foreign affairs.

So I ask you again, good citizen…

Are the >One Percent compelled to tell us that they have hijacked our government?

Obviously not (nor is it in their interest to do so.)

Instead you are expected to believe that we are suffering from the ‘side-effects’ of our ‘imperfect’ system of government. A system made more imperfect by those with a vested interest in convincing the pubic that ‘self rule’ is a ‘bad thing’.

(The alternative of voting for representation will be no representation at all.)

Look at all of the criminals the current system ignores! (Mind you, these criminals are the same people that don’t want you to have a say in your own affairs!)

They are, in fact, our politicians…corrupt to the core and criminals one and all.

But you didn’t need me to point that one out, did you?

Under A Simple Plan there are no more ‘politicians’ nor are there any ‘elections’. The only thing you’ll cast a ballot for is to weigh in on what should or should not become law of the land.

(And there is a very specific process to safeguard against ‘heads I win and tails you lose’ legislation from even getting proposed, much less put up for consideration. That’s what Leadership is about.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wishes!

Greetings good citizen,

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder, they (naturally) surprise the fuck out of you by becoming downright surreal!

The logic of Schuller’s philosophy, which is the doctrine of positive thinking at its most distilled, isn’t exactly complex: decide to think happy and successful thoughts — banish the spectres of sadness and failure — and happiness and success will follow. It could be argued that not every speaker listed in the glossy brochure for today’s seminar provides uncontroversial evidence in support of this outlook: the keynote speech is to be delivered, in a few hours’ time, by George W . Bush, a president far from universally viewed as successful. But if you voiced this objection to Dr. Schuller, he would probably dismiss it as “negativity thinking.” To criticize the power of positivity is to demonstrate that you haven’t really grasped it at all. If you had, you would stop grumbling about such things, and indeed about anything else. [snip]

In reality, mine is up in the nosebleed section; it is a hard plastic perch, painful on the buttocks. But I am grateful for it, because it means that by chance I’m seated next to a man who, as far as I can make out, is one of the few cynics in the arena — an amiable, large-limbed park ranger named Jim, who sporadically leaps to his feet to shout I’m so motivated!” in tones laden with sarcasm.

He explains that he was required to attend by his employer, the United States National Park Service, though when I ask why that organization might wish its rangers to use paid work time in this fashion, he cheerily concedes that he has “no fucking clue.” Dr. Schuller’s sermon, meanwhile, is gathering pace. “When I was a child, it was impossible for a man ever to walk on the moon, impossible to cut out a human heart and put it in another man’s chest … the word ‘impossible’ has proven to be a very stupid word!” He does not spend much time marshaling further evidence for his assertion that failure is optional: it’s clear that Schuller, the author of “Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking” and “Tough Times Never Last, but Tough People Do!,” vastly prefers inspiration to argument. But in any case, he is really only a warm-up man for the day’s main speakers, and within fifteen minutes he is striding away, to adulation and fireworks, fists clenched victoriously up at the audience, the picture of positive-thinking success.

The organisers of Get Motivated! describe it as a motivational seminar, but that phrase — with its suggestion of minor-league life coaches giving speeches in dingy hotel ballrooms — hardly captures the scale and grandiosity of the thing. Staged roughly once a month, in cities across North America, it sits at the summit of the global industry of positive thinking, and boasts an impressive roster of celebrity speakers: Mikhail Gorbachev and Rudy Giuliani are among the regulars, as are General Colin Powell and, somewhat incongruously, William Shatner. Should it ever occur to you that a formerly prominent figure in world politics (or William Shatner) has been keeping an inexplicably low profile in recent months, there’s a good chance you’ll find him or her at Get Motivated!, preaching the gospel of optimism.

As befits such celebrity, there’s nothing dingy about the staging, either, which features banks of swooping spotlights, sound systems pumping out rock anthems, and expensive pyrotechnics; each speaker is welcomed to the stage amid showers of sparks and puffs of smoke. These special effects help propel the audience to ever higher altitudes of excitement, though it also doesn’t hurt that for many of them, a trip to Get Motivated! means an extra day off work: many employers classify it as job training. Even the United States military, where “training” usually means something more rigorous, endorses this view; in San Antonio, scores of the stadium’s seats are occupied by uniformed soldiers from the local Army base.

Technically, I am here undercover. Tamara Lowe, the self-described “world’s No. 1 female motivational speaker,” who along with her husband runs the company behind Get Motivated!, has been accused of denying access to reporters, a tribe notoriously prone to negativity thinking. Lowe denies the charge, but out of caution, I’ve been describing myself as a “self-employed businessman” — a tactic, I’m realizing too late, that only makes me sound shifty. I needn’t have bothered with subterfuge anyway, it turns out, since I’m much too far away from the stage for the security staff to be able to see me scribbling in my notebook. My seat is described on my ticket as “premier seating,” but this turns out to be another case of positivity run amok: at Get Motivated!, there is only “premier seating,” “executive seating,” and “VIP seating.”

It is only months later, back at my home in New York, reading the headlines over morning coffee, that I learn the news that the largest church in the United States constructed entirely from glass has filed for bankruptcy, a word Dr. Schuller had apparently neglected to eliminate from his vocabulary.

Um, not for nothing but you don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that the list of sponsors of this whole ‘voodoo prosperity’ gimmick reads like the Who’s who of the conservo-whacko movement?

We knew these people were ‘gone’ but until now we weren’t certain just how far the ‘Kool-Aide’ went…

Well, this article wraps things up nicely!

And to be honest, good citizen, I didn’t read any further.

I don’t need anybody to define ‘success’ for me (nor do I attempt to define it for others, a decidedly Republican pass time.)

I think the most disturbing ‘revelation’ this article makes is the extent of the US government's’ ‘support' for these carnival barkers.

It’s the story line of the >One Percent they are actively defending…why should tax dollars be expended to spread useless propaganda (while the conservo-whackos are howling about the deficit and ‘entitlement’ spending.)

Which brings us full circle with that pesky ‘management problem’ I keep bitching about.

Did I mention our civilization is woefully ‘mis-managed’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Justice?

Greetings good citizen,

Here it is fifteen minutes before markets open and I’m back to old tricks of posting first thing (Well, it’s not the VERY FIRST thing I do…) and, as usual, today’s top story, a veritable outrage, is reported without rancor, in fact, it has become so common that it now seems this is how what passes for our ‘justice system’ operates.

Pay the fine and PROMISE to NEVER do it again…although, if memory serves this is the umpteenth time this particular miscreant has been fined for fiscal ‘wrong-doing’…

Which is to ask, good citizen, Where does it stop?

TOP NEWS
DealBook
UBS Is Reported to Be Near a Deal on Rate Rigging
By BEN PROTESS and MARK SCOTT

The Swiss banking giant UBS is expected to pay American and British fines of more than $450 million to settle claims that it reported false rates to increase its profit, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Worse good citizen, the ‘whopping’ 450 million dollar fine is just a fraction of the damage their falsehood has inflicted, so calling this justice is really a stretch.

Push come to shove they should pull the bastard’s charter and lock the doors!

Which, naturally, shines the spotlight on the other side of this situation, a society being held hostage by obvious criminals because of the JOBS that would be lost if justice were served!

But wait good citizen, it gets better!

Robert Greenwald, head of the progressive internet video and documentary film company, Brave New Films, recently traveled to Pakistan, supported financially by hundreds of BNF donors, to witness first hand the stories of families who have had innocent loved ones killed by U.S. drone attacks. Greenwald is challenging both the morality and the factual effectiveness of the U.S drone program as we learn more about the failures and questionable policies. The U.S. claims that drone missiles are aimed at potential terrorists but because the ground rules of who can be targeted is both vague and has been loosened, the number of innocents being killed has risen sharply. Furthermore, the information that is used to target people appears to be the result of a system of bribery at the local level, which is of questionable reliability.

It wasn't until April 2012 that John Brennan, White House counter-terrorism adviser admitted for the first time publicly, that our government has been using drones in Pakistan, and later Yemen, to attempt to kill those they consider as potential terrorists. This was the first public acknowledgment, despite the fact that the program had been going for at least several years. Still far more information was withheld in Brennan’s announcement about the program, than was revealed.

So we have bankers playing ‘pick your own fine’ and we have the military, whacking people indiscriminately and calling them ‘terrorists’ after the fact.

Worse, the average individual is powerless to ‘gainsay’ any of this, the eight hundred pound gorilla of ‘national security’ is wheeled out and paraded up and down the square and nothing gets done about it!

Which, if you have even one oar in the water, displays what a disturbing degree the ‘lack of accountability’ has taken on.

How long can you hide atrocities behind the veil of ‘national security’?

And at what point does it become, er, ‘unsafe’ to remain a member of such a society?

(Asked the man who is already living in a society that has suspended his right to review the evidence against him (habeas corpus.)

Hell while we’re shoveling dirt into the Republican’s grave we should include the other thing ‘Bush the lesser’ will go into the history books for and that is for abolishing the federal statute against usury!

But if we decide to document the crimes of the conservo-whackos we will need a lot more space and time than I’m willing to devote to the task!

But the real issue here is how it has become a ‘non-crime’ to be murdered by remote control…which weirdly started with the Israelis and their use of helicopter gunships to ‘assassinate’ political opponents.

The fact that they ‘bought’ those gunships from the US is just a massive coincidence…(or so they’d have you believe.)

Which is to roll this dialogue back to yesterday’s post and speculate just how many members of the political process as well as those in the military who would be found ‘unfit to serve’ if they were to be tested for the genetic markers that indicate psychopathy?

The idiots in charge of the drone program are most definitely ‘emotionally hard of hearing’ if not completely deaf…an accusation that could be fairly leveled at all who have ‘gone along’ with this atrocity in silence as the program has expanded.

Well, before a Scud come cruising through my window I’m going to post this bad boy so YOU get to consider it and it doesn’t remain a sordid bit of mental masturbation.

You know and I know something needs to be done to put a stop to this!

This is a fine time to realize that neither you nor I have the tools to put that action in motion.

Go ahead and call your congressman, let me know how that works out for you…

It won’t…and I’m not psychic (proven fact given my numerous failed predictions!)

The system, no matter how you slice it, don’t work…but you didn’t need me to tell you that.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Psycho Salvation?

Greetings good citizen,

It’s Sunday and you know what that means don’t you? It’s time to take a walk on the ‘wild side’.

Um, scratch that, you know every post here is straight from the demented mind of a rabid anarchist and therefore ‘twisted’ when viewed from the pervasive and perverted ‘mainstream point of view’.

Well, this morning’s offering (oops, it’s afternoon already!) provides us with a special treat and a platform for two of my favorite hobby horses, the parasitic scum running the show and their, er, ‘enablers’.

Yessiree Bob, try as they might, they can’t do it alone.

First we have a peek at ‘the tool’:

Let's start with the fascinating and frightening subject of psychopathy. This condition is neither insanity nor a treatable mental illness. It is instead linked to physical abnormalities in the amygdala region of the brain and is perhaps best described by experts as "emotional deafness." While psychopaths can often convincingly feign normal human reactions in order to manipulate others, inside they feel nothing but shark-like self-interest.

This ancient scourge has likely plagued humankind since the dawn of time, undermining our ability to trust each other and build cohesive societies. While sometimes glamourized by Hollywood as a super power, psychopathy shows little evidence of evolutionary advantage even though the condition has a strong genetic signature. After 100,000 years of human history, only one percent of the general population exhibits this affliction -- indicating that it is more parasitic than powerful.

A threat that can be screened

Only recently have scientists developed reliable screening methods to reveal people with this emotional disability, and such tests have been widely adopted in the criminal justice system. And while our jails are filled with people exhibiting this frightening trait, Dr. Robert Hare, a leading researcher in the field warns, "not all psychopaths are in prison.
Some are in the boardroom."

Um, the rest of the article makes interesting reading but it falls short (as usual) in the ‘useful solutions’ department.

It, most unhelpfully, calls for screening and ‘terminating’ people found to afflicted with ‘emotional deafness’…but would this also apply to the ‘emotionally hard of hearing’? (Which accounts for the vast majority of offenders…)

Do the screeners (people with the authority to have others screened) fear testing positive themselves? (Because the potential for this outcome is very high from a logical viewpoint.)

So how likely do you suppose ‘screening’ of top executives will become?

How much do you want to bet it will become the new ‘let’s not and say we did’, it will be our little secret’?

Naturally one can readily see where such a tool could be ‘abused’.

What do you do when the test results conflict? (Assuming the truly demented would be capable of conning somebody into letting them use their DNA to be tested.)

I’ve only had a few minutes with this topic and we’ve already uncovered a veritable ‘minefield’ of ‘what if’.

I’d opine our ‘bigger problem’ is not so much the ‘emotionally deaf’ as it is the emotionally ‘hard of hearing’, people who can ‘turn it off’ when it’s useful to do so.

Worse, we’ve all caught glimpses of this creature in action (because it is so shockingly ‘out of character’ when it occurs.)

Yet we all somewhat ‘instinctively’ know better than to cross these individuals. When it happens you are usually completely unaware they even had an interest in the undertaking that you may not have been involved with at all.

Often asking questions or displaying curiosity is enough to provoke a violent (if not a simply ‘unreasonable’) response.

Which is to ‘differ’ with the author of this piece and opine that screening WILL NOT be ‘the salvation’ of ‘predatory capitalism’.

Capitalism itself is not stable enough to create an equitable society upon…and it NEVER will be.

Any social construct based on ownership and debt is doomed from the start, the ‘owners' end up with everything, every time. (If you weren't there to grab yours in the beginning...you lose!)

Thus was it always ‘good to be king’…how unfortunate was it that the premise of ‘every man a king’ (a.k.a. capitalism) didn’t work (nor will it ever if more than one individual is involved.)

We have precious little space left and I haven’t jumped onto my second hobby horse, Exile. (Which is also to point out that 'exile' is NOT a 'new' idea...)

Seems even the ancients recognized that some people weren’t ‘right in the head’ and came to the conclusion that letting them hang around was a ‘recipe for disaster’, given ‘time and opportunity’ the exiles would fuck it up royally for everyone.

Thus does modern exile involve banishment from society itself on a permanent basis.

It is not these people’s fault they are ‘broken’ but it is IMPOSSIBLE to ‘fix’ them and attempting to do so will only end in disaster.

So for all of you who eye me suspiciously for advocating exile, I beg your ‘reconsideration’…unless you fear being exiled yourself…then I’d worry.

Although you might test negative...and how would that make you feel?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monster(s)

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets are once again bleeding from the eyesockets…BUT, in case you haven’t noticed, the ‘needy-greedy’ grab inexplicable one to two hundred point jumps in share value while giving back a paltry ten or twenty points over the following days…a net win…for them.

Um, as is my custom I latch onto the first thing that grabs my eye, like this story about the alarming surge in homelessness in NYC. and how the whiny ‘One Percenters’ are reacting…

New York's Boom in Homelessness

The crisis stems from a lack of affordable housing and the city's ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor, one of the widest in the U.S. and comparable to that found in sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike in other cities, New York is required by law to provide shelter to every person who seeks it. As the crisis escalates, the city has used its power of emergency authority to create shelters as quickly as possible, bypassing the typical community approval process. And that has created turmoil in neighborhoods like the Upper West Side, where a shelter opened in August among apartments occupied by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the shelter is right across the street from P.S. 75, an elementary school which also has a playground. "There definitely seem to be more people hanging around the street corners, at the subway stops, panhandling," said Jen Zunt, a mother of a fifth-grader at P.S. 75. "There's not enough supervision. And these are going to be people who have mental health issues, possibly."

Anxious parents say they've seen homeless men urinating in doorways and loitering near the school. (Does anyone wonder why, considering the general scarcity of public restrooms in metropolitan areas across the nation?) Many mothers have stopped letting their children walk home alone. The parent-teacher association is working with local police to increase security on the street, which is a pedestrian corridor to Riverside Park's soccer fields and playgrounds.

You can click through to read the whole article but I can save you the time good citizen, you won’t find a single sentence questioning the origins/source of this flood of homelessness.

How does it make YOU feel that the >One Percent who destroyed our economy now expect to be ‘protected’ from the consequences of their actions?

Is this just another symptom of ‘failing to think things through’?

While it seems as though I’ve been on a ‘homeless kick’ lately I’m going to ask you to switch mental gears with me as we confront the daunting if not insurmountable issue of how we fix this whole ‘corrupt to the core’ situation.

Let us first take a moment to assess the collapse of classical ‘liberalism’

Um, you’re going to have to watch the video that accompanies this link to the end to get to the part where we are once again advised to ‘protest and not cooperate’ in our own enslavement…which is bullshit.

This is a failure I have witnessed repeatedly in liberal circles. These people don’t want to threaten their comfortable lives so they encourage a ‘peaceful’ negotiation that will ‘gradually’ improve conditions for all.

Now, Mr. Hedges is being granted an international stage (albeit one that is in the back room of a dark and poorly lit studio that nobody pays attention to. If not for Jesse I would not have seen this.) Which might explain his ‘non-violent’ stance…and we could also chalk it up to his being a ‘man of God’.

Which totally ignores the true situation. We are not having a ‘dialog’ with the oligarchs, they are in fact, as Chris points out, ‘dictating’ ‘how it’s going to be.’ With no opposition or opposing alternatives intruding on that narrative.

Yes, loss of lives will be senseless and the resulting carnage wasteful…but only an IDIOT believes the same results could be achieved through ‘negotiation’.

The people who stole our civilization DON’T NEGOTIATE. And will only give lip service to anything resembling compromise UNDER THE THREAT OF DEATH, PERSONAL!

And that threat has to be more ‘real’ than mumbling the words ‘or we’ll kill you!’ Which is how our failed liberal ‘protectors’ would put it.

All our uncompromising greed-heads would hear is the ‘or’ and it would be ‘game on’!

The line we need to enforce, good citizen if we want to regain control of our civilization and our children’s future is “You and anybody who aids you WILL BE EXILED!”

And if you haven’t read the section of A Simple Plan that covers Exile, now would be a good time to look it up.

But since most of you won’t, I’ll spare you the work of finding the appropriate section by providing a thumbnail sketch here:

Exile is a one way trip where the ‘rights’ of civil society are stripped from the individual convicted by a jury of the people.

Once stripped, the convict will be released, naked and alone to live out the rest of their natural days as best they can.

Hell, it’s hard to imagine that some of these boot-strapping boot-strappers wouldn’t have electricity and running water by sundown of the first day, such gifted and talented individuals…oh wait…there is the ‘alone’ part in there.

How are these greed-heads going to get by without anybody to do their heavy lifting for them?

Short answer, they won’t.

Now we come to the second, more diabolical part of exile. These boot-strapping bootstrappers WON’T be alone! They will have tens of thousands of likeminded (albeit naked) individuals…many of them in the early stages of starvation and dehydration.

Forgot to mention that they won’t be exiled to a tropical paradise…they will be exiled to the badlands, which is what our bootstrappers were best at creating, fucking deserts!

Take what you know about the ‘charitable tendencies’ of the >One Percent and imagine a few acres of ‘likeminded individuals’ left to share what the land has to offer?

How cruel of us to teach these ingrates what socialism (the sharing of resources) is the hard way?

We shall not see how much more ‘noble’ the savages among us will be towards one another because their depravity will be unbearable to witness.

But it must be done…not to ‘cleanse’ the species but surely to preserve it.

How ironic to see social Darwinism turned upon those who would exterminate the weak? (Without a second thought or the slightest twinge of regret.)

There’s a certain justice in letting the exterminators exterminate each other.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. If this makes ME a monster, what does what they are doing make them?

More pointedly, what does it make YOU if you refuse to act?

At least the last question is easy; it will make you and your children ‘extinct’.

Whacko!

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Monday/Tuesday to you! (For many of you it’s Tuesday/Tuesday because your capitalist bosses have become stingy about giving you, er, ‘unnecessary’ paid days off.

Columbus Day USED TO BE a holiday (back when the tax rate on people who earned more than a million a year was over 90%…now that the pricks pay lower taxes than you do they suddenly can’t afford to pay YOU for holidays anymore! (Hint, they no longer need the ‘write off’ your holiday pay used to represent!)

I mean understand the logic behind high marginal taxes. Either treat your employees better OR we’ll take it from you and pay it out in welfare!

And understand, poverty has always been a problem but it was NEVER as bad as it is now.

Which isn’t absolutely accurate. Back before the New Deal kids went without shoes because their parents didn’t earn enough money, but those kids had a warm house and food in their stomachs!

But after the New Deal that variety of grinding poverty ‘almost’ disappeared…because the capitalist had his feet held to the fire. Either pay your employees or Uncle Sam will do it for you!

And it worked…at first.

Business owners learned they could get the unions to cheat their own people if they cozied up to the mobsters who ran them.

This turned into a two-edged sword because it gave the union a bad name and it let the capitalist play ‘hardball’ with the help.

But nowadays the boss doesn’t have to worry about the unions anymore…because once the bosses bought the justice system, they didn’t need to play footsie with the mob anymore.

They had (have) the judges in their pockets.

Now they can let their stooges in the financial sector pull stunts like this one:

I.M.F. Forecast Discourages Investors
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 34 minutes ago

The International Monetary Fund lowered its world economic growth outlooks for 2013 and 2014.

why do you suppose the IMF is lowering it’s already abysmal projections for the foreseeable future?

Could it be because we are ALL JAPANESE now?

Which is to ask if Japan isn’t the latest economy to join the ranks of the World’s Banana Republics?

But what’s up with this?

Japanese Car Sales Plummet in China
By KEITH BRADSHER

Japanese automakers have cut manufacturing by up to half in China after violent anti-Japanese protests over disputed islands in which Japanese-brand cars and even their owners were targeted.

More curious is what the US car buying public is making of this phenomenon? Don’t the Chinese KNOW that the Japanese produce the highest quality cars in the world?

(Not that the typical American would recognize quality if it bit him on the noggin!)

Ask your typical US Japanese car buyer what quality is and they’re likely to respond ‘shiny!’

Some might respond ‘reliable’ not that the typical US Japanese car buyer understands this concept because they have NOTHING to compare it to!

All he knows is what the Japanese tell him…and he believes it! (He also thinks his own experiences are ‘outliers’ and therefore not typical.)

But we digress because the Chinese aren’t attacking ‘Japanese quality’ there are attacking Japanese aggression!

But let us move on:

Draghi Sees a Ray of Hope for Euro Zone
By JACK EWING 3:04 PM ET

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, along with a growing number of economists, argue that there are tentative signs that adjustments are beginning to pay off.

Why is it the high priests of money are the only ones capable of detecting the ‘fruits of their labors?’ (Especially troubling because the average person believes the central bankers are full of shit…and the average person isn’t wrong!)

Yet this idiot (like Bernanke) sees the ‘green shoots’ of recovery everywhere while the facts at hand tell us all that the economy is still locked in a ‘death spiral’.

Yes, Mario sees ‘blue skies’ while the average citizen is being torn apart in a tempest of epic proportions:

Greek Leader Greets Merkel as Protests Rage in Streets
By RACHEL DONADIO and NICHOLAS KULISH 35 minutes ago

Greek authorities sought to shield Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany from protesters angered by painful austerity measures during a visit to Athens aimed at showing solidarity with the country.

And yet what is the ‘first inclination’ of the typical US observer? He thinks the Greeks haven’t given the austerity measures enough of a chance.

Because the typical Fox News viewer doesn’t remember that this ‘bailout’ of the Greek economy is entering its forth year.

But fear not…soon the typical Fox News viewer will get their own opportunity to try out ‘austerity’ first hand as the cities they live in collide with the balanced budget features of their city and town charters.

How does your town ‘live within its means’ when the owners of commerce have off-shored the reason the town existed in the first place?

Short answer is they don’t.

And you learn a lesson in civics 101, that your safety and your children’s welfare are directly proportional to your community’s ability to support itself.

Now ask yourself if a capitalist ‘has the right’ to export a community’s foundation to make themselves ‘richer’?

Let’s take a look at someone who got wildly wealthy by taking hundreds of community’s ‘engines’ and sending them to China:

Jack Welch Will Stop Writing for Fortune
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY 10 minutes ago

Mr. Welch made his decision after the magazine ran articles critical of his suggestion that the Obama administration had manipulated the monthly jobs numbers from the Labor Department.

Apparently the retired head of the world’s (former) largest manufacturer and also the former largest corporation…because GE is neither now, didn’t learn anything from his twenty years at the helm of the company Thomas Edison founded.

Except how to throw hissy fits when people point out the truth!

If only he has decided to keep his mouth shut thirty years ago when he dismantled the most successful company ever established for his own personal greed.

But no, instead we have this conundrum to ponder:

Wall Street Pay Remains High Even as Jobs Shrink
By SUSANNE CRAIG and BEN PROTESS 4:57 PM ET

Total compensation rose 4 percent last year to more than $60 billion — an amount surpassed only by total pay in 2007 and 2008, according to a report.

What? There are fewer brokers but the ones that remain are making MORE MONEY?

HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT WORK IN AN OBVIOUSLY BROKEN GLOBAL ECONOMY?

Can you say thievery?

Because that’s the only rational explanation…and where is our justice department?

Killing innocent civilians!

And you think we’re going to ‘bounce back’ from this?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner