Degradation

Greetings good citizen,

Seems the so-called ‘alternative press’ isn’t completely dominated by clueless libertarians. Some of the so-called ‘progressives’ do indeed cling to traditional liberal values.

(and Anarchists are nothing if not liberals!)

So it is that I present to you this argument as further evidence of the destruction of our society.

Laws that restrict panhandling are designed to target poor people living on the street. Other examples of laws that apply almost exclusively to the unhoused include bans on sitting or lying down on the sidewalk, eating in public, setting up camp or sleeping in a park or other public places. Advocates say these laws are used as a tool to drive the homeless out of sight.

Take the case of Gary Williams. Williams just spent 30 days in jail, because on two occasions a San Francisco police officer found him slumped over, asleep, on a milk crate. He did not have any camping gear with him -- not even a blanket -- yet he found himself charged with public nuisance, unauthorized lodging, and obstructing the sidewalk, his lawyer, Andrea Lindsay, tells AlterNet. The first two are misdemeanors, which carry up to a year of jail time each. On Monday, Williams pled guilty to one count of unauthorized lodging after the judge warned him that he could end up in jail for two years. The plea deal Williams opted for means he's banned from the two blocks where he used to reside and will be on probation for three years.

"This is a dude who ended up in jail for the heinous crime of sitting," Paul Boden, organizing director for the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) tells AlterNet. "When poor people stand for their rights, they sit in jail."

Your typical conservative believes the homeless and destitute are ‘well provided for’ and the people you see in the street ‘choose to be there’.

You see, good citizen, it is ‘inconceivable’ to the conservative mind that capitalism can fail anyone.

If you fail at capitalism (so conservative wisdom goes) it’s YOUR FAULT!

This, as most of us know, is a boldfaced lie.

Truth be told the first few times capitalism was tried it failed miserably…to the point where ‘the survivors’ had to be rescued from those who, er, ‘played the game by their own rules’.

Which is to point out (once again) that capitalism isn’t designed to meet the needs of our whole society, it only ‘takes care of’ those who control society…

And the short definition of cheating others to help yourself is a word those who indulge in this practice dislike passionately.

Do you know what word it is?

Sort of synonymous with the term ‘hang ‘em high’ is the word ‘treason’.

So what do we do with the ‘just doing my job’ crowd (in this case the cops)?

Cops don’t make the laws though, do they? (Well they do on the streets but that’s not the topic at hand…) it’s the politicians who can’t manage resources (the capitalists) keep cutting from them.

Yes, good citizen, campaign contributions do have a ‘cost’ and most times that cost is lower taxes (for the business community.)

After ‘giving away the store’ to the wealthy few, those who rely (somewhat) on public opinion for their jobs begin to fret that if one of ‘those people’ makes trouble, the incumbent will be viewed as ‘weak on crime’.

So we end up with the BS described in this article.

The difference is Mr. Politician can always find ready funding for more policing, he can’t get more than his share of ‘alms for the poor’.

As we all know, life under the ‘corporate agenda’ is far less safe (for everyone involved) than when life was ‘more equitably’ managed. (You may now shed a silent tear for FDR.)

Worse, good citizen, at the end of the crazy train, who do we find?

Why by gosh, by gum, it’s the shareowner!

All of this (madness) is occurring to, er, ‘produce’ (boost/maximize) ‘profits’ for the poor, hapless shareowner…

Which is to once again ask that rhetorical question, isn’t it time we take capitalism (along with those who control it) and throw it on the scrap heap?

In fact we are long overdue for a major overhaul of our ‘proven defective’ economic system.

I’d even accept the task of changing it over, knowing full well that I won’t get anything for my trouble except a far more equitable and humane society.

Even I, the new system’s creator, would be unable to ‘cheat’ the system. (Under the new system even the creator would not be ‘above the law’.)

But I digress…

It should be interesting to follow the rest of this series (not that I intend to devote my future posts to them) to examine the ‘decay’ in the leadership of our society.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Rare Form

Greetings good citizen,

Oil has edged up to $97 a barrel (which is only 36 gallons when they’re measuring oil) and the Dow is in the black at the moment at 13,916 again, for no discernable reason.

Well, Pfizer did ‘beat expectations’ but Pfizer isn’t a component of the Dow…Under the category of Wall Street’s useful purpose, maybe the optimism is derived from the markets being used to ‘focus’ our politicians on the goals of the One Percent.

And it seems the One Percent needs some new legislation to protect profits from those pesky ‘generics’…(the devil with the consumer! It’s his inability to pay that’s causing this whole mess, (says the One Percent…)

So if any of you are wondering what our (bought and paid for) ‘legislators’ will be working on next…chances are it will be this:

Biotech Firms, Billions at Risk, Lobby States to Limit Generics
By ANDREW POLLACK

The industry’s lobbying effort could blunt new competition to its products and reduce the savings anticipated in the federal health care overhaul.

You can understand the ‘no vaseline’ but did they really need to throw the ground glass in there too?

If we take the point of view that the price of ‘LIFE SAVING MEDICATION’ doesn’t matter ‘cuz the ‘precious few’ plan on exterminating us anyway then stories like this aren’t worth getting angry over.

Since ‘United we aren’t’ we’re all alone in our death march. Nobody’s going to help us because they are all in the murderer’s pay.

How’s that for ‘dim’?

Worse, I can sit here and plead that we’ve got to get our act together but it falls on deaf ears.

Nobody’s going to stick their neck out until this thing reaches critical mass, then it will be too late (to guide it.)

Although you want to talk about ‘tap dancing on a land mine’, the bad boy is gonna blow any day now.

All it’s going to take is one more good push. And nobody knows what direction that push is going to come from.

Which should serve to tell us that things are pretty far-gone when a single headline about the manipulation of our legal system is enough to launch a tirade on the (largely unacknowledged) 'war between the classes!'

But that’s not all that’s going on good citizen…

11:24 AM ET NYTimes
When Good Drivers Pay More for Insurance than Bad Ones

11:22 AM ET Reuters
Goodbye Goodwill as European Firms Pay High Price for M&A

11:16 AM ET NYTimes
Report Gauges Companies' Approach to Advertising on Social Media

11:10 AM ET NYTimes
New Home Office Deduction Is Simpler, but Smaller

10:51 AM ET IHT
French Central Bank Workers Strike Over Job Cut Plans

10:38 AM ET AP
CNN Executive Mark Whitaker Quitting

10:34 AM ET Reuters
Financial Fears Hit Consumer Confidence in January

10:25 AM ET IHT
Appeals Court Suspends Peugeot's Job-Cut Plan

Maybe it just us old people but every time we look at the media we see more jobs going away. Obviously to make us ‘more competitive’ but that hole appears to be ‘bottomless’.

Which is to opine that when we finally achieve ‘parity’ we will simultaneously achieve pauperdom!

But that’s our ‘lot in life’ (according to ‘the One Percent’) and who are we to complain.

We should be GRATEFUL we aren’t euthanized when we are born! (Fear not, legislation along this line is being drafted by Alex as you read this. So much for the conservative devotion to the ‘sanctity of life’, eh?)

Of course, if you talk to one, practically the first words out of their mouths is what a waste of perfectly good butt-wipe the rest of the human race is.

Yet these psycho’s are ‘anti-abortion’, what’s up with that? (Because once you’re born these same freaks are pro eugenics!)

Needless to say good citizen it’s been a rough 48 hours, thus am I in ‘rare form’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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

Occupy Who?

Greetings good citizen,

Monday again and the ‘nonsense markets’ are up to their usual shenanigans, mostly reflecting the ‘will’ of the One Percent.

But that isn’t the headline that caught my eye. In fact it was the opposite question that popped into my head when I saw this story in today’s AlterNet newsletter

Is the Tea Party Over?
The answer all depends on what you mean by "Tea Party."
January 12, 2013 |

Photo Credit: A.M. Stan

There's a new parlor game in your nation's capital, played by reporters and pundits who begin with a single question: Is the Tea Party dead? Endlessly entertaining to ponder, it's a question whose answer depends on your definition of the Tea Party movement.

Are you talking about the 900 grassroots Tea Party groups in 2010 whose numbers have now dwindled to 600? Or the popularity of the movement among most Americans?

Or do you measure the "Tea Party" as a marketing plan by the right wing in its 50-year quest to bend the Republican Party to its will and bring the nation to its knees?

The opening question, as C.K. Michaelson is fond of phrasing it, is ‘asked and answered’.

The Tea Party has been around for years and isn’t going anywhere. Conspicuous by its absence (and thus the title of today’s offering) is ‘Occupy Who?’

What happened to that ‘loose confederation’ of ‘concerned students’ who peered into the future and saw stuff that would have made even Orwell balk?

Did they scare themselves into submission or did those magical acronyms do the trick?

(I’ll never get a job teaching with a FBI record hanging over my head!)

Thus did the ever so tenuous ‘movement’ to protest the rule of the oligarchs ‘vanish’ in pretty much the same way it coalesced.

Which is not to say the OWS ‘participants’ have, er, ‘abandoned’ the cause, they haven’t.

What they were looking for then and what they are looking for still are ‘answers’.

The trouble with being young and knowing all the answers (as they were spoon fed to you) is you begin to realize how little you actually ‘know’ with any degree of certainty.

Everything you have been taught has six inches of ‘whitewash’ covering it, whether it needed it or not! It’s done for ‘consistency’…so it all ‘blends’.

As I age I am seeing this ‘goo’ being applied to days of my youth and the national tragedy that was Vietnam.

The misguided vendetta against already wobbly ‘communism’ was really just a ‘trial run’ for the GWOT!

If we get kids young enough, will they ‘kill on command’?

And the answer turned out to be yes.

Well, good citizen, what do you suppose ‘the answer’ to that one is?

You’re correct again, I don’t ‘know’ either BUT I’m pretty sure throwing EVERYBODY in the INTELLIGENCE community in the big house would provide a clear starting point to correct 50 years of military ‘adventurism’.

I know I am not alone in ‘theorizing’ that something went radically wrong after WWII and the introduction of the ‘nuclear age’.

Just how far would/did ‘our betters’ go towards insuring that nuclear technology didn’t fall into the hands of ‘the rabble’? [Iran anyone?]

Aren’t those the ‘battle lines’ we are seeing today? Did the ever-paranoid capitalists see their doom written in a mushroom cloud wielded by those they have oppressed?

Worse, the ‘hate’ doesn’t stop there. There are those among us who ‘believe’ the human race isn’t worthy of the (totally fictional) ‘kingdom of heaven’, and would see us all ‘eradicated’ so that nasty Jesus wouldn’t be able to ‘save’ us (allegedly) again.

Which is to opine that there are some mighty unbalanced individuals out there. (Start with ANYONE who claims to speak for ‘spirit in the sky’…then proceed to the entire crowd born with the proverbial ‘silver spoon’ stuck in just about any orifice!)

But I digress, somewhat anyway.

Where is OWS and more importantly, where are its ‘children’?

The Tea Partiers have been with us for long time under different guises, soon they will abandon their tri-corner hats and start pretending it wasn’t them at all! (In typical conservo-looney fashion!)

I, perhaps unkindly, predicted the demise of OWS when it became obvious they were as ‘rudderless’ as the alleged 99% appear to be.

They ‘identified’ the enemy easily enough…and then they sat there and did nothing. And when the cops came they fled.

Somehow I don’t think that will be the case next time but I’m just ‘thinking out loud’ here.

When the ‘second leg’ of the downturn hits and the people take to the streets, chances are good the One Percent will be A.) long gone and B.) quick to ‘appease’ the protesters with mock trials for low level offenders…

But seriously good citizen, justice, five years delayed, will not repair the economy or our badly broken society.

While the Libertarian leaning ‘progressives’ speculate on the fate of the Tea Party, the rest of us can continue forgetting the movement that wasn’t…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Uncertainty...

Greetings good citizen,

As we slog forward into an uncertain future those who would drive our civilization over a cliff to mask their crimes against humanity care not what happens after that.

My advice, as always, is to prepare. (And NOT like the idiots on ‘doomsday preppers’ who obviously have a screw loose…besides being decidedly homicidal! If you need further convincing that the world after the collapse is going to be uncommonly hazardous, watch the show!) Hint: it’s the trigger happy preppers you have to watch out for! Stumble upon their ‘hide’ and they will open fire first and ask questions afterwards!

In a flicker of insight on an otherwise direction-less horizon we have this article that belabors the obvious in a couple of directions…

Our Economic Pickle
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The debt-ceiling debate is unlikely to alter one major factor contributing to income inequality: stagnant wages.

Now that it is ‘on the table’, who (and how) will the issue of ‘stagnant wages’ be addressed?

‘Employers’ have no problems raising their prices in pace with inflation (driving inflation ever upwards) but are ‘strangely reluctant’ to raise their ‘employee/customers’ purchasing power.

The ‘strategy’ could be called ‘out-waiting the competition’, the longer they wait to raise their employees pay, the more they keep for themselves.

Ultimately, your NOT being paid a living wage is being driven by the ‘owners desire’ to wax rich (at, ultimately, ALL of our expense.)

It’s lower prices we don’t pay and fair wages you don’t get, because the idiots who sign your paycheck follow their mother’s advice and PAY THEMSELVES FIRST!

Funny how this advice isn’t so sound when you put it into this context, is it? It creates a ‘penny-wise and pound-foolish’ situation that is crumbling all around us as we sit here contemplating how we got ourselves into such a, as the article calls it, ‘Pickle’?

We will see in the article after this next one who WON’T be working to save us from employer greed

But the other article first:

News Analysis
The Low Politics of Low Growth
By ANNIE LOWREY

What if it is the weak economy that is driving the fiscal failures in Washington?

How odd is it that the question answers itself? (But this can be attributed to the ‘muzzle’ the ‘write for hire’ crowd is forced to wear.)

I find it astounding that our, and let’s face it, none of them has a grip on reality, ‘politicians’ continue to flog the concept of ‘perpetual growth’ as the key to future prosperity.

How can you ‘grow’ when there has been NOTHING ‘new’ since Pong? Every other technological marvel is merely the ‘fleshing out’ of potential that was already there.

So ‘exporting jobs’ (to make it more profitable for the ‘owner’) also doesn’t encourage (local) economic growth. It really only serves to make the owner richer than he/she deserves to be.

But are our politicians focused on their ‘primary job’ of managing our civilization for the benefit of our species?

Let’s have a look:

TOP NEWS
Obama Will Seek Citizenship Path in One Fast Push
By JULIA PRESTON

President Obama and lawmakers from the two parties believe that their best chances for passing substantial legislation on immigration will come early in his second term.

Like healthcare, NOBODY is looking for a ‘solution’ to an already over-populated, far too competitive job market!

It’s been opined that this (European satellite) was built by ‘immigrants’. (It was even somewhat true when most of the immigrants hailed from Europe…)

Not that providing EMPLOYERS with a ‘cheaper labor pool’ to exploit is ever a justification to ‘streamline’ the immigration process, especially when you get a load of how they intend to go about it.

You’ll get your ‘citizenship’ all right but first you’ll have to do your military service. You will be sent to foreign lands, meet new, interesting people and kill them.

What used to be scabs to keep the factories humming (cheaply) will become fodder for the endless wars the capitalists wage, merely to keep the population (and by extension, the unemployment rate down.)

There won’t be any ‘resource wars’. Resources are all sold openly on the (alleged) ‘free markets’ so what’s to ‘fight’ over?

Even the current conflict in the Middle East is over a police problem that should have been handled ‘internally’ by local law enforcement.

BUT NO! Our (block-headed) government had to use military force instead of foreign aid and providing foreign governments the tools to handle the problems itself.

Worse, our (rogue) government supports criminal regimes like the Israelis who openly subjugate the former inhabitants of the nation they now ‘occupy’ and use military force to maintain the upper hand, in open defiance of international law…not that ‘respect for the law’ is real strong here either.

But that’s another issue altogether as the ‘over fifty crowd' prepares to fight for its survival!

BUSINESS
Over 50, and Under No Illusions
By CAITLIN KELLY

Many people aged 55 to 64, who had been dreaming of easy retirement, have had to remake their lives to find work during the recession and its aftermath.

As many of us close in on the ‘finish line’ of our professional careers (most of them in tatters…the careers and our humble selves.) We are encountering the above mentioned ‘lawlessness’ that offers us no recourse to what is likely to turn into a very deadly confrontation.

While we have long lamented the ‘rudderless’ condition of our crumbling society, this was no accident. It didn’t ‘wear out’, it was snapped off by those who could (through manipulation) afford to ‘buy’ the justice system…(something many will pay dearly for because so many already have!)

Note how the capitalist credo is parroted here in the headline. How the ‘over fifty crowd’ are (unsuccessfully) ‘making themselves useful’ as they ‘sprint’ (more like limp/drag) themselves toward a finish line that (mysteriously) keeps backing away! (So a wretched few can be rich…)

Yes, good citizen, we’re all going to be each other’s ‘financial advisors’ and manage each other’s money and sell each other houses neither of us can afford.

With those ‘encouraging words’ I thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Safeguards

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With its more chilling implication of ‘incurability’.

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

Short answer…you don’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If we don’t test we won’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

2013

Greetings good citizen,

It appears I have a lot of competition for your attention this New Years Eve…although I suspect the boys and girls on Wall Street hope nobody notices that the markets have tacked on 150 points for nothing (again.)

2012 is over and it turns out the dire predictions that started the year didn’t come to pass…as advertised.

Which is to opine that we are NOT ‘out of the woods’ yet. It’s probably more than a little disturbing to still be sitting right where the financial sector dumped us five years ago.

But you’re not supposed to notice that. You’re supposed to believe we’ve put all that nastiness behind us, the ‘recovery’ (that only the pundits and certain rare breeds of parrots can see) is ‘well underway’ and the future looks bright…(or is that a fire on the distant horizon?)

If it gets much darker (socially speaking) we are going to have to re-define ‘black’.

Funny how hopelessness has a way of intensifying the dark. There was a brief and somewhat blinding flash of illumination five years ago, a fleeting moment when a brilliant flash showed us that our economy was hollow…to the point of being non-existent.

Once the market for ‘faux’ financial services collapsed, nothing remained.

Sure, it still looks like we do stuff here but that is the satellite offices of foreign manufacturers, the rest is just what you'’ find in any other Banana Republic, ‘extractive industries.’

Oh and when the rest of the world runs out of oil and the One percent decides to cash in its US shale reserves, guess who won’t get any? (Because our currency will be worthless.)

But you’re reading that literally when in fact nobody will openly ‘deny’ you access to US produced energy…they will just charge you through the nose for it AND OUR TRAITOROUS POLITICIANS WILL SAY THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT!

I’m telling you right now good citizen, every damn one of them is a traitor (and should therefore pay ‘the traitor’s price.’

How unfortunate is it good citizen that treason, like sanity, is determined by the mindset of the ‘people who matter’.

Even more unfortunate to know that YOU are not among them. (Because YOU KNOW they’re bat-shit crazy!)

Bizarrely, like turning on a light switch, you’ll go from being ‘insignificant’ to being the arbiter of sanity, right after civilization falls off the proverbial cliff.

The question for 2013 is whether or not that cliff is nearby?

And I’d opine yes, good citizen, it’s a lot closer than you’d think. The as yet ‘unresolved’ fiscal cliff that the buttlicking corporate owned media mistakenly characterizes as a ‘failure to compromise’ threatens to push an already fragile economy over the edge.

Implying the (still spineless) Dems won’t give in when we all KNOW it is the conservo-whackos who won’t do what needs to be done. This could be the trigger the robbers have been waiting since ‘Morning in America’ to pull.

Which is to opine that the conservo-whackos are patient if nothing else…

But it’s the ‘persistent’ part that has the rest of us worried (to the point of questioning their sanity.)

That and their ‘no compromise’ attitude. Here they are, begging for compromise just like their capitalist heroes do (my way or the highway!)

We, as a society, can no longer afford (read tolerate) this variety of myopia.

It literally leads to an ‘us vs. them’ mentality that is toxic to social creatures like ourselves.

While this seems like little more than ‘sound advice’ we seriously need to take the matter to heart and literally ‘weed out’ those unfit to lead because THAT is where the problem is rooted.

Those who lead DO NOT have the best interests of society in their minds when they pass judgement…often on topics they have no right deciding and they are the same people who are ‘leading’ our society over a cliff we will not recover from.

The breakdown in trust alone may become insurmountable. We are already in danger of that happening with the financial system.

One of today’s headlines was on precisely this topic. As the ‘government guarantees’ expire on certain classes of securities, bankers are slicing the funds up into FDIC insurable amounts to protect themselves.

From what remains uncertain.

I don’t need to remind you that ALL money is FUNNY (regardless of who backs it!)

Which is why these gyrations to recover ‘government protection’ are actually amusing.

Our government is as broke as the rest of us…and that’s the doing of the One Percent!

The thing YOU need to remember is whosoever controls YOUR money, controls YOU!

Do you think a bunch of self-centered opportunists should be in charge of YOUR cash?

Let’s ring in 2013 as we ponder what to do about this pickle…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

No Men

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Not I

Greetings good citizen,

The NYSE opened moments ago but it seems ‘the action’ is in Washington this week rather than on Wall Street.

Where we are, once again, having a ‘fight’ that shouldn’t be happening.

DECEMBER

Democrats led by Obama and Republicans led by House Speaker John Boehner say it's critical to reach a deal this month. Yet both sides appear dug in over taxes. And their two plans are far apart on how much to cut spending while the economy is still recovering from the last recession.

So far, Boehner said, "we're nowhere." If compromise were easy for this bunch, they wouldn't be in this jam. A good chunk of the fiscal cliff — the automatic spending cuts known as the "sequester" — is an artificial deadline created by Congress in hopes of forcing itself to come up with a deficit-cutting plan. It arrives at the same time as the expiration of the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts and other temporary tax breaks scheduled to end unless Congress extends them. Together the taxes and cuts would equal close to $700 billion in deficit reduction over 2013.

Congress could vote to override all this and essentially freeze taxes and spending where they are now while the economy heals. But Obama and lawmakers, especially Republicans bent on budget-cutting, see the fiscal cliff as the critical moment to overcome inertia on the nation's long-term debt crisis.

How ironic is it good citizen that, if the two parties involved were on more ‘amicable terms’ NONE OF THIS would be happening?

But no, the Republican’s (suffering from their usual ‘post election amnesia’) have decided to make the rest of the nation regret allowing Republicans a place on the ballot!

(We should seriously test these people, if not for psychosis then for competency!)

Do we need to pass legislation that bars psychopaths from holding elected office?

WHO would disagree with mandated testing? (Besides Republican’s and their backers?)

Same thing with the ‘fiscal cliff’.

Although perhaps the first question that we’d need to address is WHY we keep returning to this same spot every few months?

Is it because the government is incapable of ‘managing money’ or is it this broken economic model the One Percent prevents us from abandoning?

Understand good citizen, the only time a nation EVER ‘pays off’ its debts is when it is liquidated!

Supposedly the former Soviet Union drown in a sea of ‘red ink’, which ‘disappeared’ once the Soviet Union was no more. (One of those weird things regarding changes in management…even when the old boss becomes the new boss…and nothing but the packaging changes.)

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

And the only way to correct this is to throw out the old regime and establish a new way of doing things.

It’s not that hard and we DON’T need to re-invent the wheel, we just need a new way of restoring justice, perhaps we can even reach that surprisingly elusive goal of ‘justice for all’.

But no, we keep letting the psychopaths among us decide what needs doing and how it needs to be done.

Did you know there’s a test for that now?

Have YOU noticed the corporate owned media is ignoring this important medical breakthrough?

Being capable of screening for psychosis HUGE! It SHOULD alter the course of human destiny…unless the psychopaths are allowed to, er, ‘prevent’ their detection (and summary demotion/exile from society.)

But I digress…

More disturbing to me is the ‘line in the sand’ over ‘new taxes’.

How about going back to Old taxes?

A MAJORITY of the nation agrees that the >One Percent isn’t paying their ‘fair share’ (neither at tax time nor at the payroll office.)

Those millions they keep for themselves are all raises YOU never got and lower prices you don’t pay.

WHY do we let these people FUCK us like this? (Worse, why does the government let them get away with it?)

Is it because someday we hope to be able to fuck our fellow citizens the exact same way?

(That’s the ‘excuse’ the conservo-whackos are sticking with…we all want to fuck the public so we can be rich! [thus do we deserve the screwing we get!])

Is this the kind of society you WANT to belong to?

Not I said little goat gruff!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Reflexive (knee-jerk)

Greetings good citizen,

It seems like only yesterday the ‘great communicator’ (who was hard pressed to stay awake during cabinet meetings) was telling us, after 220 years, that we had finally arrived at ‘Morning in America’ (we should dig the bastard up and hang him, just on general principles!)

Do you know what the last election proved? The people who bought the ‘Morning in America’ horseshit (the so-called ‘Reagan Democrats’) are all DEAD!

And by today’s conservo-whacko standards, St. Ronnie would be a flaming liberal!

Which brings us to the shortest day ever and where we are now, something akin to ‘Midnight in the garden of supreme evil…’

Our utter lawlessness at the top has reached crisis proportions, thus do the ‘fiscally responsible’ (read self-interested thieves) propose we:

1. “Fix” means cut: When they say “fix” Social Security, they mean cut Social Security. Fixers want to convince the public that a well-managed, hugely popular program that does not add to the deficit (it’s self-funded) is somehow in crisis and requires intervention in the form of various cutting schemes.

2. “Reform” means rob. When the say “reform” the tax code, they mean “make taxes even lower for the rich.” The wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes in the United States, which is a major reason there is a large deficit in the first place.

3.“Bipartisan” means all of the rich. Fix the Debt is a pro-business ideological movement pretending to be a bipartisan group of concerned citizens. But the group is really just a coalition for the greedy, unpatriotic rich.

4. “Concern” means covet. There was a time, a couple of generations ago, when business leaders would not dare to go public with their desire to increase income inequality and stick it to hard-working Americans

5. “Fiscal conservative” means economically confused. Longtime Wall Street executive Steve Rattner, one of Obama’s auto bailout czars, has been using his influence to attract tycoons from the financial industry to the Fix the Debt movement.

6. "Strip-mining is not leadership." Fixers present themselves as magnanimous, responsible leaders doing what they believe is best for the country. But that’s a tough sell when you’re advocating policies that mainly benefit…yourself.

No irony should be lost on the fact that our failure to prosecute the criminals responsible for the first global depression 80 years ago has led to the criminal looting of our civilization today, unfortunately labeled as ‘bank bailouts’.

Well good citizen, we’ve been 'bailing out the banks' for the past five years (while basically gutting the global economy) and we’re still not done.

When do you suppose it will be time to shut down the banking industry and institute a more responsible system?

Will that be never (because nobody is ‘smart enough’ to figure out a different way? Or so the criminally rich would have you believe.)

Step one, before we shut down the banks is we have to lock all of the criminals up, starting with the ones in charge of our so called ‘justice system’.

In a bizarre juxtaposition, possessing a law degree will bar you from ‘practicing law’, actually ‘practicing’ what you have been taught will become an ‘exile offense.’ (Because the law is the people’s domain and NO ONE shall claim to speak for all of the people! Which is a direct violation of the human anti-exploitation law.

Understand that ‘lawyering’ is something most politicians do and as a profession is almost universally loathed.

Again, while some make a good living for themselves, most rue the day they decided studying law was a good idea.

All they have to show for that decision is a mountain of student debt.

(Which collides ‘face first’ with the notion that ‘more education’ is the solution to our massive unemployment problem and desperately unbalanced economy.)

Just because you study to become something doesn’t mean there will be a (good paying) job available after you graduate (and wasn’t that the whole point of going to college in the first place?)

Your ‘hard won’ degree will likely get you a job…as a barrista at Starbucks…where the tips (like the coffee) suck.

So it will be a doubly bitter pill to slave your life away, scraping and saving to keep a roof over your head and food in your stomach (forget marriage, neither of you can afford it) only to reach retirement age to find that the cupboard is empty.

Yup, after they ‘reduce the deficit’ (not by raising taxes or cutting the trillions they are spending on drone warfare…no!) by shredding social security and pauperizing those who have spent their whole lives paying into the system.

What do you suppose they will do with the ‘savings’?

They’ll pocket them of course!

And they’ll flip you the bird if you say anything about it!

(Are we testing these motherfuckers yet?)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Flawed

Greetings good citizen,

Once again I belabor the obvious when I point out how deeply ‘flawed’ our current system of commerce is…and before you make any wise cracks I DO have a ‘better way’, it just won’t work too well for people who need to exploit other people for their living!

Worse, our ‘broken’ social model is about to get worse as capitalists wrestle with ‘mandated health insurance’ (Instead of ‘single payer’ which would wipe the health insurance industry out.)

But no! For some unfathomable reason, Mr. Obama thought we all WANTED ‘RomneyCare’ and derailed any debate over ‘socialized’ healthcare.

Now the rubber is meeting the road and look at how those stalwarts of ‘The American Way’ are dealing with it…

Like many franchisees, Robert U. Mayfield, who owns five Dairy Queens in and around Austin, Tex., is always eager to expand and — no surprise — has had his eyes on opening a sixth DQ. But he said concerns about the new federal health care law had persuaded him to hold off.

Bob Bellagamba, who runs Concorde Limousine in Freehold, N.J., says there is too much uncertainty about the new law.

“I’m scared to death of it,” he said. “I’m one of the ones sitting on the sidelines to see what’s really going to happen.”

Mr. Mayfield, who has 99 employees, said he was worried he would face penalties of $40,000 or more because he did not offer health insurance to many of his full-time workers — generally defined as those working an average of 30 hours a week or more. Ever since the law was enacted in 2010, opponents have argued that employers who were forced to offer health insurance would lay off workers or shift more people to part-time status to compensate for the additional cost. Those claims have drawn considerable attention — and considerable anger in response — in recent weeks.

John H. Schnatter, the chief executive of Papa John’s, the pizza chain, said some franchisees were likely to reduce their employees’ hours to avoid having to provide coverage. And an unhappy Denny’s franchise owner in Florida warned that he would raise prices 5 percent as a “surcharge,” adding that disgruntled customers could offset that by reducing their tips.

Two things jump out at you from this excerpt.

The first is how slender the profit margins are in much of the economy (especially in ‘hospitality’)

The second doesn’t really slap you in the face BUT our new ‘Service Economy’ is pretty much based on PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT!

No lie good citizen, 50% of the US workforce is ‘part-time, no benefits.’

So what is Mr. Employer going to do?

Which is really irrelevant because as I keep reminding you, IF YOU CAN’T LIVE ON WHAT YOUR EMPLOYER PAYS YOU ITS NOT THEIR PROBLEM, IT’S YOURS!

This, good citizen, is where ‘cascading systemic failure’ begins, with customers who can’t afford the goods.

No /(too few) customers and you can’t hand out pay increases so your people have to ‘cut back.’

Try to beef up your bottom line by raising prices and you start dropping customers…the same thing happens when you reduce the services provided/quantity vended, people start hunting for better value.

Remember this is all because if you can’t make a profit you can’t pay your creditors (and THEY will put you out of business, if only to staunch the bleeding…)

So how do these operations stay in business?

Short answer, THEY DON’T!

In a sight that should amaze everyone, you pass by strip mall that is wholly owned by those bastards at the mighty ‘For Lease’ corporation and some idiot is erecting a new one right next to it!

What (except the prospect of selling these ‘commercial condo’s’ to (beyond stupid) ‘entrepreneurs’) possesses these builders to behave so irrationally?

Well, dum-dum has to pay for his excavator somehow…how fucking sad is that?

But this is precisely the environment our debt-driven social model creates…one that squanders endless resources needlessly! (Worse, they are NOT endless, as we are rapidly finding out.)

Well, it’s December first, only twenty more days until 12/21/12…

Of course many of you thought it would be game over a dozen years ago when the glitch of computers being unable to detect the new millennium would shut Western civilization down; taking the world as we know it with them.

Well, we’re still here…I haven’t detected anything ‘unusual’ in the night sky nor have I witnessed any increased seismic or meteorological activity so forgive me for being doubtful of catastrophe striking three weeks from today.

Even the biblical ‘apocalypse’ will be preceeded by some pretty tough to miss ‘signs’.

Not that I have any truck with spirit in the sky (who is the ‘primary justification’ for allowing the One Percent to exist.)

Funny how one thing leads to another, thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Bondage

Greetings good citizen,

Did the markets close ‘up’ yesterday because this morning the Dow was back over 13,000 for no reason whatsoever! (Which is to assume that the markets ‘rallied’ yesterday towards the end of the session.)

And yeah, people are back to their old tricks, going ‘in the hole’ for Christmas because they believe the electoral rhetoric that assured them the economy was ‘improving’, when it isn’t.

So, in a not too surprising ‘repeat’ of the old ‘boom-bust’ cycle, people will spend what they don’t have followed by a renewed raft of foreclosures/repossessions…and we’ll all be the worse for it.

But as Jon Stewart (of Comedy Central fame) sarcastically put it, at least there isn’t a bill of sale with your name on it (yet)

I’m sitting here wearing clothes made by modern-day slaves and probably so are you. I’m lit by studio lights assembled in countries where workers who try to organize are imprisoned, as are many of the lights in your home.

We rationalize all the products of distant slaves we use – after all, we don’t have to look into their faces like Jefferson did – but it’s still just a rationalization.

The stark reality is that we in America didn’t “end” slavery. We simply exported it.

And it’s so much more comfortable for us to criticize Jefferson and his peers for agonizing over – but still using – slave labor 200 years ago, when we don’t have to look into the faces of today’s slaves who are toiling and dying at this very moment to sustain our lifestyles.

It’s the ugly truth good citizen, the one they don’t want you to know about…that ALL CAPITALISM is ‘predatory’ (which is why it NEEDS slavery to operate!)

You education ‘omits’ this basic fact because the only thing separating you from one of those slaves is a law the fuckers can rip up whenever it suits them.

And when they decide to rip up that law, you instantly become something the oligarchs’ fear more than anything else; you become somebody with nothing left to lose!

Worse good citizen, every day we inch closer and closer to the day when the slave market re-opens and your kids go up on the block to the ‘highest bidder’.

What are you going to do when that day comes?

Grab your favorite ‘peace now’ banner and go march in front of the Statehouse?

Will the cops NOT arrest you for creating a ‘public nuisance’ because your cause is just and they know it?

(They will if they want to keep their jobs!)

You’ve been around long enough to know how this fuckaroo works. First you have to act up and then you have to take out whoever tries to stop you…because there’s no such thing as ‘half-way’.

People ‘died’ fighting for the forty-hour workweek. They were ‘killed’ (read murdered) by guys who were ‘just doing their job’.

It’s an indelible stain on our society that those murderers were never prosecuted for their crimes, it also makes the beginning of the end of what passes for justice…pretty much anywhere on this planet.

Which is to point out the unethical exploitation of others through money is another form of ‘slavery’ we aren’t even close to ending.

Capitalists don’t like it when we refer to ourselves as ‘wage slaves’…because it’s TRUE!

Capitalists, like cops are NOT you ‘friends’. They do what they do because that’s what they are paid to do. (They try to trick you because it makes their job that much easier, once the key turns in the cell it’s ‘fuck you, idiot!’)

Ironically, A Simple Plan and the Human Anti-Exploitation Law will be the first time in human history that slavery will be truly outlawed…and attempting to ‘enslave’ anyone is an instant one way trip to exile (a decidedly nasty place.)

Naturally there will be those ‘twisted’ bastards who will charge that those who run A Simple Plan are ‘exploiting’ the rest of us; but their ‘compensation’ is not under their control so their actions don’t benefit themselves personally.

But I digress…

Once again we should flip this issue over and explore the ‘real implications’ of Modern Slavery.

Why would Bwana ‘hire you’ for a salary he can keep in his pocket when he can ‘buy’ a slave for a fraction of that?

And when the slave is ‘used up’ he just cuts it loose to fend for itself, what happens to it after that isn’t their problem…just like employees!

Yet another ‘plague’ visited upon our society by rapacious capitalists…and our ‘legal system’ turns a blind eye to the problem.

Well good citizen, what are you sitting there for, you didn’t win Powerball and you’re already a month late to the revolution!

Snap to it!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wisdom

Greetings good citizen,

The markets are doing their damnedest to hold on to yesterday’s gains, which is troubling by itself. But, it becomes even more disturbing when you factor in the idea of Are we, as a species, getting dumber?

Crabtree’s central thesis to back his claim up is, according to PopSci , that “each generation produces deleterious mutations, so down the line of human history, our intelligence is ever more impaired compared to that of our predecessors.”

He argues that you can see evidence of this process in humans sense of smell. Now, humans are largely guided by intellect when it comes to what we eat, for example. Humans have “far fewer olfactory receptors than other animals,” according to Crabtree. Dogs, on the other hand, have more olfactory receptors (the neurons responsible for smelling things.)

“Once you place pressure on intellectual abilities, and take it off of olfactory abilities, the olfactory genes deteriorate,” PopSci quotes Crabtree as saying.

But other geneticists have raised questions about Crabtree’s work. In an interview with The Independent , geneticist Steve Jones said that Crabtree’s paper was like “arts faculty science...Never mind the hypothesis, give me the data, and there aren’t any. I could just as well argue that mutations have reduced our aggression, our depression and our penis length, but no journal would publish that. Why do they publish this?”

I am making a leap here and ‘assuming’ Mr. Crabtree is basing his findings on the ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’ premise.

However, we don’t really have a good definition for intelligence (or wisdom for that matter, not that anyone values that, er, ‘virtue’ any longer…)

Intelligence can provide us with a hundred ways to fling ourselves against a brick wall…it is wisdom that tells us to go around the wall.

But are we getting dumber?

Theoretically the answer is yes (following the ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’ theory.)

Look at how much hogwash the average individual is forced to swallow to remain a viable member of civil society.

First he has to ‘make himself useful’ (usually at his own expense.)

Then he must buy everything he needs to survive from people who have no right to sell it to him!

But that’s ‘okay’, that’s their business, you not supposed to concern yourself with things that aren’t your business…even when they directly effect how YOU live!

So the ability to ignore YOUR best interests has to be suppressed so somebody else can act in THEIR best interests…and FUCK YOU.

This is where they wheel out the old ‘nobody said the system was perfect’ bullshit on you…and who tells you this, the same dickheads who are getting a marginally better deal than you’re getting!

Keep you nose clean and MAYBE you can be one of them!

Wait, did you just feel your IQ drop another ten points?

Have you abandoned all hope of ever possessing even a shred of wisdom?

Wisdom tells us to ‘go around the wall’…

So maybe it’s time to ‘wise up’!

They only fuck you because you let them.

How friggin’ sad is that?

Well good citizen, now they want to fuck you without having to pay you at all…and there ain’t a fucking thing you can do about it…except go around the wall.

What is wisdom telling us to do here?

The ‘goal’ is to ‘level the playing field’ and in order to achieve that we have to stop giving and start TAKING!

It really is ‘simple’ as A Simple Plan.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Canned

Greetings good citizen,

In case any of you were wondering the collapse of our civilization proceeds apace, as evidenced by the continued dilution of the money supply for the benefit of the >One Percent.

Because when the nonsense markets do this for no apparent reason, guess who is playing the role of ‘fuckee’?

Stocks Leap on Budget Optimism
By REUTERS 12:03 PM ET
Wall Street stocks made large gains on signs of progress in talks to resolve the fiscal crunch in Washington.

Talk about ‘blowin’ smoke’, every time they jump share prices like this it dilutes the money supply.

But don’t be cozened good citizen, the markets are going to resume their ‘death spiral’, if not tomorrow then by the end of the week.

As you can see, the >One Percent is throwing a hissy over having their taxes go up to where they used to be before the ‘MBA president’ trashed the global economy.

Investors Rush to Beat Threat of Higher Taxes
By NATHANIEL POPPER and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
With potential changes in the tax code set to take place on Jan. 1, investors and business owners have begun to protect their income before the end of the year.

Where do you suppose the >One Percent are going to do with their money now that they will have to give so much of it to the government? You don’t suppose the shiftless bastards will keep it off-shore (like the jobs those tax breaks were supposed to create) do you?

Naturally, as we sit here (five years and counting) for SOMETHING to be done about the financial abuse that bankrupted the global finance system, we get this news:

New York Fed Wins Dismissal of A.I.G. Bailout Lawsuit
By REUTERS 1:10 PM ET
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York won the dismissal of a $25 billion lawsuit by the former chief of American International Group, Maurice R. Greenberg, who argued that the A.I.G. bailout was unlawful.

How fucked up is it good citizen that the only guy with deep enough pockets to bring suit against the Fed for bailing out AIG was it’s former CEO?

Now show of hands good citizens, how many of you are ‘surprised’ by this outcome (considering who was the ‘counterparty’ to all of that bad paper AIG, er, ‘insured’?)

Less surprising is who ended up ‘on the hook’ for the whole kit and kaboddle…vous and moi!

While the ‘commander-in-chief’s’ Attorney General has thus far found ‘no cause’ to pursue criminal action against anyone involved.

Needless to say it casts this man’s qualifications to perform the task entrusted to him in a rather poor light…but for some strange reason the corporate owned media isn’t saying a word…and neither, suspiciously enough, are the Republicans…

Thus are we left to wonder how much success they expect to have with this legislation:

European Countries Seek More Taxes From U.S. Multinational Companies
By ERIC PFANNER
European governments are going after American companies, like Google and Amazon.com, that pay little or no taxes in Europe, despite generating billions of dollars in revenue on the continent.

I’m laying odds in the same vicinity of a snowball’s chance in hell. They don’t pay any taxes here so why should they pay them there?

Oddly, smaller, non-multi-national companies are facing a different set of circumstances:

SAS Avoids Bankruptcy After Unions Approve Plan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 11:28 AM ET
All eight unions signed new collective agreements that will see jobs, salaries and pensions cut in the hope of restoring the company’s competitiveness and profitability.

Is it just me or do you see a pattern developing here? Why is it that companies, especially ‘old-line’ companies, lay the burden of making themselves ‘competitive’ on the backs of their hapless employees?

Wouldn’t cutting their prices and slashing the compensation of the front office (who can more readily afford it) be a more sensible approach?

But no, when if comes to executive pay cuts it’s time to ditch the venture! If a VP has to take even a ten cent an hour pay reduction it’s time to abandon ship.

Suppose the company commit blasphemy and stop paying for the staff’s country club membership, oh the scandal!

Cut one and you might as well cut them all! How could you show your face once you’ve proven your company is a piker?

But that’s nothing compared to this news:

Change in Negotiators Shakes Up U.S.-China Trade Policy
By KEITH BRADSHER
Chen Deming, who has led China’s policy on trade negotiations as commerce minister, failed to win a seat on the Central Committee and will be replaced.

How humiliating? The man failed to bring the lapdog to heel and now he’s being ‘replaced’.

This could prove interesting but not nearly as interesting as the revolt that is brewing in China’s countryside.

Will the US decide to send ‘peacekeepers’ in to protect US Interests?

Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?

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

The Wicked...

Greetings good citizen,

Again it is curious to note that the (Madly inflated) Dow has dropped 600 points since this time last week and apparently this is NOT NOTEWORTHY!

Um, since the only noticeable useful information to be provided by the stock markets are as a gauge of the One Percent’s feelings regarding global affairs in general, perhaps they are supposed to be ‘sulking’ over the loss of their ‘alternate’ candidate.

An unhappiness that will certainly be as shortlived as it is undeserved.

How unfortunate is it for the rest of the public that the media plays us for stupid regarding the One Percent’s ‘relationship’ with the world’s largest purchasing organization (who regularly pays through the nose for literally EVERYTHING! )

Nation Building: Public Talk, Secret Action
In the final days of the presidential campaign, President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that it was time to reap a peace dividend as America’s wars wind down.  Nation-building here at home should, he insisted, be put on the agenda: “What we can now do is free up some resources, to, for example, put Americans back to work, especially our veterans, rebuilding our roads, our bridges.”

Setting aside just how slipshod or even downright disastrous Washington’s last decade of nation-building projects in Iraq and Afghanistan have been, the president’s proposal to rebuild roads, upgrade bridges, and retrofit the country’s electrical grid sounds eminently sensible.  After all, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives America’s infrastructure a grade of “D.”  If, in the era of the $800 billion stimulus package, $1 billion at first sounds paltry, ask the mayors of #Detroit, Belmar, New Jersey, or even New York City what that money would mean to their municipalities.  America may need $2.2 trillion in repairs and maintenance according to ASCE, but $1 billion could radically change the fortunes of many a city.

Instead, that money is flowing into the oil-rich Middle East.  Unknown to most Americans, thousands of State Department personnel, military advisors, and hired contractors remain at several large civilian bases in Iraq where nation-building projects are ongoing; hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been flowing into military construction projects in repressive Persian Gulf states like Bahrain and Qatar; and the Pentagon is expanding its construction program in Central Asia.  All of this adds up to a multifaceted project that seems at odds with the president’s rhetoric.  (The White House did not respond to TomDispatch’s repeated requests for comment.)

Just as the, er, ‘progressive media’ has predicted, the Republicans, supporters of tax cuts for the uber wealthy, are also HUGE ‘patriots’ in their support of military spending.

This wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t distort the economy beyond recognition…but that’s one of the ‘side effects’ of predatory capitalism (over-concentration of money at the top of the social ladder, leaving wretched poverty below.)

What’s that? Still don’t think we need to replace the rules regarding money and its single useful purpose to society?

Again I will remind you that ALL money is funny…the only true cost is opportunity cost, the things we COULD HAVE DONE with those resources had they not been squandered to feather somebody’s personal nest.

In most cases a whole lot of nests would be a lot nicer than they are if those resources had been utilized in a wiser fashion.

Unfortunately, in these trying times it is difficult if not impossible to come to agreement on what constitutes ‘wisdom’.

Wise to me is outrageously stupid to a conservo-whacko! (who would rather not do anything with the resources in case the military needs them later!)

“Let society lounge in its own cesspool, the military will pay ‘top dollar’ for those resources that you want to waste on people who neither deserve or appreciate them…”

How do you deal with ‘whackos’ like that?

No irony should be lost on the fact that the ‘holy military’ (conservo-whackos literally ‘worship’ active duty service personnel, after they’re discharged they become ‘fucking civilians’ again so ‘fuck ‘em!) was established to protect us ALL.

But again I belabor the obvious when I point out that when it comes to conservo-whackos, ‘nothing go up top’ (may as well be a block of wood.)

They think what they think because that’s what they think!

Worse, they believe what they believe because somebody else told them that how things should be…so please don’t ask them to explain it, believing it is difficult enough!

But I digress…and I sincerely apologize for parading around on my favorite hobby horse in front of you all, shamelessly.

And you have to admit, it is difficult to cement your attention on the issue of ‘austerity for you’ while we waste billions on a military that serves the interests of the One Percent, coming from someone who preaches that ALL money is ‘funny’.

But my point isn’t ‘false austerity’ nor is it a bloated, useless military. It is GROSS MIS-MANAGEMENT!

And the real kicker is there ain’t a fucking thing we can do about it!

And I’m sure, by now, some of you want to slap me for reminding you AGAIN precisely how ‘powerless’ you are…

Well, I’m right here…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Mad World

Greetings good citizen,

Just as yesterday’s story about the ‘ascendancy’ of US energy reserves warned me that Saudi (real and easy to extract) supplies were approaching exhaustion, today’s headlines regarding the Soviet’s ‘redefinition’ of the term ‘treason’ speaks to me of the global assault on civil liberties.

First we must ask ourselves how unfortunate it is that the most famous Vladimir in modern history is ‘Vlad the Impaler’ and then we need to wonder if there’s a dubious connection in there somewhere.

Let’s have a look!

The law, which was drafted by the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency known under its Russian acronym of FSB, also introduced a punishment of up to eight years for simply getting hold of state secrets illegally even if they aren't passed to foreign hands.

The FSB explained in a statement run by the ITAR-Tass news agency that the new clause better protects confidential information. It said the previous law, which dated back to the 1960s, failed to provide an efficient deterrence against foreign spies.

"Tactics and methods of foreign special services have changed, becoming more subtle and disguised as legitimate actions," the spy agency said. "Claims about a possible twist of spy mania in connection with the law's passage are ungrounded and based exclusively on emotions."

It may be helpful to first settle on a ‘true definition’ of what constitutes ‘treason’…often restricted, politically at least, to aiding ‘foreign enemies’ in ‘undermining’ the state.

Ironically, the rest of us have a simpler definition…one that makes the politicians among us, er, ‘uncomfortable’.

To the average citizen, treason is (and always has been) another word for betrayal. Our politicians are uncomfortable with this because much of what they do could easily be interpreted as ‘betrayal’…and we all know the penalty for treason is death.

So, somewhat bizarrely, few people have ever been, er, ‘officially’ prosecuted for betrayal because the people prosecuting them are as guilty as criminals they are judging.

I suspect most of you will agree that it is our failure to hold people in positions of public trust accountable for their action that has resulted in the, er, ‘dismantling’ of our civilization (by those who falsely claim to ‘own it’…a false claim their attorney’s placed in their heads!

Which is how these cretins will defend their actions…but we digress.

The ‘situation’ is disintegrating once the ‘traitors’ start redefining treason to cover their treachery!

This isn’t about betrayal, it is all about ‘discovery’ and keeping ‘treason’ hidden!

Would the revelation that Russia had a ‘stolen election’ on their hands lead to the ‘suspicion’ that it had also occurred in other countries as part of a global conspiracy to manipulate currencies and strip Western cultures of their hard won civil rights?

All for ‘the greater good’ (of the criminals?)

In case you haven’t noticed good citizen, this ‘national security state’ is a global phenomenon and it is omnipresent.

The question we must ask is who is being protected from whom? And the answer is disturbing because there is a whole boatload of criminal activity that isn’t being prosecuted, never mind reported while whistleblowers across the spectrum are being jailed without recourse!

Because that’s the ‘new reality’ good citizen.

You go along with the ‘big rip off’ or YOU get put away and they throw away the key because they don’t need a reason to lock you up.

If you make waves, they silence you.

Which brings us full circle to the question of ‘what kind of world do YOU want to live in?

One where criminals run roughshod over your life with impunity or one with ‘Justice for all’?

Because the ‘choice’ is YOURS!

Justice for all starts with YOU…but we digress, the real issue here is WHY treason is generally understood to mean one thing but isn’t actually defined that way…something it has in common with another ‘popular’ commodity…money.

How fucking odd is it that we all ‘think we know’ what money is but if you ask ten different people to define it, you will get ten different answers (and some of them considerably freaky!)

Well we have the same problem when it comes to ‘betrayal’…(which also gets bizarre treatment under the law.)

Which is to point out that our legislators have no problem with betraying the general public…worse, it is considered ‘common knowledge’ that anyone running for public office is in the ‘betrayal business’.

Which ISN’T what anybody is thinking when they mark their ballots. They expect the politician to be, at least generally, ‘true to their word’.

And most politicians would quibble that they are…generally…in the broadest sense of the term, and that they at least agree whole heartedly that they spoke words…albeit some of them ‘truer’ than others…

How do you try a weasel like that for treason?

Not by their words but by their actions, of course!

Since much of politics is ‘quid pro quo’ the ‘corresponding’ campaign donations and subsequent voting record tells the story.

But nobody is prosecuted for this easily traceable treason and we can only wonder why?

Would politicians suddenly abandon public service if they were held accountable for their voting record…or would the one percenter’s who regularly ‘purchase’ favorable legislation dislike the, er, ‘scrutiny’?

It’s a mad world good citizen and it will only get madder if you continue to do nothing.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Energy Independence!

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But again I digress…

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

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

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

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

So is it a battle we ‘can’t win’…?

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

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

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

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

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

Your money truly is ‘for you’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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

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

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

Sustainable Future

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Am I a ‘dreamer’?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner