Impasse

Greetings good citizen,

The Kabuki dance that passes for our government is being presented to convince you that the BAD (non-existent) LIBERALS are responsible for the ‘automatic austerity’ that somehow found its way into law.

Naturally, to that end, we have this headline:

Boehner Halts Talks on Cuts; G.O.P. Cheers
By ASHLEY PARKER

Speaker John A. Boehner seems to have decided that he may have more to lose by negotiation over the impending spending cuts than letting them happen.

Just to provide a clear starting point you must be aware that the ONLY reason the Republicans have retained control of one branch of Congress is to provide the ‘illusion of conflict’.

The voters of this nation aren’t that stupid…but they are powerless, thanks to the mis-steps of the founders.

Conservative rhetoric aside, we all KNOW who is responsible for the economic devastation being visited upon us.

The conservo-whackos keep pointing to the liberals (who no longer exist) claiming they are responsible for policies that passed during conservative administrations!

Why is there A SINGLE conservative in government today? Because the electoral process is rigged!

Hanging chads and all…(like we need to go there.)

The >One Percent tells their very willing puppets what to do and they do it.

Is this eventually going to get those puppets lynched? Undoubtedly! But that day has yet to come.

I remind you good citizen that the only people who need secrecy are people who are up to no good as we see in this headline from today’s front page:

Soldier Admits Providing Files to WikiLeaks
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Pfc. Bradley Manning confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.

Even more tragic than his arrest is the track record of the current administration towards ‘whistle blowers’.

And naturally, the, er, suspension of the young Pfc.’s rights makes the whole situation reek of justice being steam-rolled.

But that’s the funny thing about coups…they don’t give a fig about justice! They exist to PROTECT THE GUILTY!

Once you start doing that your whole justice system falls apart.

World’s largest inmate population…broken justice system, guess what? They’re related!

Record income inequality and a corrupt banking sector…related again!

You don’t have to look very far to find links that stretch right down to the local level.

The ‘rot’ goes right to the core!

Here you sit, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Miraculously things haven’t come unraveled (yet) but tick-tock good citizen, that old clock just keeps ticking off the seconds to zero (and you know it's going to happen soon because nothing is being done to head it off.)

(Ironically, acting to prevent derailment will be the most likely cause of one!)

Hmmn…maybe that’s what’s behind the latest Republican strategy!

Hanging in the balance here good citizen are school systems across the nation.

However, this situation is not unprecedented, across the south school systems closed during the (former) Great Depression due to ‘lack of funds’.

Given our inevitable conversion to a Banana Republic, this will be viewed as ‘no big loss’.

Thanks to ‘financial manipulation’ we have already been rendered ‘uncompetitive’ by those (union busting) conservative ‘haters of freedom’!

You either cut the schools or you cut fire and police…and you know the only reason Fire and Police protection exist is to protect the >One Percent…

YOUR tax dollars at work…protecting those who oppress you!

Same as it ever was.

So…what do we do about our ‘runaway government’?

Short answer, replace it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pillar 3

Greetings good citizen,

Not much going on in the world today so I thought we’d wrap up our discussion regarding the three [main] ‘pillars’ that make up A Simple Plan.

As I commented yesterday, many of you would be just fine with one pillar, the middle one but that leaves too many ‘loose ends’.

So, how many of you think you know what the third pillar of A Simple Plan is?

Some would argue there is no ‘third pillar’ and others would guess anything from God to Money and everything in between (by filling the void with such nebulous qualities as ‘happiness’.)

While it is my job to ‘make you think,’ it is not my job to ‘jerk your chain’.

The ‘third pillar’ of A Simple Plan is the ultimate goal of the first two pillars (what they SHOULD produce.)

Come on good citizen, how many essays have I signed off, using those three principles linked together?

What do Equality and Justice produce?

PEACE!

How can Peace be a pillar of society? If you don’t know the answer to that question then you don’t understand the point of having all of the firepower sitting around, ready to go.

Without peace there can be no prosperity.

A Simple Plan is designed to ‘maximize’ conflict resolution and as a result, foster a more peaceful and unified society.

How does A Simple Plan promote ‘peace’?

It starts with prohibiting legislation regarding personal behavior.

Now the ‘simple minded’ are already envisioning a wild society where people drive on the sidewalks, either stoned to the bone or too drunk to see straight when the ‘wrong assumption’ here is that anyone will have anything to drive on the sidewalks with!

They are also underestimating the power of peer pressure. The foundation of peace is courtesy and consideration. Which is to point to the pendulum of social values and opine that like in the days of old, you will take great pains not to offend anyone, lest you provoke them to ‘defend their honor.’

Most would agree that we, as a species, have become far too ‘free’ with our tongues. This is why the media acts shocked when people are pushed beyond their limits and the quite predictable occurs.

Out comes the guns and there’s some ‘justifiable homicide goin’ on!

There is a demonstrable ‘link’ between removing the individuals ability to defend themselves and the rise in criminal behavior.

Most of this crap wouldn’t be happening if a ‘smart remark’ or other perceived ‘under-handed act’ carried with it the distinct probability of you staring down the business end of a .45 from ten paces at dawn.

We really should treat one another better but so far ‘legislating’ better behavior has proven ‘fruitless’.

Civility won’t return (nor will peace) until we learn to ‘respect’ one anothers feelings and personal preferences.

So far it looks as though I am advocating ‘trench warfare’ by removing the capitalists boot heel from the public’s neck.

Understand, the reason you get cheated, with impunity, every time one of these deep pocketed, er, ‘rodents’ decides you need to ‘sue him’ for what’s yours. He owns the judge, besides, even if he’s dead wrong it is one thing to be awarded a judgement and quite another to actually collect it.

However, things would be considerably different if Bozo’s ability to cheat you hinged on his prowess with firearms…or any of a variety of armaments (the challenged gets to choose.)

Then payment would be swift and certain, wouldn’t it?

Worse, not living up to your word would carry a considerable social cost. It could bar you from promotion in the tests permanently (even if you ace the exam!)

No easy way to be free good citizen…but it will never happen if you are stripped of your ability to defend yourself.

And that’s what the capitalist has done with his ‘control’ of the injustice system. He’s left you to pay fines YOU can’t afford with money he ‘wishes’ into existence. (Which is to point out that ‘fines’ can’t hurt those who control the money supply…)

Notice all of the ‘fines’ being handed out as atonement for the banks criminal behavior?

Which is to once again put the shoe on the other foot, how do we prevent a repeat of what laid waste to our current civilization?

It looks pretty ‘Simple’ to me…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: Again I apologize if these pillars offend anyone but we must deal with the world as it is rather than the world some of us pretend to live in.

While there are 3 ‘premises’, they actually unite to create one unbreakable pillar.

Why is this particular pillar unbreakable? It is the pillar of human love and the love of our species. Without that we are just animals being herded to slaughter by the ignorant and ruthless among us.

Chew on that before you point an accusing finger.

Pillar 2

Greetings good citizen,

There were too many competing items for yesterday’s spot and I did what I do ‘best’ (because I do it so often!) I digressed.

So it’s back to our primer on the pillars of A Simple Plan.

The second pillar is Justice, as many of you know (more interestingly, many of you would be content if this single pillar was all there was.

But, and it may be my twisted mind that thinks this way, I don’t think Justice is possible without Equality. Part of the reason I rank Equality number one is everything starts with it.

Seems a bit priggish to talk about equality and justice in a society that has abandoned both but that sinking feeling in your gut is due to angst…

It’s your angst as you watch the society you live in sink into barbarism.

A Simple Plan lays out how to restore the kind of ‘equality’ necessary to get the economy functioning…‘normally’.

It also lays out how to restore the Justice system.

Put on your galoshes good citizen, it’s time to jump down the rabbit hole we call ‘Justice’.

Let’s start with a ‘blanket approach’ and theorize that most of us have an ‘inner sense’ of what justice is and when it is achieved.

Sadly, most of us confuse justice with revenge.

This is where our current justice system has been sabotaged. The jury is ignored and the judge decides guilt, innocence and punishment.

Why does nobody get prosecuted for ‘White Collar Crime’? Because the judge won’t issue a warrant or even an investigation.

Why won’t the judge do this? Because it’s not what they’re paid to do…by their capitalist benefactors that is.

Judgy plays the same game he sees/believes everybody else in his position plays, he does what’s ‘good’ for HIM.

If he fails to investigate (but ‘comes into’ a ‘lucky’ stock pick by turning a ‘blind eye) fair dinkum!
Under A Simple Plan there are no judges. (Besides being nothing to bribe them with, sort of a ‘redundant solution’…)

Does our ‘lack of judges’ automatically fix our justice system?

Of course not…we have the daunting task of redefining the term ‘criminal’ ahead of us.’

Understand good citizen crimes under capitalism are quite different that crime under A Simple Plan.

The capitalist didn’t give a fig for ‘human rights’ where we ‘humanists’ care about them more than we care about MONEY!

Which is to point out another major difference between capitalism and its alternatives. In capitalism almost all crime is money centered, under A Simple Plan most crime will be people centered.

Ironically, theft will remain a huge problem after cash becomes a historic relic.

Then there’s the issue of punishment.

We have witnessed, under capitalism, the escalation of punishment (mostly the elimination of due process and legal protections against torture, preformed ‘unilaterally’ by the One Percent…or as the founders liked to call them the ‘owners’ of the land!

Which is to belabor the obvious, anyone who ‘idolizes’ the ‘founding principles’ of this nation is an elitist pig!

As I have pointed out repeatedly in the past, the central pillar of the US government is this: Let those who OWN the land, RULE the land!

Since you and I weren’t here when these predators were dividing up the nation among themselves, we missed out on our chance to own a ‘voting share’.

Those shares were all gone shortly after the revolution ended. (And continued to be gobbled up by the same people who had helped themselves to the original ‘pie’ when new regions ‘joined’ the Union…)

But I digress.

Which is to point out that the History books tell us one thing while history itself tells us an entirely different story.

SO how do we become the just and humane society we hope to evolve into if we don’t adopt a ‘humane’ system of punishment?

Yes, good citizen Exile was developed as that ‘humane’ system. Often the most fitting punishment is to let the criminal who doesn’t appreciate the rules to live as they wish without those rules.

But we need not let these selfish people disrupt social cohesion with their blatant disregard for the most basic courtesy. Want to behave ‘like an animal’? Then go live with the animals!

Which, unfortunately for you, will be others just like you!

So what will get you exiled? Mostly theft and coercion…although theft is pretty stupid in a society where you can’t sell anything to anybody (because nobody has money they can give YOU…but that doesn’t mean they won’t try!)

The other thing that will get you ‘barred’ from society (and the gene pool) is treason.

Of course, treachery, which is commonplace today, will be illegal under A Simple Plan because treason will be ‘redefined’.

It is common today to ‘mis-represent’ things or situations only to later claim you were ‘mis-understood’.

While sometimes the ‘mis-understanding’ is genuine, other times the ‘fraud’ is intentional.

This willingness to harm others for personal gain is a nasty trait

Will your kids get exiled for YOUR crimes?

Only if they do as you did.

No one would be punished out of hand (or through ‘association’) under a ‘just society’…but if your tend to be ‘twisted’ a certain way then the odds start to tip against you.

Honestly, I think we are all the ‘product’ of the society we were raised in. Raise a child with tolerance and forbearance and you will produce a solid citizen who appreciates AND values the benefits of civil society, not just some of them but ALL of them.

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

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

Hand Selected and Spoon Fed

Greetings good citizen,

Um, as disturbing as it is, I often complain about the STIFFS who ‘write for a paycheck’. Although half of the time I sympathize with them, they are no different than any other ‘paycheck hostage’.

I don’t care if your way is easier, I’m paying you to do it MY WAY!

And other nonsense we ‘non-stakeholders’ regularly put up with.

But…and some things are ‘unforgivable’, sometimes you just have to wonder how these fuckers sleep at night because NOT ONE ‘mainstream media outlet’ reported this story

Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein said Wednesday police handcuffed her to a chair during her eight-hour imprisonment following her arrest outside the second presidential debate.

“For most of the time it was just [running mate] Cheri Honkala and myself,” Stein told Democracy Now anchor Amy Goodman. “Yet they felt the need to keep us in tight plastic restraints tightly secured to metal chairs.”

Stein and Honkala were arrested Tuesday while sitting in the street to protest their exclusion from this year’s presidential debates between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. They tried to enter the debate hall at the host site, Hofstra University, but were denied access because they lacked the necessary credentials

Raw Story (http://s.tt/1qjFK)

[Deep Sigh…]

Well good citizen, is this something you’d expect to find in the country you were raised to believe in freedom and equality…or is this the kind of BULLSHIT you’d expect to find in some tin pot DICTATORSHIP?

We aren’t talking some obscure demonstrators from OWS, we’re talking actual, on the ballot in all fifty states, presidential candidates!

What are the FUCKING >One Percent trying to hide (besides an alternative to two sides of the same coin?)

Um, should we be ‘surprised’ by this? Dennis Kucinich wasn’t invited to the presidential debates last time and despite some squawking from the alternative press, nothing was done about that either.

Which is to say it’s probably time for another piece on ‘fatal myopia’.

What is the sound of one hand clapping? If you want to know then all you have to do is look at the presidential race through the eyes of the corporate owned media…

Two guys who both answer to the same masters.

It has occurred to me that since Obama has become identified as a ‘do nothing’ president, The >One Percent are offering up the Romney-Ryan show to justify his second term.

Not that I’m voting for the worthless…(fill in your own blank.)

How sad is it that until this article I didn’t even know who the Greenies were running. (Never mind that they had been taken hostage by the >One Percent!)

While I am all for sustainability, my ‘greenness’ is tempered by practicality. I’m unwilling to sacrifice large numbers of humans on the alter of some ‘unachievable balance’ and carrying capacity estimates that are guesses at best.

Perhaps my biggest, er, ‘issue’ with the greens is their lack of awareness that economics is deeply tied to politics and their ‘values’ are predominantly capitalist.

I don’t know who it pisses off when I exclaim that predatory capitalism (and ALL Capitalism is predatory) must go, but that’s my position and I’m sticking with it.

The planet isn’t big enough for one capitalist and the rest of us.

Which is to express my support for the ‘Gone Galt’ project of transplanting this planets, er, assholes um, I mean ‘good people’/capitalists to their very own colony on the Moon!

Once there they can sort out who will do the heavy lifting for them…it won’t be our problem anymore.

And we MUST send them all, no matter how vigorously they protest that we NEED them to ‘take care of us’…

Since they are the self professed ‘best and brightest’ of us all they should easily overcome the, er, ‘oxygen deficit’ that will occur when we don’t send along any additional supplies.

This will also solve the problem of feeding them once they’re there too.

But let us not get too wrapped up in the details. They have long insisted they are better than the rest of us, maybe it’s time we put that claim to the test!

It was disturbing enough that the moderators basically ignored the one candidate who wasn’t a stooge for the One Percent…but at least they didn’t arrest him!

Although the War Criminal had ‘uninvited attendees’ to his campaign events arrested…which probably ‘set the precedent’ for this atrocity.

This tracks back to ‘authority’ good citizen, under whose authority did they arrest legitimate candidates for national office and detain them for 8 hours?

One would THINK there would be several job openings at THAT Police Department/Government agency by this time tomorrow!

Understand good citizen, a cop is YOU with a gun and a blue suit!

You can’t walk around and arrest anybody you like because you don’t agree with what they’re doing, can you?

Then why aren’t those security personnel under arrest awaiting charges of kidnapping and hostage taking?

Oh, wait…it’s because Obobo ignored his mandate and went for giving insurance companies a gift rather than prosecuting W, the war criminal!

Um, when it’s YOU being ‘illegally detained’ it will be far too late to do anything about it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: do not ignore the elephant in the room, you are also being deprived of hearing alternative voices, so blatant has the ‘pay to play’ atmosphere become!

The deplorable state of what passes for justice in our society is sadly secondary…although it is primary to our society's restoration.

Rot

Greetings good citizen,

I pen literal dynamite last night and it does so-so…although ‘make believe’ got a slow start before taking right off!

And, as you well know, blogging isn’t about popularity. If it was I’d have given up a long time ago.

I (like Oh so many bloggers) have an agenda I’m pushing and this is my place to showcase my wares.

Apparently saving the civilized world isn’t a popular topic…mostly because people don’t think our civilization is in peril…yet.

Weirdly, they read headlines like this and shrug…

Rich as the Devil, but No Gordon Gekko
By GINIA BELLAFANTE

The income disparity in New York has hardly diminished, but pop culture’s recent portrayals of the class wars haven’t been indicative of the boiling debate.

Um, weirdly she is right, there is no acknowledgement of the class war by the corporate owned media. You get guys like El Rushbo spewing about ‘the liberal media’ (because chuckle-head thinks he’s the only one in the conservative media.)

But this only brings us back to the issue of how the One Percent controls the soapbox.

They don’t want to argue, much less justify their theft from the rest of us so of course there is ‘no discussion’ (or ‘debate’ as the corporate owned media puts it.)

Which brings us to…

Finding the Roots of Your Office Anger
By EILENE ZIMMERMAN

What’s really making you lose emotional control at work? Often, it’s not the upsetting situation at hand.

What’s this? Do you need someone to explain to you why you’re angry at work?

Could it be that you’re pissed off about not being able to feed your family on what you’re paid or that you are faced with the ‘heat or eat’ question here in the first week of autumn. Making you wonder what the situation will be like when ‘real winter’ gets here?

But no, that’s not it at all! It’s figuring out which one of the shiftless idiots you work with that is stealing your lunch!

Or any one of a million reasons why you loathe going to a job that doesn’t utilize your talents (because the cost of fucking up is too dear…)

You don’t need psychoanalysis, you need an even break. A job you actually find interesting and the training you need to do that job well!

But you aren’t going to get that under capitalism because the boss doesn’t want to foot the tab for training you. If you can’t pick it up on the fly then you might as well forget about it.

But you’re not a ‘victim’…just ask Mitt.

Nation’s Choices Needn’t Be Painful
By ROBERT H. FRANK

Many of America’s problems can be solved by putting idle resources to work, or redirecting wasteful spending, an economist writes.

Did your head just explode, good citizen? Mine did because that statement is both true and false.

As I have stated repeatedly there is no way to use capitalism to fix capitalism, that whole tool box is empty.

Now you will notice numbnuts doesn’t give us any example of what ‘idle resources’ we can put to work…because that would involve explaining why those resources are idle in the first place.

Nor does he address specifically what ‘wasteful spending’ we should re-direct…but you already know it WON’T be the military budget nor will it be the Security apparatus that is busier watching honest people than it is hunting down criminals.

Actually the bastards are hunting for ‘terrorists’…the homegrown kind.

Which sort of goes hand in hand with this headline:

C.E.O.’s and the Pay-’Em-or-Lose-’Em Myth
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

The argument that C.E.O.’s will leave if they aren’t compensated well, perhaps even lavishly, is bogus, according to a new study.

Now, did they actually do a new study or did logic tell these idiots that all of that ‘room at the top’ is there for a reason…because there’s no place else to go?

Worse, most of these psycho’s got the job they have through ‘connections’. They’re somebody’s butt-buddy and they have a screw loose…which is why they got the job of screwing the employees mercilessly!

Ironically, these same assholes ARE INCAPABLE of actually operating the companies they allegedly ‘lead’, they DON’T KNOW HOW!

But they DO KNOW how to slash and burn the payroll so that the remaining employees are left virtually paying to keep their jobs.

You and I both know that commerce was (originally) founded to serve the needs of society/civilization. It has only been in the last thirty years that commerce has been ‘re-purposed’ to serve the greed of Wall Street.

And the resultant instability you see all around you is the end result of this ‘re-purposing’. A few got very rich while civilization itself collapsed.

What, civilization HASN’T collapsed?

Wait a minute!

If you want to restore sanity and save yourself and your family in the process then A Simple Plan is for YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Shooting Blanks...

Greetings good citizen,

It is difficult for someone such as my humble self to hit three in a row out of the park but here goes:

A Tight Election May Be Tangled in Legal Battles
By ETHAN BRONNER

With federal and state courts handing down decisions on ballot casting and counting, the presidential election may hinge partly on last-minute legal battles by both parties.

This morning the campaign ads for the hotly contested Senate seat currently held by Scott Brown ran an ad accusing ‘congressmen’ of ‘insider trading’ and how HE penned and got passed legislation that would forbid this otherwise illegal activity.

Um, there are a lot of things happening that are ‘against the law’ and that’s not stopping the criminals from doing them so what makes this supposedly ‘new’ law different?

Could it be because he is a freshman Senator that he believes his legislation carries more weight?

Without actually reading this bill and parsing EXACTLY what it says, we don’t know what got passed. He could have written legislation forbidding littering the floors of congress with the receipts from insider trading…

If you don’t read the actual document you won’t know what it actually prohibits or enables!

But I digress.

The topic here is the gerrymandering that goes on right before every election…and like yesterday’s piece, we have to take a moment and wonder just who this Kabuki dance is for the benefit of?

We have a bona-fide member of the >One Percent running against a DINO.

The only ‘choice’ you’re being given is the degree of conservatism you like.

The ‘smart man’ has proven spineless and unprincipled while the stuffed shirt has lived up to the reputation for cluelessness that defines his class.

As illustrated here:

Washington Memo
Romney's Tax Plan Leaves Key Variables Blank
By ANNIE LOWREY and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

Mitt Romney has pledged to cut individual income tax rates for everyone, but he has provided few specifics, confounding analysts and leaving himself open to attack from Democrats.

Correct me if I am mistaken but didn’t ALL Republicans sign a ‘no new tax’ pledge prior to being sworn in to office?

I guess we’re back to the riddle ‘define tax?’

Did you know it was a Republican that coined the phrase ‘My words mean exactly what I want them to mean, nothing more and nothing less’?

They LOVE to use the term ‘tax and spend liberal’ while denying their own propensity for ‘borrowing and spending’ (often like drunken sailors) on idiotic and catastrophic causes.

But that’s an aside…the truly disturbing part is the ‘irresponsibility factor’. It is this same (faux) inattentiveness that is supposedly responsible for the destruction of the global economy.

But hey, that had NOTHING to do with Republicanism (because the whole government is captive so neither party is responsible.)

Actually, when all ‘elected officials’ take their marching orders from the same elite clique, party membership is superfluous.

The ONLY interests being represented in the US (and its ‘satellites’) are those of the >One Percent.

The question is whether or not your nation is in a US centric orbit (while your politicians claim to be ‘independent’.)

So if your nation is considered a part of the West, you are in a definite US centric orbit, under the control of US based oligarchs…although that will soon change.

Meaning oligarchs that currently call the US home will be, er, compelled to flee for their lives when the hunt begins…and they won’t be coming back either.

They’ve made their bed and now they are going to be forced to lie in it.

Which will only make them punish the US more…causing the minions they leave behind to be, er, ‘exorcised’ from here as well.

Now do you see the benefits of a monetary system that isn’t tied to global markets and that can’t be manipulated by the ‘self-interested’?

They can inject their oil up their backsides; we won’t need it. (Because the new economy is efficient and designed for pedestrians.)

Do I have ‘A Plan’? Why yes I do and you can read all about it right here!

Let me know if you find any ‘blanks’, will you?

(Although some parts are purposefully left undefined so YOU can live the way YOU want to.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Economics or Law?

Greetings good citizen,

Watched Doomsday Preppers on National Geographic last night, contemplating the whole time how much of this (nonsense) was due to the channel being owned by Newscorp?

More interestingly, the preppers themselves were revealed to be conservo-whackos (by dint of their bumperstickers, never mind being STUPID enough to go on national TV with their so-called ‘secret stashes’ of weapons, food and cash.)

And these people did the term ‘conservo-loonie’ proud! They were doing it all wrong and were being praised for their efforts by the show’s ‘independent judges’.

Actually, I am personally thankful for the preppers efforts, they will become the supermarkets that will provide temporary relief from eating whatever you can chase down with a stick and beat to death after the collapse.

For people obsessed with cop shows they appear to be completely ignorant of just how easy it is to get ‘the drop’ on somebody.

And after they tear that gun out of your surprised hands you only have moments left to live…and those will be the moments it takes for you to give up the location and how to disable the booby traps protecting your stash.

And you WILL tell them because YOU want to live.

Heck, comply quickly enough and they just might decide to spare your life…if only to have you take some of the risk out of hunting down future supplies.

Not all ‘hoarders’ will be ‘pushovers’ and as time goes on the job will only get more difficult.

But that is not the topic of today’s post.

Like the headline says, it’s still about the economy…

“This is one of the reasons wages haven’t been growing,” he said. “People are taking jobs they didn’t take in the past, moving from sectors like construction into jobs at lower-paying, big-box retailers.”

There were a few slivers of encouragement in Friday’s report. Using the broadest measure of unemployment, which includes part-time workers who want to work full time as well as individuals who are not looking for jobs but indicate they want to work, the unemployment rate fell to 14.7 percent from 15 percent.

The pace of government layoffs seems to be slowing, said Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton School and director of the school’s Center for Human Resources. As the private sector added 103,000 jobs in August, governments cut just 7,000. That is down from 21,000 in July, and well below the average of 16,000 reductions a month since March. Federal employment actually increased by 3,000 in August, to 2.8 million, the first monthly increase since February 2011.

There was only slight relief for the long-term unemployed, defined as workers out of a job for at least 27 weeks. Their ranks fell by 152,000 to just over five million in August, and they account for 40 percent of all unemployed people. Among workers with less than a high school education, the unemployment rate fell to 12 percent from 12.7 percent, but that remains far above the 4.1 percent unemployment level for workers with a college degree or more.

Still, there were plenty of other signs the economy was still treading water. Average hourly earnings paid by private employers ticked downward by 1 cent in August, to $23.52, while the length of the typical private sector workweek remained flat at 34.4 hours. Both measures have barely budged from where they were six months ago.

This slightly longer than generally permissible snippet was taken from the tail end of the article.

Funny to see all of the ‘hands in motion' here as they examine the public sector side by side with the private.

The Feds can ‘shazaam’ money and hire as many people as they want…below this and government is totally dependent on tax revenue and ‘grants’ for specific purposes.

City and states are laying off because their tax base has been gutted by the global race to the bottom.

No employers means no employees living in their once prosperous communities.

You’d think politicians would want to avoid that sort of thing but apparently we have a new breed running for office…

A breed that knows there is a lot to be had for those willing to do as their told without asking any questions.

Sadly, this new breed thinks their new masters will protect them from having their necks stretched for treason…and this is totally untrue!

If it suits these masters purposes, they will have them strung up themselves! (if only to buy themselves a few more precious minutes of ‘run time’.)

But I digress…it’s not about being ‘sold out’ (although in the end it is ALL about that!) It is about the badly broken economy the massive unemployment problem the idiot capitalists have created!

Here’s a simple proposition I’m sure everybody can understand. When your commerce system excludes ‘too many’ people, your civilization collapses.

For all of this 8%, 12%, hell, 5% unemployment, the REAL rate is closer to 50%!

Worse, you can’t tolerate a 50% unemployment rate and expect your society to remain cohesive.

For too long the working have been taught to despise the unemployed as lazy freeloaders despite being the victims of predatory capitalism.

So when non-workers achieve parity with workers a conflict erupts.

And guess what else has been bubbling right under the surface of this cauldron? The ‘I can get any one of those people out there to do YOUR job!’ threat.

Coupled with the other famous taunt: Be happy YOU even HAVE a job!

Now the unthinking conservo-whacko worker doesn’t realize the guy in the street doesn’t want HIS job…well, I think you can see where this whole thing is headed.

[He wants something that doesn’t exist, a job of his own!]

They don’t say ‘blood in the streets’ for nothing…although, supposedly, we have a robust ‘justice system’ to prevent things like this from ‘getting out of hand’.

Boy, are they gonna be surprised!

As I have stated repeatedly, we don’t have a ‘money problem’ (because money is fiction, albeit a very dangerous one) we have one pisser of a legal problem! (with criminals in charge of the justice system.)

Thanks for letting me inside our head,

Gegner

Exploitation

Greetings good citizen,

It is a proven fact there is more, er, ‘profit’ in treating the symptoms of various diseases than there is in providing a cure…thus do we have numerous ‘treatments’ and few ‘cures’.

How fucking sad is it good citizen that this is a prime example of capitalism in action?

Not that ‘exploitation of the situation’ is limited to the healthcare industry:

Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas

But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer. That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty, but the effort has been a struggle.

This is the kind of thing that gives us millionaire farmers who grow nothing, although this variety of flagrant exploitation can be found throughout the worlds’ capitalist cultures.

How unfortunate is it for the rest of us that the world’s ‘capitalist cultures’ are restricted to the top > One Percent of the world’s population?

And make no mistake about it good citizen, these people are no smarter than you.

Why they get to exploit these situations and you don’t has more to their membership in a criminal network that they were born into than anything related to either luck or skill.

Worse, good citizen, is how these criminals are ‘one trick ponies’. When the surplus population gets too high they only have one solution for it and that is World War.

The ‘handwriting on the wall’ tells us that the next ‘global conflagration’ will center on the dual hubs of energy and food.

What vast majority of the global population is ignorant of the fact that large swaths of land we currently call ‘home’ will become uninhabitable during the winter months because we will lack the ‘cheap and abundant energy’ necessary to heat and light them.

Although we won’t necessarily be ‘out’ of them…it will just be a situation where a capitalist finds it ‘irresistible’ not to ‘take advantage’.

Who gives a fuck if billions die, there’s profits to be raked in!

Full Stop, good citizen.

Is THIS the kind of world YOU want to bring YOUR KIDS up in?

The > One percent have no problem with this because it won’t be THEIR KIDS SUFFERING!

Worse, the hard-hearted pricks will use their kid’s less fortunate cousins as an example of what will happen to them if they don’t adopt the hard line (and traditional) stance of ‘hooray for me and fuck everybody else!’

Even more sinister, they aren’t beyond ‘giving fate a hand’ when it comes to these nasty little scenarios.

We (in my opinion) desperately need to change our operating system, the status quo must go!

It was only viable when energy was cheap and abundant…now that energy is neither; the solution is NOT a return to feudalism…although that is the solution seen by those who can’t conceive of a society without slavery.

Yes good citizen, the > One Percent is more than just a pox on society, it represents everything that is wrong with our species.

A Simple Plan eradicates the One Percent. It also eradicates the criminal from birth society.

Do you want to give your kids a chance to live life their way? (Within reason.)

You won’t find a better vehicle to achieve that goal than A Simple Plan.

And if A Simple Plan ever becomes oppressive, it has been hijacked by the self-interested…and a ‘counter-revolution’ is already underway!

Equality fosters justice and justice fosters peace…and peace fosters prosperity.

That’s the equation and it can’t be deviated from.

Naturally, opponents of equality will lead the charge for change with a direct appeal to the personal ‘I’ in all of us…but this life isn’t about me or you, it’s first and foremost about ‘us’.

Putting personal prosperity first is a recipe for universal poverty…because for some people the wealth of an entire planet is not enough!

Ironically, that is how the ‘invitation only’ (met in secret and under armed guard) ‘founders’ justified THEIR theft.

‘We have all we want and want no more’ (a vicious lie than made even more vicious now by lying liars!)

And they proceeded to do nothing more than cement their theft of public property with a system of government designed solely to protect ‘ownership rights’.

A corrupt system we have, trust me, ‘suffered’ under for more than 230 years.

Every once in a while journalists are given an opportunity to cast a feeble light on the shit hole we live in I jump on it whenever I see an opening.

Naturally, a blogger’s lot is ‘triage’. I can’t write about everything and important is an extremely, er, ‘relative’ term.

Today’s post is nothing ‘new’, just a rare glimpse of the mud puddle we wallow in as we try to eek out a living and keep our families from starving to death.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

About Me

Greetings good citizen,

I have just perused the media offerings for today and concluded, amazingly, that in a world that is truly falling apart, they have nothing to say!

So for today’s ‘treat’, you can read me, ‘unplugged’.

Let’s start with my humble beginnings, shall we?

No, I’m not going to bore you with my tawdry upbringing because being raised poor has little to do with anything…although I doubt I’d be who I am today had I been born with anything even resembling a ‘silver spoon’ protruding from any orifice!

So yes, it is at least tangentially relevant that I was born poor and remain poor to this day.

Um, contrary to popular belief, I have never set myself on a path to ‘conquer the world’…and, unsurprisingly, might be accused of failing because I didn’t’ set my sights high enough.

But we can’t ALL conquer the world…and maybe that is my fracture because my goal always has been the ‘greatest good’.

Why is it in a world so full of bounty that only a few get to enjoy it?

And the answer comes back (quite quickly I might add:) mismanagement.

The system itself is deeply flawed and remains that way due to deep corruption!

But I preach to the choir, do I not?

Everybody knows.

So why doesn’t ‘somebody’ DO SOMETHING about it?

Have we all been so deeply indoctrinated with ‘go along to get along’ that none of us dare ‘rock the boat’ (even though it is headed over a cliff?)

Although I’d daresay we have already gone over that cliff, rocking the boat now would merely remove the only thing between you and the jagged rocks below.

As thin as that object may be,

And no, it is unlikely you will survive that sudden stop that follows every long fall.

But I digress…(and do so with such frequency that I fear few of you can follow my, er, ‘insights’ to their conclusions.)

Which is to announce that I suspect my son isn’t the only one with ADD.

Meaning he comes by his ‘honestly’.

So let’s return to the beginning (because we’re gonna end up there anyway) and try not to ‘squander the opportunity’ which the slavers among us are prepared to defend with their worthless lives.

Yes good citizen, there are those among us who support slavery so long as it is not they who are the slaves.

They will inflict a fate worse than death upon YOU if their children are spared.

Did I lose you again? Try to keep up, eh?

These ‘true believers’ form a singular barrier to a fair and equitable society. They must be eliminated OR those they follow/obey must be, er, ‘eradicated’ for subsequent generations to be free.

No ‘half measures’ here good citizen, this is not a ‘once and done’ proposition.

Which is to say vigilance is key. We may succeed in sweeping them aside (temporarily) but they will regroup and start over if we provide them with the mechanisms they need to corrupt society.

Their ‘tool of choice’ is (and always will be) ‘hard currency’. Without it, it becomes near impossible to ‘bribe’ others towards your way of thinking.

This is why you are ‘trained’ to demand money you can touch…while money itself remains an ‘idea’.

Fix this and we break the slaver’s back.

The other ‘trump card’ the slaver holds is their control of the workplace. They get to decide who ‘prospers’ and who starves.

A decidedly toxic power to have in a world where survival depends on ‘participation’.

If they don’t let you play, you can’t prosper…legally.

That is the ‘powder keg’ the unemployment situation has become.

Yet the conservatives (those who would enslave you) still preach that it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to make yourself ‘USEFUL’ to the employer.

And soon SOME OF YOU may be able to ‘redeem’ yourselves by being willing to DIE for people who wouldn’t ordinarily spit on the best part of you!

Oh, you’ll be a hero for taking a bullet for them but you can almost hear them shriek ‘idiot’ as you fall to the ground, clutching your vitals!

Um, I find myself apologizing after these solo flights if only because a trip through the landscape that is my mind can be a pretty disturbing experience for those who don’t usually think along those lines.

So, in short…(not that I’m particularly comfortable with the short version of anything) A Simple Plan was designed to facilitate the ‘equality’ we need to move forward as a species.

If we don’t learn to live together, we will not survive to go forth and meet new (and hopefully more intelligent) races across the cosmos.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Capitalism 2.0

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do YOU see ANYTHING ‘new’?

Short answer, no.

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

Yup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How fucking stupid can you get?

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

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

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

So what’s left?

Fucking whacko Libertarians! (Pretending to be Democrats)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to the subject at hand.

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

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

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

The ‘answers’ lie within A Simple Plan

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Choke

Greetings good citizen,

Around the world the ‘insufficiently connected’ are being forced into unacceptable situations while the people commonly responsible for these circumstances are routinely ‘bailed out’ at the taxpayer’s expense.

The price of food and fuel continue to spiral upwards as the financial sector loots the ‘real’ economy.

Understand, the financial sector isn’t eating all of the losses reckless lending by ‘imprudent’ bankers caused a certain degree of ‘cascading systemic failure’…

TREVISO, Italy — On New Year’s Eve, Antonio Tamiozzo, 53, hanged himself in the warehouse of his construction business near Vicenza, after several debtors did not pay what they owed him.

Three weeks earlier, Giovanni Schiavon, 59, a contractor, shot himself in the head at the headquarters of his debt-ridden construction company on the outskirts of Padua. As he faced the bleak prospect of ordering Christmas layoffs at his family firm of two generations, he wrote a last message: “Sorry, I cannot take it anymore.”

The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”

There’s a weird saying in the business world that goes like this, You’ll get yours when I get mine. Most of the time our entire (screwed up) economic system operates ‘on credit’; everything is billed ‘net 30’ and actually paid between 90 and 120. Worse, you know ‘squeezing’ the people who owe you won’t expedite the process because they are in the same position you are; they don’t have it…(yet.)

This is why the feckless banks went, hat in hand, to their politicians and told them in no uncertain terms that they needed to be ‘bailed out’ or the financial sector around the world was going to ‘collapse’.

Well, the politicians (idiots that they are) took these bankers at their word, never realizing that the bankers WOULDN’T extend the same kind of consideration to their customers…

So the banker got a ‘pass’ courtesy of the taxpayer but the bank’s debtors got what they always get, ‘fuck you, pay me!’

Understand good citizen, NONE of these banks ‘skipped’ paying their staff ‘bonuses’ (They HAD TO or these ‘highly skilled’ technocrats would go ‘elsewhere’…)

Like the entire banking sector around the world DIDN’T (and believe me, it DID) ‘collapse’.

The, er, ‘government (taxpayer) bailouts have been the ONLY thing keeping the (crooked) banking system afloat for the past four years!

Worse, the banks have had TRILLIONS pumped into them and they’re STILL BROKE! (Because the ‘shadow banking system’ had created a quadrillion dollars worth of debt that the brick and mortar banking system is ‘trying’ to make good on…)

Instead of telling the fuckers that created this garbage to go piss up a bent rope!

But that’s okay, that quadrillion dollars will ‘vaporize’ when we institute the new monetary system A Simple Plan uses! (Partly because ALL DEBT will be illegal and mostly because placing someone in YOUR debt will be an EXILE OFFENSE!)

Um, under ‘fair use’ you are only permitted to use three paragraphs of someone else’s work. So if you don’t click the link and read the entire article you will remain ignorant of the fact that the article goes on to (briefly) examine the ongoing effects of this, er, ‘perpetrator free’ phenomenon.

Yeah, if not for my rant about the bankers getting ‘rescued’ but the people who owe bankers not making out so well, you’d be left to your own devices to try and determine who was responsible for this, er, ‘collateral damage’.

In the first three paragraphs of this article it is made out that the ‘fragile economies’ of the affected countries is to blame for this banker created carnage.

Well, good citizen, the bankers are at least ‘partly correct’ that they don’t deserve ALL of the blame, the fucking politician’s hands are dripping with blood as well.

While yesterday’s post examined what it takes to ferment revolution, we should take a moment to examine the miniscule amount of corruption it takes to implement widespread oppression!

The first key is money. Take over a nation’s money supply and you ‘control’ that nation. If you want to ‘simplify’ this process then you ‘manipulate’ the other bankers into agreeing that one currency will be the world’s ‘reserve currency’, making the manipulation process easier.

One you control the ‘printing presses’ you proceed to ‘buy’ control of the ‘business friendly’ political party in each nation.

After you have control of half of the total political ‘pie’, you ‘exterminate’ the other half, keeping it alive only as a ‘sock puppet’ so you will have the only ‘opposition’ in your pocket.

Now that you control the political process, it is a simple matter of co-opting the courts and you have true ‘free rein’.

There is no need to add the ‘rinse and repeat’, this ‘winning formula’ has been repeated throughout the entire (now) capitalist world.

Understand, good citizen, this wouldn’t be possible under any other system. It was only by turning communist China capitalist that they were able to ‘co-opt’ the formerly communist government.

The part we all should get a kick out of is that they did it all with ‘funny money’ (and the cooperation of some REALLY STUPID people.)

I’m gonna drop this one right here and you can try to work out whether or not I just called YOU stupid…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Shrug

Greetings good citizen,

I watched an hour of TED talks on the Science channel last night and learned that the richest man in the world will NOT be the source of the world’s salvation.

How fucked up is it that we often equate money with intelligence?

I lived most of my life without the, er, ‘benefit’ of cable TV and I am relieved to report that I’m fairly confident I didn’t miss anything ‘meaningful’.

Since I do not subscribe to the idea that money = smarts, I marveled for a few moments as to why the richest man in the world agreed to record what ultimately turned into a cheerleading session.

The end of Bill’s talk told anyone who was paying attention WHY he was doing this…he was stumping his investment portfolio!

He doesn’t give a fuck either!

Once again good citizen we are confounded by the realization that the ‘super-wealthy geniuses’ among us are NOT all that bright (but they are, er, ‘extraordinarily’ greedy and extremely full of themselves!)

And why people, er, ‘confuse’ driving ambition with intelligence has more to do with ignorance. Most people wouldn’t recognize genuine intelligence if it bit them on the ass! So what ‘passes for’ intelligence is more so a combination of (destructive) ‘self-confidence’ and unchecked desire (which has paid off for them at least once in the past) that makes people stand aside, often against their own better judgement…

But I digress (which is a little weird considering this post hasn’t established a theme yet…)

Funny how watching Bill Gates, already rich enough to buy and sell us all, (he most certainly doesn’t ‘need’ the money) on the fucking ‘boob tube’ stumping for investment capital!

Talk about ‘clueless’, how do you communicate to a (moron) capitalist that there is NO PROFIT in saving the world?

Understand (and be very afraid, good citizen) that this is WHY nothing has been done about the long smoldering train wreck that WAS our economy.

Nothing is being done because these idiotic ‘one trick ponies’ can’t figure out how to make a buck off of, well, repairing the damage (not that anyone is particularly interested in actually ‘fixing’ what’s broken…)

Worse, the vultures ‘know’ what needs to happen next but because of all the blood on their hands they aren’t too keen on fixing it…(yet.)

And therein lies the danger, if they keep stretching this thing out they will eventually ‘erase’ the most damning evidence against them so THEIR courts will be free to ‘hold their noses’ and exonerate them.

Think Ford ‘pardoning’ Nixon or Obama failing to prosecute Bush…(both done ‘for the good of the presidency’, of course!)

(Like a freshly ‘white-washed’ executive office is more important than an honest and just government.)

At the end of the day it is all about ‘priorities’.

It’s not about what’s important to the knot-head in power, it is about what is important to the people!

Anyway, my twisted mind keeps returning to the puzzle of ‘what it took’ to make little Billy Gates a multi-billionaire…

And not him specifically, but billionaires in general.

There are roughly a thousand and a half of them worldwide…in a world that is FILLED with grinding poverty!

What the hell is ‘wrong’ with this picture, good citizen?

Even our current President is often quoted as ‘not begrudging’ the rich their wealth…but is it ‘their wealth’?

Understand…’God’ did not come down from heaven and hand Billy a check for $75 billion, you COULDN’T begrudge him that, but Billy made his vast fortune doing the work once and getting paid for it forever (never mind the ‘forced migration’ aspect of the puzzle!)

But then again there are a lot of wealthy people that owe their fortune to, er, ‘what the law allows’…

Like I have said repeatedly, good citizen, we don’t have a ‘money problem but a legal problem…one that will remain ‘insoluable’ as long as the self-interested maintain their vise like grip on the laws we all must live by…

This is why a revolt is necessary. (Because NOTHING is going to change until these people’s bloody corpses are dragged from behind their desks!)

An ‘order’ to quit is ‘insufficient’.

There were other disturbing sentiments expressed on last night’s show, one of the presenters played the reviled ‘complexity’ card (figures he was an ‘economist’…)

Worse, he also presented the ‘false’ idea that there are 10 billion products in a market like NY City…like each one was, er, ‘unique’.

Much of what he was calling ‘product’ was in fact the same thing in a different color/flavor.

Life itself is as simple as shelter (with a place to build a fire), water, food and clothing…done.

Where ‘red nail polish’ fits into this calculus escapes me but the world doesn’t stop if we are ‘deprived’ of ‘war paint’.

So don’t sit still for anyone who plays the ‘complexity card’…he’s bullshitting you to your face! (Ironically, another ‘killing offense’ under the laws of the jungle!)

Perhaps I’m being unfair…not that I think I’m THAT much smarter than the average joe but I do recognize the need to cut the, er, ‘less sophisticated’ among us some slack.

Hell, we all know someone who would find the choice between red and yellow ‘complex’ beyond their abilities…

Which must be how such brazen injustice continues to escape notice…although that huge honkin’ muzzle they had made for the media must help a lot!

So while you’re contemplating how Christ died for your sins, take a good, hard look around you and consider how YOU have repaid ‘the favor’…

Did Jesus's sacrifice REALLY make this world a 'better place' or is that part up to us?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Judges

Greetings good citizen,

Same old, same old despite the cheerleading by the clueless Corporate owned media:

Stocks Trade Sharply Lower
By REUTERS

Wall Street stocks opened down about 1 percent, despite good private sector payrolls data, as investors digested information suggesting further monetary stimulus action is unlikely from the Fed.

That little ‘nutshell’ does a far more effective job of explaining the inexplicable than I ever will.

Although you should note the sharp dump is being attributed to the, er, ‘feared end’ of the monetary stimulus that has been keeping the ‘pirate economy’ running for the past four years…

Har me bucko! You think it’s time we make the lubbers walk the plank?

Well, good citizen, if this story of ‘judicial overreach’ is any indication it sure as hell is time for something.

And dozens of women who described an ordeal of unwanted and aggressive sexual conduct may receive no compensation for lost wages or emotional distress because of judicial criticism of the agency's investigation.

A February ruling in the case sets a new standard for workplace class-action lawsuits in the federal court district that includes Iowa, Arkansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska and the Dakotas. Before filing a lawsuit on behalf of employees alleging similar discrimination, the agency will first have to investigate the merits of every worker's claim and attempt to reach settlements. If the agency doesn't, EEOC risks having the case dismissed.

The agency has argued that such a standard is impractical in cases involving hundreds or thousands of potential victims. At a minimum, the agency says, investigations would take longer and delay relief compared to other regions, where class-action cases can be filed with a lower standard. EEOC has a deadline next week to determine whether to appeal.

Um, just so you’ll know there are NO judges (and no provisions for them under A Simple Plan, THE PEOPLE (ALL OF THEM) are ‘the law’.)

Not some stuffed shirt who is so full of himself that he forgets where his authority comes from!

In fact that is something I have always found ‘disturbing’ about our borrowed ‘English’ legal system. The judge’s role is rather a contrived one, very much like the role of the ‘owner’ under capitalism.

In fact, to make matters even more disturbing, I am sure most of you are aware that you needn’t have a law degree or a degree in anything at all to become a ‘judge’.

These mostly appointed positions (although some places weirdly ‘elect’ their judges, dunno what’s up with that because it sure don’t solve the problem!) become the arbiters of what is and isn’t ‘permissible’ in their courtrooms.

Worse, this stuffed shirt gets to tell ‘a jury of your peers’ what evidence they can consider and should use to base their decision on…and you are forbidden to protest this.

So a ‘judge’ is oh so much more than an ‘impartial referee’.

And now these female recruits are going to get the shaft because somebody in the trucking company has ‘the judges ear’?

Oh no! It would never be anything like that!

It, as the corporate owned media explains, is the ‘shoddy nature’ of the investigation that is the issue here.

WTF!

There’s another item in today’s news about some federal appellate judge ‘taking issue’ with the President’s comments regarding ‘judicial over-reach’ where it concerns Romney Obama Care.

It appears he is ‘offended’ by the president challenging ‘judicial authority’.

When BY RIGHTS there should be NO SUCH THING AS JUDGES!

There is ZERO ROOM is the legal process for ‘independent judgement’, (The law is self explanatory!) and few will deny that the judges main role is solely to secure the ‘desired outcome’ in any given case, justice BE DAMNED!

It is also why 'the rich' walk away from their legal problems while the average citizen gets the book thrown at him...or has his case dismissed...because the judge didn't think it had 'merit'.

And speaking of justice be damned we have this sort of bullshit to contend with on the other end of the puzzle:

Most American workers labor under the auspices of employment-at-will, which allows employers to hire, fire and promote for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all.

On March 16, at least 14 employees of the Elizabeth R. Wellborn law firm, located in Deerfield Beach, Florida, wore orange shirts to work. For this style choice, they were marched into a conference room and summarily fired. Wellborn’s husband declared that the shirts were a protest against working conditions at the 275-worker law firm, and that management would not stand for such behavior.

Adherents LOVE capitalism mostly because it rewards them with their own little ‘kingdom’ that they can run anyway they wish…even like they run the company in the first article.

So the question currently without answer is precisely where does ‘executive privilege’ end and ‘the law’ begin?

And how disturbing is it that the Judge’s position was designed to ‘mimic’ the owner’s position and not the victim’s?

Now I have found myself on the wrong end of a ‘dispute’ with ‘the king boss and anyone else who has been in that position will tell you. Unless you have the wherewithal to sue for millions (and can afford to lose) Good Luck with finding a law firm willing to take on an employer for you!

And when you see items like today’s first offering in the news, it tells you up front what your ‘chances’ are of coming out on top.

In fact, if our justice system were 50% effective, news stories about judicial corruption would dominate the headlines…but judicial corruption has become a given under our corrupt and badly broken legal system.

And as I have explained, in detail, many times, we do not have a ‘money problem’ in this country but we have ONE FUCK OF A LEGAL PROBLEM!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pardon Me?

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To which I ask, Is THIS ‘Justice’?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does the idea itself piss you off?

It should.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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

Step one is to ‘spread the word!’

Clearance Sale!

Greetings good citizen,

It appears the market tickers are out of whack (but how do we tell?) They had the date right but the clock indicated it was already 2:35 in the afternoon! (and this was before the open!)

But that is not today’s topic, today’s offering comes to us straight from the headlines of today’s NY Times

Naturally, whenever you see a ‘this isn’t new or news’ item, we are compelled to ask why this and why now?

Largely insulated from the country’s economic downturn since 2008, members of Congress — many of them among the “1 percenters” denounced by Occupy Wall Street protesters — have gotten much richer even as most of the country has become much poorer in the last six years, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group.

Congress has never been a place for paupers. From plantation owners in the pre-Civil War era to industrialists in the early 1900s to ex-Wall Street financiers and Internet executives today, it has long been populated with the rich, including scions of families like the Guggenheims, Hearsts, Kennedys and Rockefellers.

But rarely has the divide appeared so wide, or the public contrast so stark, between lawmakers and those they represent.

Well, ‘the divide‘, which has been growing steadily for the past few decades, has become more stark partly because the rich have indeed been getting richer and mostly because the poor have been getting considerably poorer.

Worse, the ‘bar’ for entry into the, er, ‘public arena’ has also risen at an alarming rate. The merely ‘well-to-do’ can no longer, er, ‘afford’ to mount a campaign, much less buy a seat on an influential committee if elected!

Politics have indeed long been the preserve of the ‘idle rich’.

Thus has ‘leadership’ been lacking for so long.

To give you an idea of how bad it has gotten good citizen, Connecticut has long enjoyed the status of having the highest per capita income of any state in the nation…but not anymore.

Recently it has come to light that there is a place where the per capita income dwarfs that of Connecticut…but it’s not a state!

So this, er, disparity may have existed for quite some time…

Can you guess which, er, ‘district’ has snatched the crown from Connecticut, home of hedge fund Billionaires and other Wall Street tycoons?

Correct good citizen, the enchanted district that contains ‘K Street’ has snatched the crown from the desert state of Connecticut.

What Connecticut isn’t in a desert?

The fuck it ain’t!

The biggest employer in the state is Stop & Shop!

Not that the rich give a shit about that! They don’t do their own grocery shopping…

Unlike the vast majority of us…although these days, more and more of us are purchasing our necessities from the local dollar store!

Makes you wonder what places like Stop & Shop are going to do when we are all reduced to buying pet food with our food stamps?

But it stands to reason that we’ll all have bigger things to worry about if it comes to that.

So, we have rich politicians AND a ‘leaderless’ world…how the fuck did that happen?

Aren’t the wealthy ‘natural leaders’?

Apparently not.

Doing what’s good for you often involves doing what’s not so good for a bunch of other people…but you aren’t gonna stay rich if you aren’t willing to, er, ‘crack a few skulls, I mean eggs!

So we return to the very limited pool our politicians are drawn from. Sure, on occasion some rich bastard will stake a poor man’s run for office but this is done as a ‘spoiler’, it is not done out of any sense of civic pride or a genuine desire for ‘honest government’ (despite robust claims to the contrary.)

It might fairly be said that the current incumbent is a fair example of this ‘spoiler’ in action. Give the public what they want but then tie his hands behind his back once he’s in office!

This tactic has made the public wary of what is now viewed as a ‘puppet government’, the ballot box has never been more suspect than it is today.

Which returns us to our original question…why point to corrupt politicians now?

Are they trying to focus our attention on the futility of changing anything while politicians and the system used to elect them are on sale cheap?

Or are they attempting to ‘deflect’ some of the hostility currently aimed at the financial community by pointing at their ‘enablers’?

There can be no doubt that our legislators are just as guilty as the finance boys…who are just as guilty as those who employ them!

Which only re-enforces my cry that we need to redefine the term criminal.

Justice disappears when criminals get to decide what is and what isn’t ‘just’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Critical Thinking Skills...

Greetings good citizen,

I sometimes despair that there are so few ‘viable’ alternatives to the failed system we are currently saddled with.

It is only in retrospect that we have learned that capitalism has NEVER worked and only thrived due to the collusion of the few it benefited.

(As we are witnessing, the only thing holding it together was avoidance of the massive train wreck switching to another system would cause.)

Perhaps the most distressing of all of these proposed ‘alternatives’ is the plethora of ‘half measures’ that don’t take into account the true nature of the problem.

Take this tripe for example.

Rushkoff also raises points worth considering, particularly for those of us trying to articulate, in the wake of massive failures of the economic system we've lived our whole lives with, some sort of alternative to the cycle of boom, bust, bailout.

He argues that perhaps we're going about it backward when we call for jobs, that maybe it's not a bad thing that technology is replacing workers, and points out that actually, we do produce enough food and “stuff” to support the country and even the world—that, in fact, we produce too much “stuff.”

He alternately harkens back to a past before jobs, when many people worked for themselves on a subsistence level, and forward to a future where we are all busy making games and books and communicating with one another from behind computer screens, with the hours we have to work dwindling.

Like most ‘half-measures’ Bobo leaves the details to ‘take care of themselves’. Worse, this half-wit doesn’t possess the presence of mind to focus on the crux of the problem, which is where a solution can be found.

Constant Reader knows where I place that crux (we don’t have a money problem, we have a legal problem, big time!)

It is the laws that need to be changed…and until they do, nothing will change!

Your kids starving to death? Sorry, nothing we can do, helping you (or you helping yourself to what you need) is against the law!

Yes good citizen, fuck you, pay me capitalism is ‘centered’ on property rights NOT the ‘common good’ (which empty -headed Libertarians routinely dismiss as being exploitive.)

So what the fuck is the thinking behind a future where only some people contribute?

Where’s the justice in that?

Which is to ask ’who the fuck thinks THAT is a ’good idea’?’

While A Simple Plan mandates 100% employment as ‘the price of citizenship’, detractors would question the sanity behind essentially quadrupling the commute.

Well, as we build a more sustainable future, working where you live will become the rule rather than the exception it has become today.

If you commute at all you will use your feet as the preferred mode of transportation.

Going anywhere else you’ll probably take the choo-choo (or a dirigible.) If your travel plans take you across one of the world’s oceans it is more likely safer to take a sailing ship.

Yes, we will ‘sacrifice’ supersonic speed for ‘fuel efficiency’.

Hopefully, slowing things down a couple of notches will give us all more time to think things over.

Everybody (even the ‘handicapped’) will be provided with the opportunity to ‘participate’ in society…and that means ‘jobs for everyone!’.

You WILL do your part, even if it is only for a couple of hours a day or a couple of days per week.

Which is to point out there’s no lack of things that need doing, it is capitalism which prevents them from being done!

People are already aware that they can no longer ‘breed like minks’ and that is the true danger of building ‘utopia’.

Which is to say that there are still ‘hard choices’ to be faced, that part doesn’t go away.

I strongly suspect only a ’hooray for me and fuck everyone else Libertarian’ is capable of conceiving of a future where not working (and thereby not participating in society) is an option.

It is uncertain which disturbs me more, the lack of critical think on display here or the fact that THIS ASSHOLE gets a national forum to air his nonsense in!

Oh fucking well…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner