Accountable

Greetings good citizen,

Yesterday’s ‘milestone’ for the financial markets appears to be more evidence of the criminal’s favorite pass time, fraud.

IF you think the economy has ‘recovered’ I’ve got some nice ‘drainage challenged’ real estate you’ll be interested in…

In the meantime, to consider stories such as this one anything more than ‘jaw-boning’ is a tragic error.

TOP NEWS
As Worries Ebb, Small Investors Propel Markets
By NATHANIEL POPPER

After millions of people all but abandoned the markets after the 2008 financial crisis, individual investors are pouring money into stock mutual funds for the first time in years.

Left to our imaginations is precisely who this ‘small investor’ is? He certainly isn’t the newly re-employed worker, stoking up for retirement. We already know 90% of ‘new jobs’ aren’t even full time and 80% of those pay minimum wage! So WHO is this ‘small investor’ they are referring to?

Could the answer be as unfortunate as Wall Street, in it’s usual fashion, is merely transferring funds from real estate hedging vehicles back to mutual funds, ‘ringing the cash register’ so to speak?

Because you don’t need me to tell you that this is not cause for rejoicing! This is sticky fingered Wall Street churning (and helping itself) to money that was already there.

So, small investor recovery? Hardly, small investor fleecing is more like it but Wall Street has this ‘truthiness’ problem where honesty only creates hard feelings.

Just because the ‘deterioration’ of the employment situation has slowed doesn’t mean it is ‘improving!’ (But that’s the message the meatheads would have you believe. That ‘less-worse = better!’)

It’s the same idea of when the economy contracts, that return to stability is sold by the pundits as ‘recovery’ when in fact after ‘leveling off’ for a brief period, it falls again and the talking heads pretend it’s a mystery.

But it’s not. There was a headline in the local rag the day before yesterday that one of the city’s largest employers is laying off half of its workforce AND sending the work to its plants in China and Mexico.

Still feeling ‘optimistic’, Bunky?

It seems every time they declare ‘the recovery is at hand’ I feel compelled to jump in and cry foul!

And it looks like they got me again.

The question is did they get you?

For every nineteen people who reject hogwash like this there is one who embraces it. Maybe not as quickly as they used to, they are starting to catch on to the fact people are laughing at them behind their backs…

Understand good citizen, the corporate owned media HAS TO report the economy is on the mend, even if it isn’t in order to quell social unrest and dampen ‘animosity’ towards ‘our betters’.

But as I am tiring of pointing out, no amount of jaw-boning is going to alter the facts on the ground.

Our economy (or that limp dishrag that passes for our economy) is broken and nobody has done a single thing to repair it…nobody!

So ‘recovery’, such as it is, amounts to a lesser rate of descent. We merely aren’t sinking as fast as we once were.

What do you suppose should happen to the employer who cut 70 out of 150 jobs and sent the work off-shore?

One of my other ‘hobby-horses’ has been the need to redefine what constitutes a ‘crime’.

Under our current goofy calculus, the owner can send the work wherever he pleases. He is seen as ‘owning’ the work.

But isn’t he also a citizen and doesn’t that citizenship carry a responsibility to the society he lives in?

He’s quick enough to demand justice (or the protection of society) when disaster strikes…so how come he feels no obligation to keep the society that protects him healthy and vibrant?

Because, until such feckless acts like the global race to the bottom are criminalized, our ‘global’ economy (and all but it best connected participants) is doomed.

Not the kind of world I want to raise my kids in and I’m sure many of you feel the same way.
This ‘competition’ baloney is all fake. Worse, it is the old canard of ‘I can teach a monkey to do your job’ writ large!

Which is to point out that the ‘quality problems’ that served as an excuse to cover early job exports have resurfaced in the cheaper there, indicating the problem didn’t lie with the craftsman but with management.

Which tells you what, good citizen?

It’s time to hold management accountable.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fact, Fiction and News...

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Americans Seek Jobless Benefits
By REUTERS 55 minutes ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Ten Points

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But once again I belabor the obvious…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Dream On!

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Entitlements are the problem.

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

3. Welfare benefits are a drag on the economy.

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

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

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

5. Prison puts away the bad guys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How many of you DIDN’T know that?

Good, stupid people aren’t welcome here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Cascading Systemic Collapse

Greetings good citizen,

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

But other evidence points in in a more disturbing direction

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like fucking Apple!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And to a degree you’d be correct!

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

But, naturally…I digress.

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

Who gives a fuck?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Dodged Bullets

Greetings good citizen,

It’s almost a week since Verizon promised me a new router and it still hasn’t arrived. Well, after nudging my favorite source of inspiration to come out of seclusion I decided I shouldn’t play the ‘waiting for parts’ card any longer either.

(Although I truly do not like the keyboard on my wife’s computer! My fat fingers are wearing out the backspace key…)

Worse, I suspect my problem is the Ethernet cable and the router is working just fine. So I’m really dogging it.

Um, here in the ‘afterglow’ of the election I can say I am not displeased with being ‘wrong’. I didn’t want to cope with the changes a Romney victory would have held.

That said the, er, (fucking) >One Percent still ‘won’ as their boy Obama is still licking their boots.

And what is the FIRST THING stupid did?

Why he ‘reached out’ to his Republican cohorts…like that has ever worked in the past.

But that is neither here nor there, the next four years he is free to do his masters bidding without fear of reprisal from the voting public.

Which leaves us the question of why did the, er, ‘democrats’ not challenge the incumbent, especially considering how unhappy a majority of the public has been with his, er, ‘performance?’

Oh, he got re-elected all right…because the alternative was too ugly to contemplate!

Which is to point to the exact same thing all of the other political pundits are saying, that the electoral process is broken.

Oh, just for full disclosure, I DID NOT vote for the incumbent…I voted for those who were jailed for protesting their exclusion from the presidential debates!

And I’m no Greenie.

How curious is it that under anarchy there are no ‘candidates’? (You vote directly on the laws!)

It is what Anarchy is all about, ‘rules WITHOUT RULERS!’

But that is not what I want to focus on.
Tonight, after nearly a week of silence, I want to direct your attention to the rail car you’ve been chained to.

Let’s start with the Republicans sudden craving for ‘introspection’…what went wrong and how can we fix it?

Well, I’ll tell you what I think ‘went wrong’.

They somehow sensed that people weren’t buying their horseshit anymore…and if they stole another election that they would risk a violent revolt the likes of which haven’t been seen in over two hundred years!

So they ‘engineered’ the lesser of two evils instead. They got their lapdog re-elected so they can ram their unpopular policies down the public’s throat while the ‘Democrats’ held power…like the NAFTA fuck job, passed by the first Republican controlled congress in nearly a hundred years! With a (so-called) Democrat in the White House.

Well, what happens next is going to make that look like a Sunday Picnic.

Which is to point out that the bullet we thought we dodged is still racing towards out heart. The animals who fired it are still in charge and they can take us out any time they want to.

When it hits it will literally knock the stuffing right out of us…and there won’t be a thing we can do about it.

Short of track down and execute the bastards responsible.

But it’s tough to remember when you’re up to your ass in alligators that your original intent was to drain the swamp…

And that’s right where we’re going to find ourselves…just as we will be able to find them; herding the alligators in our direction.

I admit to being wrong about another stolen election…but I suspect the ONLY reason it didn’t happen is because the perps realized (maybe at the last minute) that it hasn’t been ‘morning in America’ for almost thirty years.

In fact, I suspect the Republicans woke up and suddenly realized that their Reaganite followers are either dead or dying…and their numbers were shrinking instead of swelling.

You’d think the 25,000 or so Tea Partiers (almost all ‘older than dirt’) that showed up at that rally in DC last year showed them where the bear shit.

So the pricks have all of the money…they DON’T have a large enough of a following to convince anyone they are capable of a legitimate political victory.

Sure, they’ve got the Religious Right and other ‘End Timers’ on their side…which is yet another scary reminder of what happens when you try to mix religion with politics…

But it is important that you, the regular citizen, not lose sight of what’s important and that would be removing thee criminals from power BEFORE they loot the planet and throw civilization onto its own cesspool to cover their crime.

Now.

Will YOU hold the incumbent’s feet to the fire and MAKE HIM PROSECUTE the criminals who let Wall Street ruin the pensions of millions of workers while the banks get a free ride on the public’s purse?

Not having that conversation…WHY?

We have to return to the business of caring for our growing population, and we must do it RESPONSIBLY! (WE ALSO HAVE TO DO IT NOW!)

Um, thanks for letting me inside your head,

Glad to be back!

Gegner

Reverse Robin Hood

Greetings good citizen,

Little behind the eight-ball here tonight as my ‘puter inexplicably gave up the ghost this afternoon. I can likely repair it so it’s more annoying than anything else.

As you know, the markets were closed today in deference to the ‘superstorm’, which is still blowing outside.

Which is to say thus far the storm has been a ‘non-event’ locally, just a lot of blowing rain and the lights flickering on occasion. However, my kids had the day off from school and it looks like the NYSE will miss another day of trading:

U.S. Markets to Be Closed on Tuesday
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 7:55 PM ET
The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and BATS Global Markets said in separate statements that they have agreed to close, after consulting with other exchanges and clients.

So far it appears the kiddos will be back to the grind tomorrow.

But wait, it gets worse:

Political Memo
In Middle of a Messy Election, a Nightmare Makes Landfall
By PETER BAKER
Recounts, contested ballots, an Electoral College at odds with the popular vote: now adding to the campaigns' potential horrors, a freakish storm may warp an election two years in the making.

Um, why do you suppose they are pointing to the hated Electoral College BEFORE the elections? Worse, with early voting going on across the nation the contest may be decided already.

Or maybe it was decided long before now…as I have, er, ‘opined’ as early as last year.

Why would the corporate owned media being trying so hard to convince us that we are still, er, ‘deeply divided’ when the truth of the matter is that ‘deep divide’ is more economic than philosophical.

And so far the money is winning.

So we are left with the question of what we are going to do when the team of Romney and Ryan start dismantling what’s left of this nation’s safety net, all the while telling us about the ’urgent need for austerity’ (while they dole out more tax cuts for the super wealthy!)

It is laughable indeed to think nothing will happen when the sock puppets of the superrich continue to loot the nation while they slash programs intended to help the poor.

And I don’t need to remind you that the rich don’t need what they are being given.

The purpose of this ‘reverse Robin Hood’ in not to enrich them as much as it is to make you destitute…and the object of making you the victim of ‘grinding poverty’?

They want you DEAD!

I know most of you can’t bring yourselves to believe this dire prognosis but that doesn’t make it any less true.

And it won’t be until the streets run red that you will finally know their ‘true motive’.

Um, if the power give out I’m going to lose this…and if their power doesn’t give out, we’re all gonna lose!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pig Lips

Greetings good citizen,

If you thought the wheels were ready to come flying off this rickety old broken down economy wouldn’t you step up the spending to prepare for a time when you couldn’t spend even if you wanted to?

Worse, wouldn’t the nincompoops who monitor and misdiagnose the economy all of the time say it was something stupid like the consumer is through deleveraging’…so now we can all take on more debt and everything will be just marvelous…(until we find ourselves overextended again!)

For the first time since the Great Recession hit, American households are taking on more debt than they are shedding, an epochal shift that might augur a more resilient recovery.

Many American households had cut back spending on cars, food and other goods.

For two of the last three quarters, American households’ total outstanding borrowing on things like credit cards, mortgages and auto loans has increased after falling for 14 consecutive quarters before then. Some economists even see an end to the long, hard process of deleveraging — as they refer to the cutting of debt relative to income or the nation’s economic output. That process, they say, has been a central reason for the extraordinary sluggishness of the recovery.

“We’re at an inflection point,” said Kevin Logan, the chief United States economist for HSBC. “Debt is less of a burden” for households, he said.

Closely watched economic figures released Friday underscore households’ nascent sense of strength. Despite tepid growth and still-high unemployment, consumer confidence has soared to a five-year high, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan. And economic growth numbers for the third quarter showed household spending picking up pace as well.

Let’s look at the facts for a moment good citizen, prices are rising and nobody is getting pay increases…add the push to the shove of a family has to live and you’ve got ‘increased debt!’.

Now wait a minute, numbnuts SAYS people are taking on debt to finance things they were doing without…like transportation.

You know ‘wheels under your ass’ is part of the equation that makes up the debt cycle, right?

You get a job so you can have the things you need to live. If you can’t get to the job you don’t get paid and a whole avalanche of bad things happen. So spending money on cars is considered a necessity (despite being charged an ‘excise tax’…which translates directly into a ‘luxury tax’ because the butt-head capitalist thinks you don’t NEED a car to get to work!

You COULD ride a horse!

Now, almost nobody rides horses as ‘basic transportation’ these days yet everybody gets charged excise tax on their automobile as if they did (or could if they wanted to.)

Just another example of the flawed thinking that has led to the mismanagement of our civilization.

You know, the capitalists do get ONE THING RIGHT…it is the assertion of ‘how can we expect you to do the big things right when you can’t manage to do the little things correctly?’

Which is to opine that we have overwhelming evidence of their incompetence…what’s taking so long putting corrective action in place?

And you’d (rightly) ask ‘What corrective action?’ Belaboring the obvious fact that nothing is being done to correct the imbalances throughout our civilization so nothing is ‘getting better’ regardless of what these scatter-brains say!

So what about you, good citizen? Do YOU think the tapped out US consumer is ‘on the mend?’

And would your belief do anything to affect reality?

Short answer, no.

How long would you continue to ‘believe’ while the situation continues to go ‘downhill’? As poverty rises and desperation becomes widespread would you allow yourself to be ‘deluded’ by those paid to lie to you?

As this train wreck progresses we are increasingly going to see pigs wearing so much lipstick you won’t be able to tell what the hell they are.

And THAT will be pointed to as more evidence of the non-existent recovery!

Um, enough is enough and it’s time to put this post to bed.

You deserve a break,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Beneath it all...

Greetings good citizen,

Every few months I feel compelled to restate the mission of this blog, which, due to its subject matter, is widely considered a ‘Doom and Gloom’ site.

How sad is it that it isn’t my purpose to frighten anyone nor am I intent upon twisting your mind toward my way of seeing things. (Although part of my mission involves, er, ‘educating’ you in the finer points of my creation, A Simple Plan.)

That said, some of you might find that education bordering on ‘indoctrination’.

I can be rabid when the feeling moves me and I’m forever racing ‘off the reservation’, a fault I readily admit.

Um, to opine that my posts are, er, ‘unbiased’ would be exactly that, an opinion. We’re all biased and there’s no getting away from that fact.

The editor of the local rag was ‘editorializing’ on the subject of biased fact checkers just last night…and you know why the conservative liar was crying about that subject, don’t you?

Yes indeed good citizen, the closer we get to the election the more it looks as though Ol’ Mitt is gonna pull off an ‘upset victory’ much Like W. winning Florida due to ‘hanging chads’.

And they’ll pin it on ‘waitresses’!

But I digress.

We all know those waitresses are working in dives across the nation, just waiting for a One Percenter (like Mitt) to waltz in and sweep them away from the drudgery of being a working class drone.

Billionaire, Princess, same difference.

And, bizarrely, YOU are expected to BELIEVE that it was that sort of BULLSHIT that swung the election in favor of the man who gave HALF OF US the fucking MIDDLE FINGER less than a month ago!

I don’t know how they expect this to play in Peoria but I’m fairly certain it won’t go down well with the decidedly non-conservative 80% of the NATION!

Especially when we have seen first hand how the bullshit with the banks went down.

But again, I digress.

Let us return to the topic that underlies the foundation of modern civilization, a topic that will ultimately bring an end to life as we have come to know it, peak oil and those whose power derives from fossil fuel.

We seem to hear two versions of the story of limited oil supply:

1. The economists’ view, saying that the issue is a simple problem of supply and demand. Substitution, higher prices, demand destruction, greater efficiency, and increased production of oil at higher prices will save the day. [HA!]

2. A version of Hubbert’s peak oil theory, saying that world oil production will rise and at some point reach a plateau and begin to decline, because of geological depletion. The common belief is that the rate of decline will be determined by geological considerations, and will roughly match the rate at which production increased.

In my view, neither of these views is correct. My view is a third view:

3. An adequate supply of cheap ($20 or $30 barrel) oil is no longer available, because most of the “easy to extract” oil is gone. The cost of extracting oil keeps rising, but the ability of oil-importing economies to pay for this oil does not. There are no good low-cost substitutes for oil, so substitution is very limited and will continue to be very limited. The big oil-importing economies are already finding themselves in poor financial condition, as higher oil prices lead to cutbacks in discretionary spending and layoffs in discretionary industries.

The government is caught up in this, as layoffs lead to more need for stimulus funds and for payments to unemployed workers, at the same time that tax revenue is reduced. There can be a temporary drop in oil prices (as there was in late 2008), as recession worsens, but eventually demand rises again, oil prices rise again, and the pattern of layoffs and increased governments financial problems occurs again. [snip]

What the Economists’ View Misses

The economists’ view misses the fact that it is external energy that makes the economy operate the way it does. (See my earlier posts, here, here and here.) If energy products are higher priced, energy importers can afford less of them, and there is a tendency of their economies to shrink back to what their economies can afford—fewer employed workers and fewer government programs. I talk about the connection between employed workers and energy consumption in The Close Tie Between Energy Consumption, Employment and Recession.

Back to the beginning, where I was explaining the objective of this blog.

I can’t help it if the truth sucks…that said I am also not telling you that ‘all is lost’ (although it might be if we don’t, er, ‘rid’ ourselves of those who were born thinking they are the only ones who deserve to live here. The rest of us are ‘excess baggage’ to be disposed of however and whenever necessary.

Worse, the only thing saving our sorry asses in their indecision about how many of us to keep around!

Although there is a building consensus that they should exterminate us wholesale and then let the few that survive breed the ‘servant class’ back up to full strength.

Pretty gloomy, but it doesn’t have to turn out this way.

There are alternatives to the eminent return of a ‘slave economy’ and the bloodshed this will cause.

We just need to bring everyone associated with this ‘New World Order’ (more commonly known as ‘The One Percent’) to Justice…after we purge the now corrupt beyond belief justice system.

The situation IS salvageable…but you need to have faith.

It all starts with small steps and A Simple Plan points the way!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Web of Lies

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

What is the solution to this thicket of economic forces?

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Money is a tool, not an end in itself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Is it class war now?

Greetings good citizen,

I jumped on the Romney story the minute it broke last night…imagine my surprise to see it is the ‘talk of the town’ this morning…

Naturally, they had that other stuffed shirt (Donald Trump) ‘defending’ him on the Today show this morning.

The part that should make your head explode, good citizen, is that the >One Percent ARE GOING to make this idiot our next president…

Don’t go calling this ‘class war’ good citizen but you know that is just a ‘liberal excuse’ they throw out there whenever they hear something they don’t like.

So tell me, can you say un-be-fucking-lievable?

President Barrack Obama's campaign quickly seized on the video, obtained by the magazine Mother Jones and made public on a day that Romney's campaign conceded it needed a change in campaign strategy to gain momentum in the presidential race.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," Romney is shown saying in a video posted online by the magazine. "There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

"Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax," Romney said. [Because they have NO INCOME asshole!] Romney said his role "is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Romney's campaign did not dispute the authenticity of the video, instead releasing a statement seeking to clarify his remarks. "Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy," spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said. "He is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government."

Right…

How do you suppose they got that way Mitt? How many of them did you personally make ‘redundant’ by off-shoring their former job?

The private remarks are the latest in a string of comments from the multimillionaire Republican businessman whom Democrats have criticized as out of touch. During the primary campaign, Romney insisted that he was "not concerned" about the very poor, said he knew what it felt like to worry about being "pink-slipped," and said that his wife drove a "couple of Cadillacs." Aides to Obama's campaign said the latest video would help them continue to make the case that Romney doesn't understand the concerns of average Americans.

Voters say they believe Obama has a better understanding of their problems and concerns than Romney does. A CBS/New York Times poll showed 60 percent of likely voters said Obama understands the needs and problems of people like them, while 37 percent said he did not. For Romney, the same question found that 46 percent felt he did understand people's needs, 48 percent said he didn't.

Really? Does anyone believe a guy who believes the ‘average’ middle class household income is in the quarter of a million dollar range ‘understands their problems?

Who the fuck did they poll to come up with these numbers? The Ronald Reagan Home for the terminally senile? (more commonly known as the RNC Headquarters...)

Be that as it may, the article goes on in an attempt to ‘clarify’ Romney’s tactless tax remark by camouflaging the issue:

Many of the Americans who owe no income tax are reprieved because basic exemptions — such as the "standard deduction" — took their taxable income below the cutoff levels. The other half rely mainly on a variety of tax breaks, such as the credit that helps offset child care costs.

Because THE TRUTH is a lot uglier…they don’t pay taxes because they don’t make that much money!

Hell, for the past six years I didn’t pay Federal income tax because I earned spit! (But I paid into my SSI and FICA…unlike the One Percenters who stop paying in after they hit roughly a hundred thousand in annual income.

Guys like Willard stopped paying into SSI and Medicare in late January or early February of each year. Hedge fund nitwits stop paying in after their first paycheck…if they pay at all.

But that’s not the disturbing part here good citizen, the disturbing part is they are going to put this asshat in the White House regardless of how you vote.

Look at the ‘defense’ they are putting up on his behalf:

These Americans range from the very poor to solidly middle-class families with jobs, homes, cars and vacations. The Tax Policy Center says "relatively few nontaxable households" have incomes exceeding $100,000; families that make between $50,000 and $100,000 often owe no income tax because of breaks for their kids and for education.

Americans who pay no federal income tax still often pay an array of other taxes. They include payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, sales taxes, property taxes and state and local taxes. A handful of extremely wealthy families do not pay federal income taxes. This summer the Internal Revenue Service reported that six of the 400 highest-earning households in America owed no federal income tax in 2009.

Still, many are low-income Americans. According to the August 2010 AP-GfK poll, a majority of Americans who make less than $30,000 a year are Democrats. But 27 percent identify as Republicans, and 15 percent say they're independents. About 57 percent say they will vote for Obama, while 38 percent back Romney. About 43 percent identify themselves as conservatives.

As you well know, there has been a huge problem this election cycle with, er, ‘untruths’ flooding out of the corporate owned media on the behalf of their supporters, the conservo-loonies.

Worse, it is these same lies that will be used to justify his being named the winner.

You’ll hear, after the fact, numerous claims that the American people educated themselves and ‘chose the best man’.

Not that I’m voting for that (other) conservative doormat either. I’m looking at the alternative candidates and you should be as well.

I think ‘Rocky’ stands a good chance of beating both mainstream candidates and will, if necessary, hold new elections so he can get a Congress he can work with.

Which is to suggest the unlikelihood of his surviving until the inauguration, that’s how psycho the conservo-loonies are!

Yup, just how far are we going to let them push us good citizen?

Well don’t look down because ‘you’re standing in your grave.’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Make Believe

Greetings good citizen,

As a Romney victory becomes more and more unlikely the oligarchs will simply flex their muscles and claim, for the fifth consecutive election cycle, that the mythical ‘swing voter’ carried the day…again.

We continue to careen down the greased skids prepared for us by the >One Percent as the vast majority of the nation continues to agree that we are on the ‘wrong path’…but somehow can’t agree on how to correct the nation's course.

(Because the ones doing the steering also control ‘the message’.)

Although sometimes you have to wonder just what are they trying to tell us…

Anti-American Protests Flare Beyond the Mideast
By RICK GLADSTONE

Anti-American rage that began over a video insult to Islam spread to nearly 20 countries in the Middle East and beyond.

Notice how Arab Spring, once interpreted to mean that the Muslims wanted to be ‘free’ (as in ‘free marketers’ like the> One Percent.) Now reflects the recognition of their hatred for the world’s ‘true terrorists’, that same >One Percent.

Why even acknowledge this political football, they could just as easily ignore it as they do countless other issues.

But no, to acknowledge a thing is to defuse it. Here is the corporate owned media on the job, telling us that ‘yeah they hate us but they’re a nation full of haters, it’s what they do.’

Let’s not get into why that hatred is justified or the likelihood of the whole situation blowing up one of these fine days…

They acknowledge the hatred only to dismiss it…but you knew that.

Sort of similar to this article here:

Poll Finds Obama Is Erasing Romney's Edge on Economy
By JEFF ZELENY and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN

President Obama has taken away Mitt Romney's advantage as the candidate voters say is most likely to restore the economy, according to the latest poll by The New York Times and CBS News.

Graphic: Likely Voters' Views of Obama and Romney

We need only refer back to our opening remarks to see where they’re going with this one. It doesn’t matter that Romney is a card caring member of the >One Percent. It also doesn’t matter to the oligarchs if their boy Obama wins, same end result…(although Obama will provide more of a ‘status quo’ performance, meaning the changes that would have been ushered in under a Romney/Ryan administration would have to be done ‘undercover’.)

In case you live in a cave and didn’t notice, the freaking Dow (which is mostly financial stocks) closed the week up 250 points…for absolutely NO GOOD REASON!

Can you say ‘stop thief?’

I knew you could…let me know how that works out for you…k?

News Analysis
Fed Responds to a Grim Reality
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

In a meaningful departure from past policy, the Federal Reserve said it would focus on reducing unemployment at the risk of provoking higher inflation.

Constant reader knows statements like the one above are enough to launch me into a screaming tirade about the nature and general level of ignorance surrounding money…but I will spare you the lecture…this time.

And parrot what all of the other ‘serious people’ are pointing out…that the fed buying the banking industry’s trash for big money does absolutely zero for the real economy.

The bankers aren’t about to start lending because there’s nobody to lend to. That’s WHY the Fed (and central banks worldwide) continue to buy the banking system’s ‘bad paper’…because otherwise the banking system WOULD COLLAPSE!

Again we see that what you’re being told and what they’re actually doing varies wildly…and that’s okay. It doesn’t matter until it does…and by the time it does it will be too late.

You aren’t going to see job growth because perpetual expansion is impossible…even if you ‘cook the books’ six ways to Sunday!

You know it, I know it and they know YOU know it…yet the lies continue; so they can pretend that somebody believes them!

This won’t stop until we literally make them stop.

But now I belabor the obvious.

This is the power of ‘make believe’. If you can convince the general public that ‘some people’ support your point of view, it doesn’t matter that you can’t produce these people…(like the 33,000 physical member Tea Party movement…that’s an order of magnitude less than >One Percent.)

If that’s what it takes for you to get your way, then that’s what you do…

Are you getting this?

Sorry to keep running you into the limits of your understanding but it has to be done…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Primary(s)

Greetings good citizen,

Almost lost it last night. The people claiming to represent our interests are spineless jellyfish.

Worse, they ‘caved’ to Republican taunts about the platform not including God or Israel (and had the platform re-written…at the president’s direction no less! But we all know who ‘Uncle Tom’ carries water for…)

Again I feel compelled to ask just how much more ‘proof’ do you need that we have a ‘captive’ government that takes its order from an elite few?

But don’t take my taunt to heart because the proper response to such righteous outrage is the same as it has always been: What are YOU gonna do about it?

And the answer, sadly, is the same…everything we can…which amounts to nothing because there is nothing (short of revolt) we can do.

There is the ‘slap in the face’ good citizen. Until YOU take ‘personal action’ NOTHING is going to change.

You’ve got to stop worrying about being on the ‘wrong side of the law’ because the perps can draw that line anywhere they choose to…because they have become the law.

Either way, you’re the outlaw if you stand up for yourself…as illustrated by how the law treats demonstrators these days…and we ‘ain’t seen nothin’ yet!’

So we begin today’s journey with a check of the markets, which spiked (up) over a hundred points around the world…once again coinciding with the opening of the NYSE…(like we should expect anything less.)

Now the media is mute on this bizarre episode of ‘self-enrichment’ that benefits the >One Percent the most…and maybe that’s why they remain silent.

Is the following headline going to be passed off as the cause of the global spike?

Central Bank Sets Bond Plan Meant to Ease Euro Debt Peril
By JACK EWING and MELISSA EDDY 20 minutes ago

The decision means there will be no immediate relief for countries like Spain whose borrowing costs have soared in the two-year-old euro debt crisis.

Read my lips: there is NO (capitalist) solution to the Euro Debt Crisis!

This ‘jawboning’ of the bond market is an exercise in the movement of hot air and will amount to nothing.

Because there is nothing they can do to repair the damage done by the global race to the bottom.

Slash your customer base you slash your own throat...but for reasons unknown they DON'T teach this epic fact to new MBA's!

Nothing that complies with the laws of capitalism anyway.

My solution, A Simple Plan throws out the principals of Capitalism and replaces them with the more realistic rules of supply and demand. [In case you’re wondering there is very little about capitalism (better known as the ‘fuck you, pay me’ system) that has any relationship with supply and demand.]

Supply is FREE so demand is what needs to be ‘regulated’. Which is to admit the fact that we all can’t have everything NOW!

This is an important economic tool (when used properly.)

[This is due to stupid being permanent. Because of this, one need not go too far to find some pinhead who believes we can have everything, immediately, all of the time!]

When framed this way guess how much our modern world (that YOU are constantly be charged for using) cost?

NOTHING! You’re being charged for nothing…actually not nothing, you’re making some greed head rich, that’s why you’re forced to pay!

I digress (mightily) but it is important to for YOU to understand that the chicanery that is tearing our civilization apart is escalating considerably.

Enough said, next headline:

Ford Expands Offerings in Europe
By BILL VLASIC 8:13 AM ET

The Mustang will arrive on the Continent as Ford seeks to bolster its sales in the region.

Otay…gas is what, the rough equivalent of eight dollars a gallon in the euro-zone…so let’s send ‘em a ‘gas guzzler’ and see how that improves our ‘market share’.

Of course, every carmaker on the planet has a SUV/crossover/fucking TANK that gets two miles to the fucking gallon and you have to wonder just what the fuck is wrong with these people?

That and they all want you to take out a mortgage on the fucking thing like you can afford a $30,000 vehicle on what your part time barrista job at Starbucks pays you!

WTF!

[I’m TRYING not to make this a second overlong post…but it’s not looking good.]

E.U. Investigates Chinese Solar Panels
By KEITH BRADSHER 8:34 AM ET

The authorities are looking into whether companies poured $26.5 billion worth of imports into Europe at less than the cost of manufacture.

How the fuck do you suppose those ‘clever’ Chinese managed that? Is this just another example of that now famous phenomenon known under capitalism as a ‘loss leader’?

How much of a ‘loss’ is it if we go back to the initial premise of A Simple Plan and reduce the cost of ‘inputs’ to their ‘true cost’ (even labor is *free under capitalism! [*So long as demand is strong.])

Now we can see the ‘truth’ behind the cheaper there peeking out at us.

While we’re here it could be useful to point out, once and for all, that there is only ONE ‘job creator’ (and it ISN’T the Almighty!)

The ‘one and only’ entity/factor responsible for ‘job creation’ is Mother Nature (and her sidekick physics.)

So the ‘stupid is permanent’ Republicans can go crazy insisting otherwise, we know the truth…and it doesn’t rely on being a ‘superstitious peasant’.

But,(naturally) I digress.

Let’s wrap this baby up so you can move on with your day!

Steel Leads Revival in Ohio River Valley
By KEITH SCHNEIDER

From the vantage point of crew members of the tugboat Mike Weisend, the regional economy is improving as seen in increasing shipments along the Ohio River.

Curious, wouldn’t you say good citizen?

Consider if you will that Shanghi harbor is overflowing this very minute with Australian iron ore?

Who would be ‘reckless’ enough to start up a domestic steel operation with so much surplus already on the market and slack demand plaguing global commerce?

I’m really going out on a limb here but my guess (and believe me, it’s a guess) is somebody is getting a head start on the coming ‘barter economy’.

You have to have ‘trade goods’ and one of the best (most useful) will be raw steel.

I applaud this forward thinking individual for his/her courage and foresight! The ‘risk’ here is that collapse is still a long way off…and it could be as exemplified by the previous story.

What you ‘believe’ shapes your reality, whether it’s fact or not.

Look at the current economy still chugging along, five years after it flat-lined…and the ONLY thing keeping it running is ‘perception management’.

Just one more thing to think about as you lay your aching head down to sleep…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Lying liars (and what it means to you.)

Greetings good citizen,

When you’ve been doing this as long as I have you end up ‘re-visiting’ topics you’ve already addressed (some topics it seems like a bazillion times!)

So it is that we revisit one of my ‘core’ topics, something I have ranted about at length, albeit not recently.

To ‘refresh’ your memory I’ll begin with the primary assertion:

It is impossible to arrive at the ‘correct’ conclusion without accurate information.

One need look no further than the bombed out wreck of our civilization for proof of that postulate.

It seems, when the study of law was ‘new’ and the scholars were endeavoring to ‘get it right’ they recognized the, er, ‘power’ of ‘manufactured consent’ and the danger it presents to civil society.

Yet today, here in the wreckage of the failed ‘rule of law’ experiment we have a reckless disregard for the truth as the One Percent rams their fairy tales down the throats of the terminally stupid:

The Romney campaign recently accused Obama of directing his administration to relax the welfare-to-work provisions of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform bill. That accusation is directly refuted by the facts. What Obama did was to permit waivers for states that could affirm their progress in moving people from welfare to work, and allowing them flexibility to enhance their programs. It’s a modification that Romney himself had requested when he was governor of Massachusetts. Nevertheless, Fox News picked up the accusation and ran with it. In every segment on the subject it portrayed the issue precisely as Romney had framed it despite every factchecking operation concluding that Romney’s charges were entirely false.

Speaking of factchecking, Romney has been rated untruthful 67 times by PolitiFact, and 14 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies (including the welfare lie). In fact, 43% of PolitiFact’s findings on statements by Romney are rated as untruthful. He’s downright pathological, but Fox has not yet reported that fact.

Understand good citizen, a society that is ‘intolerant’ of the truth is on the edge of collapse.

If I were to be worried about anything right now it is about how few are sounding this alarm!

That said, there is the possibility that those warning the rest of us about our being manipulated are also, like my humble self, being ‘surpressed’.

Only those who feed (or ignore) the ‘bullshit machine’ are granted a national forum to share their opinion.

Which does YOU zero good!

So thank your lucky stars that you have found this oasis where you are provided with questions with which to test what you’re being sold.

Although it is much more comfortable to just lie down and let them tell you what to think…then you can be like your co-workers, little Fox News wind-up toys who regurgitate the day’s headlines with malice in their hearts.

And that has to be ‘damaging’ to the individual psyche all by itself.

To be given a (false) target and not being granted a way to ‘relieve’ that torment.

Liberals are tax and spend mental cases but every problem in your life is the direct result of conservative legislative action…

How the fuck do you deal with that?

And as our latest crop of shooters reveals, you don’t!

It is no secret that the mainstream (corporate owned…which translates directly to ‘owned by the >One Percent) is out of control and in complete disregard for the law as well as the general wellbeing of our society.

Which is why I have opined repeatedly that the first target would be rebels should tackle is the ‘dis-information networks’.

Weirdly, once again we circle back to concepts that haven’t been revisited for hundreds of years.

Back when the US was founded, the ‘learned men’ who met to build this nation apparently didn’t completely understand what a ‘free press’ really meant.

Worse, most people don’t understand it today.

How can you have a ‘free press’ under a totally ‘for profit’ enterprise system?

Short answer is you can’t.

Worse, good citizen, free ‘unbiased’ information is essential to a ‘free society’.

As evidenced by the battle for the Senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy.

Elizabeth Warren appears in her commercials questioning Republican heavy handedness regarding female reproductive rights while Scott Brown appears right after her talking up his efforts to restrain the bureau of wildlife management so that ‘hardworking fishermen’ can do their damnedest to drive commercial fishing stocks into extinction.

WTF!

Is HE a moron or does he just think the rest of us are?

And you already know the answer to that one…which is sadly BOTH! (Because morons think everybody is as dumb as they are.)

Well, I ‘try’ not to repeat myself too much but as my audience grows I find it important to keep returning to core topics.

Our future depends on you being on board with ‘the whole program’.

Looks like a big promise but believe me, there’s a lot at stake!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

We're Saved! ('scroomed' is more like it)

Greetings good citizen,

In a ‘too good to pass up’ headline, I jumped on an article titled ‘Romney ‘vows’ to deliver country from economic travails.’

He, like all conservo-whackos, has been lying his ass off from the get go. So imagine my surprise when I clicked through (wasting one of my ten shots) to find not A SINGLE PROPOSAL, CONCRETE OR OTHERWISE to support this stupendous claim.

He’s gonna ‘save’ us but it will be via fucking magic!

But you too can check for yourself and see if I missed or omitted anything.

You’ll notice that I didn’t ‘excerpt’ any of the long-winded article that lavishes praise upon an unworthy presidential wannabe.

Which only serves as proof where the corporate owned media is coming from.

More, er, ‘curious’ is the fact that Clint Eastwood, er, ‘performed’ at the RNC doing an ‘empty chair act’ where he took the (unchallenged) incumbent to task for all of his unfulfilled campaign promises…(including the ones he didn’t make in typical conservo-whacko style.)

The conservo-whackos would really like to blame the economy on Obama but we all know it was his predecessor’s fault.

And the party of his predecessor stonewalled every attempt to rein in Wall Street…so that’s why we should all go out and vote for Bain Capital this November.

American employers NEED to be ‘freed’ from oppressive government regulation and the ceaseless demands US workers.

What part of ‘If you can’t live on what I pay you, it’s not my problem’ don’t they get?

But increasingly we are seeing that the ‘problems’ employers choose to ignore (underpaid employees) have a way of becoming the government’s headache.

All because of the fake ‘competitiveness meme’.

One of these days the ‘high priests of freemarkets’ are gonna swing for their false teachings!

It ain’t about ‘competition’. It’s the same as it’s always been; it’s about ‘market share’ and ‘locking the doors’.

What few people remember (because our schools don’t go there) is that back in the ‘bad old days’ you couldn’t buy or sell (anything) without the King’s express permission.

This is a situation the well connected turned to their advantage at once!

You didn’t have to compete, you didn’t even have to worry about things like product quality if you could control who was granted ‘the king’s permission’.

Now a days things have changed…a little. The thieves on Wall Street can force you to sell your company to your ‘competitor’ through their control of YOUR share price!

Works very much like the ancient ‘permission of the king’ bullshit did.

Which also lies behind the ‘return of monarchy meme’ I often float on these posts.

If you know what you’re looking at you can almost see our modern ‘Royals’ peeking out from behind their ‘freemarket’ thrones. They are just busting for the day when we will all be forced to kneel before their greatness.

I’d die first…(and pinhead will be more than happy to accommodate me or anyone else who feels likewise.)

[Although I am not above kneeling if it helps to steady my aim…I’d rather kneel than miss!]

You can see an ‘infamous quote’ in the making right there…‘If I kneel, it will be to steady my gun/aim!’

It is far better to die on your feet than to live on your knees, good citizen.

And that old saying comes directly from what’s headed in our direction in the not too distant future.

I’d even opine that the royals are already in their places, having used capitalism’s predatory nature to carve out new ‘empires’ for themselves.

What they have yet to do is re-establish their thrones (and in the process, command the respect their position demands.)

Somehow their crimes against humanity are viewed as ‘great accomplishments’ among their peers…

The thing you need to keep in mind is YOU are NOT among their ‘peers’.

That noted, having voluntarily exempted themselves from penalties of civil society, they will NOT be afforded any of the benefits when they are brought to justice.

How unfortunate is it that they are putting all of their hopes in a criminal justice system that they control…but won’t when the executioner comes for them?

Simply put good citizen, you can’t take the ‘good’ parts of civilization and ignore the bits that interfere with your running roughshod over your brothers and sister.

When you do that, society and civilization itself dies.

If we are not ‘good citizens’ then we are bad ones.

They’ve already made their choice, how about you?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Extravaganza!

Greetings good citizen,

Ready for the annual ‘extravaganza’? It’s my Birthday…(and my twin’s; can’t forget her!)

If some of you are confused it’s okay, Gegner is male and has a female twin…not all that uncommon as there are three sets of male/female twins in my extended family alone.

What really screws people up is that I’m married to an identical twin (and no, since we BOTH have twin sisters, our twins are NOT married to each other…although it would be possible here in Massachusetts.

Speaking of ‘double trouble’, markets around the globe are swimming in red ink, likely because the latest spike in energy prices has caused the ‘tenuous at best’ recovery to be extinguished (again.)

Did I mention ‘gross mismanagement’?

Of course, that assumes that none of this is ‘intentional’…and I posit that it is, in fact, intentional!

Although I am fond of pointing out that our affairs are being (intentionally) ‘mismanaged’ by our self-professed betters!

Sorry about the full circle there but sometimes that’s what it takes to fully appreciate the spectacle as it unfolds.

This whole C-F is all about ‘perception management’ as demonstrated by the insane disconnect on display during the Republican National Convention.

How these criminals can face the nation and soberly intone that they are the only ones who can save us from their own disastrous policies is hypocrisy in its most odious form!

They truly exemplify what it means to be a psychopath (as well as being sociopaths!)

And no, the two terms are not mutually exclusive, it is possible to be both!

But the ‘mental state’ of what passes for our leadership is a topic for another post. Right now we have bigger problems (albeit brought on by the ‘diminished capacity’ of those who are our leaders as well as those who want to assume the role.

How fucking disturbing is it to you good citizen that the man responsible for our current plight and his ideological successor are BOTH card carrying members of the >One Percent?

What does that say to you about the current state of electoral politics in this nation?

How can a member of that class even HOPE to stand a chance of being elected and if he is, how does he expect to NOT have his legitimacy questioned?

To give you an understanding of just how much this stinks, over the past forty years we have had five Republican presidents and during that same period the number of people who ‘self-identify’ as Republican number at less than twenty percent.

How does a political party that only one fifth of the voters subscribe to puts their candidate in office five times out of seven?

Sure looks like broken ballot box to me.

Especially when the party in question represents the nation’s ‘rich minority’.

We WON’T accept that outcome.

Which is why they have their boy Obama waiting in the wings. His re-election is probably the only thing standing between a deeply troubled populace and a new civil war.

Although the ‘mouse’ we call the conservo-loonies has pledged armed insurrection if the incumbent receives another term.

And you know that is just ‘lip service’, the conservo-loonies love the man for saving them (temporarily) from the hangman’s noose.

(Um, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s my birthday and I am invoking my right to ‘rant’!)

Before we get too far afield, let me just quickly review these headlines:

Prosecutors Link Money From China to Iran
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

Prosecutors say they found evidence that banks may have been flouting United States sanctions against Iran.

Um, we have ‘prosecutors’ who go after sovereign nations who don’t ‘obey’ the imperial edicts of the mighty US empire?

Can you give me a WTF!

Consumer Spending Rose in July
By REUTERS 9:25 AM ET

The increase was the biggest in five months, offering hope that economic growth could pick up this quarter.

How come they never acknowledge the loud sucking sound of your pockets being sucked dry at the fuel pumps? Since when is this ‘magic?

Under the ‘no shit Sherlock’ category:
Wall Street Turns Lower 9:55 AM ET

And the beat goes on:

DealBook
Carlyle to Acquire DuPont Performance Coatings for $4.9 Billion
By EVELYN M. RUSLI 6 minutes ago

The Carlyle Group has agreed to buy DuPont Performance Coatings for $4.9 billion in cash, as the private equity firm continues a deal-making binge.

Just another bite in the relentless pursuit of market share!

Remember, competition is ‘good’ for the Consumer…until there isn’t any, then you’ll pay whatever they demand…or you’ll do without…and the fuckers who stole your government from you will thumb their noses at you.

And lock you up for rioting if you protest.

Um, I’m off to ‘enjoy’ the rest of my day, Hope you have a good one too!

Gegner

Lovely Ladies

Greetings good citizen,

Today we tackle the idea that this coming election will be decided by the nation’s female population…as they do, indeed, out number the males AND they’re more likely to vote!

Unhelpful is the fact that a large portion of the ‘conservative base’ is both female and elderly.

However, the largest segment of the female population in the US is militant and liberal.

The GOP’s corporate owned media has the task of convincing us that ‘enough’ men combined with the elderly women of the conservative movement will be sufficient to swing the election in the GOP’s favor.

Despite having a party platform drafted exclusively by men from the Religious Right.

The official 2012 Republican Party platform is a far-right fever dream, a compilation of pouting, posturing and policies to meet just about every demand from the overlapping Religious Right, Tea Party, corporate, and neo-conservative wings of the GOP. If moderates have any influence in today’s Republican Party, you wouldn’t know it by reading the platform. Efforts by a few delegates to insert language favoring civil unions, comprehensive sex education and voting rights for the District of Columbia, for example, were all shot down. Making the rounds of right-wing pre-convention events on Sunday, Rep. Michele Bachmann gushed about the platform’s right-wing tilt, telling fired-up Tea Partiers that “the Tea Party has been all over that platform.”

Given the Republican Party’s hard lurch to the right, which intensified after the election of Barack Obama, the “most conservative ever” platform is not terribly surprising. But it didn’t just happen on its own. Here are some of the people we can thank on the domestic policy.

As you can imagine, the article goes on to name names and provide the pedigree of each ‘contributor’…which can only make us wonder who will be drawing up the planks of the, er, ‘progressive’ party platform?

What will Libertarian Lou include to attract the ladies to the progressive banner besides NOT being republican?

Because the way things are going, not being Republican has a lot going for it already!

Twitchier still is how Republicans are predicting armed insurrection if THEIR BOY Obama is re-elected…

While those of us who will be voting for WHOEVER ELSE IS ON THE TICKET that ISN’T a ‘conservo-whacko’ (a category that includes the unchallenged incumbent) are predicting the same thing if their boy Mitt gets the ‘win’.

It's the classic 'Heads I won, Tails you lose' situation...(and we're all getting more than a little tired of it!)

I think I speak for the majority, the 99% if you will, regarding the consequences of a conservative victory this November.

The global economy was DESTROYED by ‘conservative policies’, further conservative, er, ‘rule’ will destroy our society and see a return of slavery to this world!

You’re already some ‘employer’s bitch’…how would you like to see that asshole handed a bill of sale with YOUR name on it?

What, you’d be thrilled?

Naturally, you’re thinking of the ‘upside’…if he ‘owns you’ he has to take care of you.

Take a fucking minute to consider the fucking downside of that.

Once your ‘upkeep’ exceeds your extractive value your more likely to be sold as ‘dog food’ (or perhaps the gross equivalent of ‘soylent green’, the fucking capitalist doesn’t care!) than to be allowed to muddle along in a ‘diminished capacity’.

Say watering the lawn or weeding the flower beds. It is far more likely you will end up ‘feeding the flowers’, literally!

That is what ‘hangs in the balance’ in the upcoming election, the one where all choices SUCK!

Of course, since I have ‘no control’ over the situation, I’m probably ‘exaggerating’ the situation a teensy bit.

But I’m willing to bet that more than a few of you find my ‘point of view’ at least within the realm of belief.

Because of ‘gradualism’.

You remember what ‘gradualism’ is, don’t you?

It’s that series of small, nasty steps the large institutions use to get you to accept the unacceptable.

Once upon a time the, er, ‘government’ used to sacrifice YOUR CHILDREN to ‘appease’ the ‘gods’!

Naturally that was BEFORE the separation of Church and State…now consider if you will just WHO wants to see them ‘reunited’…

Here we are, throwing a lot of shadows on the walls because the truth is only the ‘old’ vote. Kids don’t have (or don’t bother to ‘make) the time’.

And, ironically, there are now more ‘old people’ than ever before (the first wave of the Baby Boom has already retired!)

So how do YOU think ‘cutting entitlement programs’ is going to go?

Which is to ask, just how much faith do YOU have in the ballot box?

The ballot box did absolutely ZERO when it came to protecting your job OR your pension fund!

And we really can’t level the electric gattling gun at either political party…but there is a target right behind those ‘meat puppets’…the > One Percent.

Guess who is ‘responsible’ for off-shoring YOUR job and POCKETING your pension savings?

I know, don’t remind you…but hey, this is all going to be laid at ‘the girls’ feet, isn’t it?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The need to redefine the term 'criminal'

Greetings good citizen,

I love it when my ideas ‘reverberate’ through our culture! Sadly, while Mr. Sirota expanded on a theme of mine, he’s a little ‘off the mark’ as far as his interpretation of the message goes:

It’s always dangerous to state you were first when it comes to perceptions but I was definitely ahead of the esteemed Mr. S in the category of perception management :

One spot for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (read: the casinos) shows a woman climbing onto her desk to demand a vacation. Another for McDonald’s implores us to fight back against employers and “overthrow the working lunch.” Still another for a Coca-Cola subsidiary seizes on the stress of harsh working conditions to create buzz for a branded “Take the Year Off” contest.

“Marketers are adopting the theme of workers’ rights at a time when unions themselves are confronting declines in membership and influence,” notes the Times. “In effect, some labor experts say, they are turning a pro-worker theme on its head to serve the corporate interest.”

In one sense, this is good news for organized labor — at a moment when unions are under assault, the ads reflect polls showing persistent mass support for both the concept of worker solidarity and the economic outrage voiced by worker protests. Indeed, companies wouldn’t be echoing such themes if they didn’t know they were wildly popular.

Looks to me like Smack Water Jack done dropped his shotgun!

Besides, you KNOW what’s gonna happen if you ‘demand’ anything from our corporate overlords…you’ll be singing that old familiar tune, ‘Hope I like my next job better’. While trying to out distance your newfound reputation for being ‘a difficult employee’.

But if this feeling of persecution is enough to ‘motivate’ you into taking a much-deserved vacation (and you ARE ‘the man’) just go ahead and do it!

Because that’s who these commercials are really ‘targeted’ at. Not the poor cubicle dwellers but the guy that put them there, they’re trying to get HIM to take some time off! (‘The most valuable man in the office’ really believes the company won’t run without him so he doesn’t take vacations…despite being the only one who can afford to!)


You can find this next offering under my rants about redefining the term criminal :

“We had people who were locking down to concrete barrels and other devices to prevent them from evicting the house and we were mobilizing people to come and defend the house,” Espinosa said. Over the course of the five eviction attempts there were 26 arrests. The last time Espinosa was arrested along with 14 others and charged with rioting in the third degree, defined as “Violence or the threat of violence to people or property when more than three are gathered.”

They face up to two years in prison. Espinosa noted, “There are 15 people now facing riot charges who were arrested doing nonviolent civil disobedience, basically sitting down and linking arms on the front steps of a house.”

“The chief of police was there the night I was arrested. Four other officers stepped over us as we were sitting in front of the door,” he continued. “He stepped directly on top of us, on our shoulders and necks, to come into the house.” The previous day police had grabbed protesters by the neck to move them out of the way, and women activists complained of feeling sexually assaulted, having been groped by the police. “Somebody's hand went up one of my friends' shirts,” Espinosa said. One of the Cruzes' neighbors was arrested while standing on the sidewalk outside her house holding up a sign in support of Occupy Homes.

What’s the first thing to strike your eye here good citizen? Was it the fact that you’d never have heard of this incident if you didn’t live in that particular neighborhood or if not for this Alternet article?

The corporate owned media doesn’t grant a forum for ‘lawbreakers’ (not of the >One Percent variety.)

Which only punctuates our need to redefine the term ‘criminal’. We’re locking up the wrong people while the real felons walk free!

Which leads us directly to our third piece, yet another theme I harp on all of the time, the one regarding the ‘purpose of government’

Teaching the middle class to hate their government was an essential part of the plan to implement Corporate Feudalism. A middle class cannot exist without a strong government. This is because only a government has the power to stand up to the giant corporations of today’s world, or the powerful individuals and private armies of earlier times. It is the government that enforces the laws to protect the middle class from those who would like to become their economic rulers. That is why prior to the Industrial Revolution and the creation of the middle class all economies were run according to some version of the feudal system. If you want to put an end to the middle class and replace it with a feudal republic, you would need to change people’s perception of their government.

Obviously a government does not have to be on the side of its people, as can be seen by the existence of countless dictatorships and oligarchies throughout the world. Even the corporatocracy that currently exists in the United States falls far short of being on the side of its middle class. But US history shows that a government committed to serving its citizens can, in fact, help create and maintain a healthy middle class even in the face of powerful corporations whose only interest is maximizing their own power and profits.

It is like the story in old westerns of a big bad landowner who takes what he wants when he wants it, ruthlessly terrorizing a town without a strong sheriff. Any individual who tries to stop the landowner is beaten into submission or killed. The situation continues until the town finds a strong enough sheriff to regain control over the landowner and his gang. This is the Old West version of the feudal system. In westerns, the feudal lord comes first and the sheriff comes later. But in the United States of thirty years ago, the government was the strong sheriff keeping the late-twentieth-century feudal lords from taking what they wanted. As long as the government was supported by its citizens—particularly its middle class—no one could ride into town and steal what belonged to the people. But if the government were weakened or destroyed, a different situation would arise. The intent of the plan for Corporate Feudalism was to convince the middle class to fire their sheriff. And that’s just what happened.

Again, this article is just a touch ‘off the mark’. The ‘plan’ is not to get the ‘middle class’ to ‘fire the sheriff, they can’t!

The plan was to get the middle class to believe it’s a ‘good idea’ to fire the bum who keeps letting the criminals ‘get away’…when it wasn’t really his fault, the ‘judge’ kept turning ‘em loose!

Ever wonder why you can’t do nothin’ to a judge?

Well, now you know!

Like I said months ago, the ‘plan’ is for a coup against the ‘perceived ineffective’ government.

And we all know what’s going to follow once the “Law & Order” types seize control.

Truth(iness) and Goodness, sprinkled ‘liberally’ with some good old fashioned ‘fire and brimstone’ in support of ‘righteous retribution’ (against those who couldn’t pay!)

Which is to say ‘Hell on Earth’…
It will be better known as the ‘war on the poor’.

How fortunate is it that the poor also comprise the largest segment (in the >One Percent’s mind) of the ‘surplus population’?

The only good news is the ‘war machine’ doesn’t/won’t have the necessary energy to roll around the world like it did the last time…unless the stupid bastards do ‘the unthinkable’.

Switching gears here, they’ve already done it once, purposefully bankrupting the global financial markets, so why stop now?

We truly are in a struggle for our species future…who will you side with?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner