Pillar 2

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It also lays out how to restore the Justice system.

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

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

Sadly, most of us confuse justice with revenge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then there’s the issue of punishment.

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will your kids get exiled for YOUR crimes?

Only if they do as you did.

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Government

Greetings good citizen,

In our ongoing series to highlight how we can change the world we discussed (briefly) the economic changes that need to be made in order to return society to prosperity.

What we didn’t do was touch upon the social ‘third rail’…not out of fear but due to the great degree of ‘ignorance’ that surrounds what politics should be about.

We have a landscape populated with starving, unemployed homeless people and all our politicians can talk about is gay marriage and gun control (along with Federal subsidies to get more cops and build new schools.)

Worse, politicians (and people with political ambitions) don’t see the need to change the conversation from what it was 200 years ago when the hot button was States rights Vs Federal rights.

Our new government, er, (bear with me) will be (as opposed to ‘should be') centered on Human rights.

How did our (Slaving) founders get it wrong? They had to avoid the issue of human rights so as not to offend the ‘monied interests’.

Worse, the founding of the US was seen as the birth of a ‘capitalist utopia’…which they rapidly learned would not work! But you have to give the capitalists credit, they are persistent if nothing else…(like intelligent, for example.)

Here it is two hundred years later and they are trying to pull the same stunt in China (which I predict will go horribly and catastrophically wrong.)

They tried to ‘capitalize’ the former Soviet Union and it blew up! (Just to give you an idea how toxic capitalism really is.)

So if capitalism is so toxic, how have we survived it for two hundred years?

Well, not all of us did. The death toll keeps rising as capitalism continues its death spiral.

Make no mistake about it, 99% of the murder rate is tied directly to capitalism.

And while it (again seems like) I am digressing, I am not. Capitalism is so ingrained in how we manage our society as to be inseparable.

And THAT is what I mean when I point to ‘ignorance in politics’.

Politicians regularly separate politics from commerce when, under capitalism, they are the same thing.

Ironically under A Simple Plan there are no politics…and political parties will be illegal.

I’ll go you one better, the ‘lie machine’ will be shut down too.

People who make their living molding public opinion will have to find a ‘real job’.

But now I digress, the ‘fourth estate’ is the subject of its own essay.

Under the new way of doing things we will have ‘direct democracy’…which means YOU will get to decide what is or isn’t illegal (within reason.)

Understand that our ‘leaders’, who will ‘earn’ their positions, will be in charge of the day to day business of keeping our society running. YOU will get to decide on the guidelines they’ll operate under.

Unlike today, leadership will NOT be in charge of the justice system. It will be an independent body charged with protecting society with a focus on preserving personal liberty.

These days money buys favorable legislation while ‘short-circuiting’ existing prohibitions. That will no longer be the case because we will not have ‘elected’ officials.

Our leaders will ‘win’ their positions by demonstrating they are the best candidate for the job via the tests!

Better! The tests are open TO ALL!* (Yeah, there is an exception that needs to be included here despite this being a far from definitive layout of A Simple Plan architecture.

(* You will not be permitted to test IF you are accused of an exile offense…and since false accusation is an exile offense we would hope nobody would bring such charges ‘frivolously’.)

IF we are to get ‘money’ out of the management of our society we need to put an end to political process designed to make candidates ‘beholden’ to the money interests.

And if we are to put human rights where they belong (number one) we must eliminate the influence of greed that routinely crushes compassion and understanding.

Spoken like a ‘true liberal’ wouldn’t you say?

Makes me wonder how many conservative heads explode reading my exhibits?

Because a true conservative doesn’t care about humanity or an uneven playing field, all a true conservative cares about is themselves.

Well our streets are full of hungry, homeless, unemployed people who are the ‘by-product’ of ‘compassionate conservatism’.

“We’re gonna end these folks suffering by farming out their jobs!”

Then we’ll cut their welfare and let them eat Democrats!

This, good citizen, is what ‘politics’ in the US has devolved into.

If you think it’s time for a change, I’m pointing the way.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. Just an observation but today's post on 2/12 is number 1212...coincidence?

And no I didn't take Sunday off to make it fit!

Class confusion...

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

January 4, 2013 |

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is this seeming unthinkable thing happening?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Money does not a ‘plutocrat’ make.

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Blind Eye

Greetings good citizen,

For this week’s episode of ‘descent into the maelstrom’ we have this purposefully vague and more than a little hopeful article on why the stock market is seemingly ‘divorced’ from the real economy.

Observe:

THAT may help explain why, despite all the storm clouds hanging over this economy, professional investors appear willing to look past the poor data. In fact, money managers say they are more bullish about domestic blue-chip stocks than about stocks in emerging markets or the rest of the developed world, according to a recent survey by Russell Investments.

John S. Osterweis, chairman and chief investment officer of Osterweis Capital Management, says that the economic head winds notwithstanding, several long-term trends could support a new leg to the bull market in domestic stocks.

Among them are a possible rebound in the housing sector, a potential revival of domestic manufacturing as wage growth accelerates in China, and the tail wind that could arise from the boom in domestic energy production.

Mr. Dorsey at Sanibel points to yet another possible tail wind. “Think about what uncertainty causes,” he said. “It causes low expectations. And when is typically a good time to buy an asset class? When expectations and valuations are low.”

The above are the closing paragraphs from this NY Times article…trust me, you won’t find anything more concrete in the whole package.

Especially, er, ‘hopeful’ is the third paragraph where they cite a list of (highly relative) possibilities.

Loan me your blind eye so I can point to some of the features they, er, ‘gloss over’…

Let’s start with the ‘Only game in town’ part of the puzzle. And what they don’t want to point to is the ‘Secret of their success’.

Have you noticed the never-ending procession of mergers and acquisitions? That’s why stocks are doing well while the rest of the economy is at a dead stall.

Capitalism is all about Market Share and when you reach ‘market saturation’ capitalism turns cannibal.

That alleged ‘opportunity for everyone’ turns into market share for those who can afford to buy it.

Oh, and how do you ‘justify’ spending tons of cash for market share that would have been yours if you had just waited?

You throw a ton of (suddenly redundant) people out into the streets (and pocket all of those ‘salaries and benefits’!)

Which as we can see from the ‘labor force participation rate’ actually shrinks the overall economy!

Thereby increasing social unrest…but the peckerheads who wrote this article don’t take that into consideration…

Since you absorb the shares of the ‘target’ company, your shares naturally ‘rise’ because you have captured market share you didn’t have before…by eliminating a competitor.

But, as these assholes know, there is a downside to this variety of economic predation that walks hand in hand with diminished opportunity.

Eventually a very small handful of not necessarily intelligent people end up owning everything…and they don’t feel your pain. You lost, so you should sit down and shut up.

Didn’t get your turn ‘at bat’, not their problem!

Until you make it their problem!

Like yesterday’s ‘disenfranchised’ young man who did something totally senseless because he had absolutely nothing to lose!

And if that doesn’t bug you…you may not pass the test.

Worse…since this ‘nothing to lose’ phenomenon is spreading, things could get mighty frightening, mighty quick (and the idiots currently in charge have no clue how to fix it, except by playing to the ‘nothing left to lose’ crowds strength.

Did I mention our civilization is self-destructing faster now that the process is picking up steam?

What I’m really curious to see is what kind of ‘New Deal’ they are going to offer the marauders who threaten civil order?

The first couple of passes will be ‘Band-aids’ at best. Discounts on mortgages and guarantees on jobs that are so conditional as to be worthless.

We all know how the HMO bullshit ended up, you’re two bucks a week became two thousand a month (and rising!)

But not until after the publicly funded healthcare system was dismantled…thanks St. Ronnie!

No what I’m curious to see is if the people will fall for the same old crap they’ve been ‘force-fed’ for centuries or whether civilization will self-destruct due to the massive decay of trust and good will?

Pretty fucked up thing to be pondering during the season of peace and goodwill…but considering how commercialized it’s all become, maybe it’s not that fucked up after all.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

First Person Shooter...

Greetings good citizen…

I’m sure many of you are ‘anticipating’ how I will address the most recent wave of violence erupting across our crumbling civilization...

And I’ll repeat what I’ve been screaming about all along…although you’ll now see certain ‘between the lines’ and ‘assumed’ universals (things everybody knows but few acknowledge) brought to the fore.

First let’s look at the ‘culture of violence’ we are expected to shrug off like it doesn’t effect us.

How many of you are connecting yesterday’s gunning down of Connecticut school children with drones killing civilians halfway around the planet (who are ‘posthumously’ labeled ‘terrorists’ by the corporate owned media to justify this ‘murder’?)

But a little closer to home we need look no further than the prevalence of ‘first person shooter’ video games that kids like Mr. Lanza grew up playing.

What doe this do to a child’s Id?

Sure as hell ‘desensitizes’ them to the idea of shooting someone to death…doesn’t it.

And what was one of the headlines on my homepage news feed this morning? How violent video games are the ‘top seller’ at retailers this Christmas.

How much of this is caused by Halo, Call of Duty or Assassin’s creed?

More succinctly, what drove this anti-social loner to first KILL HIS OWN MOTHER and THEN take up arms and drive down to the local elementary school (as opposed to a shopping mall) and open fire?

Do you think we should start mandatory testing (for psychopathy) now or should we wait until a few more thousand are murdered?

Will the next psycho cut to the chase and blow the whole school up?

Hell, we’ve already let the ‘high functioning’ psychopaths destroy the global economy so what’s the senseless murder of a few dozen innocents matter?

When there’s a ‘free for all’ out in the streets it will be too late. The bonds that prevent us from killing one another on sight are wearing perilously thin.

How many times do I need to repeat this before SOMETHING (like TESTING) is done?

Or would we discover that drawing our children from the bottom of a test tube (another crisis that the media purposefully ignores) is adding to what Mother Nature might naturally screen out? (Like the sudden surge in nut allergies and the insane jump in asthma rates?)

But no, we couldn’t possible be talking about the same thing…except we are now coming into the ‘maturation’ of the first generation of ‘test tube’ babies.

And with it nobody wants to connect the alarming rise in the rates of ADD and other ‘socialization’ problems that have been ignored…because the source of every one of these afflictions is…rabid capitalism (profits before people!)

Why are females ‘waiting’ so long to start families? Because they want to establish their careers first…so they go to school and work during their prime childbearing years, leaving most of them barren by the time they make their heap (or say yes to the guy who has been chasing them since they were in High School.)

No money, no family!

What do you suppose our young shooter saw that the fucking asshole corporate owned media is doing its damnedest to ignore?

He saw a system that didn’t have a place for him and determined that no matter how he sliced it, he had nothing to lose!

He killed his mother for bringing him here in the first place and he killed those kids as a ‘favor’ to them. While he’s not here to ask I would bet he believed he was doing them a ‘kindness’ (albeit a left-handed one.)

Which also shines a spotlight on just what kind of monsters we’re dealing with here (and I mean that figuratively because we are factually doing nothing about this.)

So, I have pissed off my female readers and all of the parents in my audience…but like I have said repeatedly, I’m not here to be ‘popular’, nor is it my purpose to tell you what to think.

My ‘mission’ is to provide you with things to think about by offering up a different perspective than the corporate owned media serves up.

Yes, they lie to you religiously and you don’t hate them…(you may catch yourself muttering ‘bullshit’ under your breath a lot but you don’t begrudge them doing you the disservice of lying to you in order to protect the oligarchs.)

Yup, nobody questions that the stacked deck has become obvious just as nobody questions the futility of living from lottery to lottery, hoping you can set yourself free from the debt trap you were born into.

I’ll ask (rhetorically) if our shooter was ‘wrong’ in his assessment of the future that led him to act so…

Rationality is a very fragile thing, what seems senseless to you may appear perfectly logical to someone else.

If we back up a few steps, the society that bred this killer is NOT blameless…

I say the ‘root’ of this disease lies in a predatory social structure that leaves the individual on their own to deal with problems that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

We would be very lucky indeed if the Mayans were right and this predatory mess we are snared in ‘died’ on 12/21/12…

So what do you say good citizen, are you feeling lucky?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Counsel

Greetings good citizen,

Only eleven more shopping days until the end of the world as we know it! While the stations owned by Fox News are still trying to make a story about bit of cosmic weirdness left behind by a long defunct civilization, others have written off the doomsday predictions when tangible proof of inevitable doom failed to materialize over the summer.

Not that said ‘doom’ isn’t going to happen! We are hurtling towards a disaster that can’t be seen with a telescope or measured with a seismograph yet it will destroy our civilization just as surely as it has destroyed every (human) society before ours.

Which is to point out that even the Mayan predictions of eminent doom are expected to be ‘survivable’, the question, as always is what will rise from the ashes?

And for some fucked up reason, people keep letting the ‘opportunists’ take the reins…and down the same old path we run!

Um, since we are at the tail end of what passes for ‘civil society’ the following is an incomplete picture of how we got to where we are:

The 6 Economic Facts of Life in America That Allow the Rich to Run off with Our Wealth

Do you ever wonder why it takes the average family 47 years to make as much as a hedge fund honcho makes in one hour?

1. The super-rich are stealing our fair share of productivity. The U.S. economy is enormously productive. Since 1947, the amount of goods and services we produce per hour of labor has risen by nearly 300 percent. That's because as a nation, we blend together a potent mix of effort, skills, technology and organizational capacities.

2. Americans really want a wealth distribution more like Sweden's. First, virtually all Americans greatly underestimated the degree of inequality in our economy today. They had no idea how extreme the U.S. wealth distribution really is -- which goes to show you what a good job the super-rich have done in mis-educating us.

Second, when asked to construct an ideal distribution of income, 92 percent of Americans preferred radically more equality – on a par with the social democratic state of Sweden! What’s more, it didn’t matter whether the respondent was a Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, black or white, male or female. Everyone wanted more economic fairness.

3. Everything we hear about government debt is wrong. Right now, the biggest target of public mis-education is the government debt debate. And the biggest spender on the mis-education of the American public is billionaire Pete Peterson.

4. We are under-taxed, not over-taxed. The super-rich want us to believe that taxes are too high and that those taxes are harming job creation and economic growth. It's a fabrication.

5. Government jobs are just as good as private sector jobs. Another major con job concerns the attack on public employees. The greedy rich are trying to pit public and private sector workers against each other in large part because public employees still seem to have benefits the rest of us have lost (and they have unions…

6. Wall Street needs to be shrunk (until we can drown it in a bathtub.) The function of finance is simple: moving our savings into productive investments. By doing so, money supposedly moves to where it will do the most good for our economy. This function is considered so simple that most economics textbooks ignore Wall Street entirely.

Does anyone else see the irony in the use of Grover Norquist’s famous quip about government being applied by the writer, who is a champion of ‘saving’ predatory capitalism from the scrap yard of history (where it belongs.)

Perhaps not and perhaps it is this same blindness to hypocrisy that dooms us to repeat the mistakes of the past.

But I digress.

These bullet points do not constitute the whole article and my removing them from the main body of the text has likely altered their intended meaning.

Suits me fine, maybe not so much if we were to ask the writer…

Whatever.

The main thrust of this article is mis-information that is foist upon the rest of us by a ‘for profit’ media (which we need to do away with ASAP!)

Here’s a case where we see the problem but are powerless to fix it because of our ‘attachment’ to money.

It’s going to be more fucked up when we’re all starving to death thanks to ‘insufficient funds’ (which actually has nothing to do with nothing…except perhaps gross mismanagement.)

Which brings us full circle with the selective blindness thing, that which we see but choose to ‘ignore’.

Casting into doubt the assertion that ‘ignorance can be fixed’ (sometimes people don’t want to be ‘cured’.)

How about you good citizen? You are wise enough to seek counsel beyond your peer group…what you do with that counsel is entirely up to you.

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

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

Our fates are intertwined

Greetings good citizen,

I am unsure how to present this one because it poses the same problems we face when we look at the issue of what to do about the criminals running our government.

We certainly aren’t going to successfully separate money from electoral politics, we would need to create a ‘not for profit’ media to even attempt that.

More curiously, how far do you think a truly independent media organization would get before the capitalists crushed it?

Our Oligarchs (a.k.a. the >One Percent) don’t want the public informed of who is really responsible for our myriad problems!

If our oligarchs fear one thing it is a recurrence of The Terror…

With that fact firmly in mind, what are we to make of this latest exercise in ‘mental masturbation’?

As the 2012 election crests with all its chaos—billionaire-driven TV ad wars, legal fights over voter suppression tactics, endless fundraising e-mails and worries about stealing the vote—progressives need to remember what’s been destroying our democracy and what solutions are needed to restore the balance of power in America.

Now is the time to note precisely what’s wrong, what’s gotten worse and what’s completely broken in key corners of the electoral process. That’s because once the dust settles after Election Day, the impetus to fix things will wane among the political victors, media and much of the public, as it does after every big election. The winners will say there is not a problem because they won. The press will start covering the new administration. And weary voters will want to look ahead to solutions, not back to old problems.

That’s how our dysfunctional democracy may limp along until the next major election (the 2016 midterms) or a national crisis. But the first year of a presidential term is the most likely time that Congress might do anything on a big enough scale to touch the underlying problems because it’s the ebb tide in the electoral cycle.

And once again I have to sit here and contemplate why it is so difficult for the average person to understand that NONE of this will change WITHOUT A FULL BORE, BLOOD IN THE STREETS REVOLUTION!

You aren’t going to see a ‘non-profit’ press as long as the capitalists have something to hide.

C.K. Michaelson reminded me this morning that capitalists don’t have a ‘lock’ on unemployment, poverty and homelessness. The dictatorial regimes that called themselves ‘Communist’ in both Russia and China had their share as well…although it is interesting to note that the problems have gotten worse since they, er, ‘converted’ to capitalism.

At least communism nods at the notion of a shared fate. Wonder how the Chinese party brass reconciles that one to their rebelling public?

This presents a mathematical conundrum to those of us awaiting a ‘tipping point’. China has a roughly twenty percent prosperity rate with the eighty percent scraping by as subsistence farmers.

Um, is the key here the self-reliance factor, that a significant portion of the country still grows its own food?

Because we have a similar split labor force wise (considering half of our labor force is part-time) but the percentage of US citizens who are food self-sufficient is infinitesimal.

Across our ‘for profit’ culture only a tiny percentage of the population grows 100% of the food.

(Let’s not visit the issue of how much of it is grown and how much is whipped up in ‘vats’ just now…)

But let’s rewind a couple of steps to the idea of a ‘shared fate’.

This is something that the Capitalist and the Conservative both abhor and that is how our fates are 'intertwined.'

Ironically, they will be the last to admit that it is you (mostly your stupidity) that is responsible for ‘their’ success.

Your belief in their lies makes them rich!

Without you, they are nothing but common peasants, the very thing they abhor about YOU!

Worse, it is this point that they mince as proof of their ‘superiority’! YOU work for THEM! (They totally leave out the part where they sold you out to the king to obtain this envious position…no need to go there, right?)

But I digress.

Worse, I fear that even these simple concepts sail right over your heads.

There is nothing ‘natural’ about ‘the natural order of things’.

The self-important slime makes no objections to the idea of intertwined fates…as long as it is YOUR fate to SERVE them!

YOU weren’t born to be somebody else’s jackass!

Wake the fuck up, will ya?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Hail Anarchy!

Greetings good citizen,

For the longest time Anarchy has gotten a bad rap under our capitalist society…mostly because our leaders DON’T want YOU thinking and deciding for yourself!

How long would the thieves on Wall Street gone unprosecuted if YOU had something to say about it?

Wouldn’t YOU be screaming for the head of those supposed to be in charge of investigating this sort of thing?

Because under A Simple Plan you can (and will) institute action (that must be answered to!)

Not that the kind of fraud we are seeing today will even be possible under A Simple Plan but the fact that those in charge are answerable directly to ANY MEMBER of the public is a true game changer.

Um, like communism, there are many different ‘varieties’ of Anarchy, A Simple Plan is based on the ‘Rules without Rulers’ variety.

While I have been advised that my, er, ‘type’ of Anarchy is close to a variety championed by Bakunin (who was executed by the Bolsheviks) I am unfamiliar with the specifics of Kropotkinism…

It seems that everywhere, these days, people are talking about anarchism. Now Dmitry Orlov joins the discussion with a 3-part series, “In Praise of Anarchy.” Utilizing primarily the work of the 19th century Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, Orlov argues that anarchy, rather than hierarchy, is the dominant pattern in nature, that hierarchical organizations ultimately end in collapse, and that the impending collapse of the capitalist industrial system presents an opportunity for the emergence of anarchism.

Orlov,(aka kollapsnik at Club Orlov), is probably best-known for his book, Reinventing Collapse, in which he compares the collapse of the Soviet Union with the imminent collapse of the United States. Russian-born Orlov is in a unique position to make such comparisons. He immigrated to the USA when he was twelve years old, and, as an adult, made numerous trips back to the former USSR in the years immediately following the collapse of its political and economic system.

With a wry Russian wit I find immensely attractive, Orlov describes in Reinventing Collapse how people in the USSR were better positioned than are Americans for economic collapse. For example, most Soviet citizens did not own their homes; instead they lived in state-owned dwellings. When the USSR collapsed, they simply remained where they were and nobody evicted them. Compare that with the United States, where people were seduced into signing questionable mortgage agreements for outrageously priced homes, and where, since the economic crisis of 2008, 3 million have been foreclosed upon.

Unhelpfully, this article goes on to compare life in ‘post-communist’ Russia with living conditions in the US just after the collapse of the financial markets.

What this has to do with Anarchy is unclear…although the writer points to Orlov’s background as a naturalist and his observations on nature to reinforce the concepts of Anarchy…

Much like this video explores Darwinism as a justification for the excesses of capitalism…

The video is an hour long and provides a curious window into the mindset that brought us the original Great Depression…

I have not visited ‘Club Orlov’ and it remains unclear whether or not Alternet will run the remainder of the series…I am assuming they skipped the first installment as this one seems to indicate it is the ‘middle’ piece.

I have to give Orlov credit though, he states the Darwin (actually Spencer’s) term ‘survival of the fittest’ is merely the fastest route to extinction…which is to point out that ‘fitness’ has many more aspects to it than the fitness of the individual.

Man’s success is predicated on his ability to pull together with other members of his species to achieve larger goals and to overcome other, more virulent competitors.

So this ‘survival of the fittest’ bullshit has actually had a dampening effect on our social development…so a few could be rich.

Which leaves us to ponder how we protect the bulk of our species from the few self-centered enough to betray the trust of the rest?

I posit that the best preventative here is to place the levers of power beyond the reach of the self-interested…which is what *A Simple Plan does.

[* Part of the testing feature that governs advancement also measures the candidate’s moral compass. You can ace the technical aspects but if your moral compass is broken, you will NOT advance.]

Most psycho paths believe others are ‘too stupid’ to know they are being played…this is a shortcoming in the psychopath…because everyone KNOWS who is a few fries shy of a Happy Meal and that they need to be watched.

The only ones the psycho is fooling is themselves. Everybody else has a ‘good idea’ something’s wrong with the clever guy who talks down to everyone…

But I digress…

This is supposed to be an opportunity to talk up anarchy, and idea whose time is long overdue!

I designed A Simple Plan with certain laws already in place so we could avoid having the ‘I didn’t vote for that’ bullshit that some people will engage in regardless.

The idea was to lay down a framework that enabled us to vote on the laws we want without having to hold critical ballots that preserve our freedoms…like the Human Anti-Exploitation Law.

It’s so basic you can only marvel why it isn’t already a law…but then you take a quick look around and you know the answer.

It’s a ‘choice’ those who are screwing you left and right DON’T want YOU to have.

With that one law as the cornerstone of our new civilization, everything else falls into place.

There is also a law about new proposed laws that forbids legislation that isn’t ‘universal’ in nature.

Which is to say it prevents stupid laws like ‘Only white people can vote’…

Or only the military can be armed…

Seriously good citizen, you have to be extremely careful with what you prohibit.

Protecting the few at the expense of the rest is a recipe for tyranny.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Listen Carefully:

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Saturday! (The idiot stock markets are closed so we needn’t trouble ourselves with their irrational gyrations for a couple of days anyway.

Probably a good thing that we are spared this nonsense on the weekends or our heads might truly explode.

But that doesn’t apply to all of us. The ‘new economy’ (retail focused) is a 24/7 enterprise.

It is only a matter of time before the buying and selling of financial securities transitions to a 24/7 activity.

(How sad is it that the markets will crash if they even attempt it?)

But no matter; because we are racing towards a time when it will all be like it was for time out of mind and there won’t be ANY financial markets at all.

But I digress.

The topic of tonight’s post isn’t the financial markets but how those who own them benefit the most from them…and how one individual proposes that we change all that…

There are three categories of policy changes that we need: rules and policies that raise the floor, those that level the playing field, and those that break up over-concentrations of wealth and corporate power. These are not hard-and-fast categories, but a useful framework for grouping different rule changes.

1.Rule changes that raise the floor

• Ensure the minimum wage is a living wage
• Provide universal health care
• Enforce basic labor standards and protections

2. Rule changes that level the playing field

• Invest in education
• Reduce the influence of money in politics
• Implement fair trade rules

3. Rule changes that break up wealth and power

• Tax the 1 percent
• Rein in CEO pay
• Stop corporate tax dodging
• Reclaim our financial system
• Reengineer the corporation
• Redesign the tax revenue system

Um, I keep repeating this but apparently nobody listens (and why should they?)

THERE IS NO WAY TO FIX CAPITALISM USING CAPITALISM.

Error number one here is the word tax. If you need taxes to finance your society, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!

How does, er, ‘Zippy’ propose to insure that the minimum wage is (and remains) ‘a living wage’?

A Simple plan accomplishes this by making housing and utilities a ‘gimme’, they are both your ‘rights' as a citizen. You only need money for food and clothing and to compete for little ‘extras’ like seats at entertainment venues and for meals at a hospitality facility.

Um, then there’s the ‘traveling’ piece of the puzzle. Good shoe leather will command a premium because walking will be everybody’s primary mode of transportation.

Each region will deal with the transport issue in ways that make sense for that area (although I can GUARANTEE YOU that a 400 Hp 4X4 will NOT be one of them.)

Personal transportation will become a rarity reserved for ‘special needs/situations’.

Which, tangentially, will help to address the nation’s obesity epidemic (said the three hundred pound moose!)

Wanna ‘see the world?’ Join the fucking Navy! (Or at least the merchant Marine.)

Universal healthcare is also a ‘gimme’ under A Simple Plan…but Bobo doesn’t say how he proposes to enact and enforce ‘universal health and safety standards’…the lack of which accounts for much of the pretense of the cheaper there.

I’ll tell you how this happens under A Simple Plan, Bobo no longer ‘owns’ the company so he no longer gets to ‘dictate’ how it is run!

Then he goes on to repeat one of the oldest ‘talking points’ there is, the ‘invest in education’ bullshit.

Under A Simple plan you learn on the job, the way they used to do it!

Everybody will literally ‘apprentice’ in their given field of endeavor and you won’t have these disastrous ‘misunderstandings’ that are born of miscommunications in the educational process.

You will learn and you won’t advance until you can pass a test on the material!

Thinking about bribing the guy giving the test?

You can’t…your money is for you, and you don’t have any cash…nor is there any way to transfer funds between individuals.

So Bobo’s last proposal, stiff taxes on ‘inherited wealth’ is also a non-starter…

Because under A Simple Plan, when you die your money dies WITH YOU! Your account is erased, nobody gets it!

I’ll bet your thinking…hmmn. Shame that nobody gets that money…maybe if I worked in the book keeping end of the organization I could, er, ‘skim off’ a little bit of the money into an alias that I happen to have…who’d know?

Um the system is self-checking AND if you are caught ‘buttering your own bread’ it is ‘automatic exile’ for you!

Oh, and don’t get me wrong. I suspect there will be numerous ‘accountant types’ who will be convicted of stealing from society and will pay the price…but that’s only ‘human nature’.

Again, Bobo makes the mistake of treating a legal problem as if it were a tax problem and you can’t solve the problem if you don’t attack it at the root!

Here’s my ‘sales pitch’ one more time:

If you want YOUR KID to grow up free in a society where they will be equal to everyone else then A Simple Plan is for YOU!

Now, if you’re hopelessly stupid and think your kid is better than everyone else, knock yourself out and listen to idiots who can’t even get the problem right!

If you don’t start at the beginning you won’t end up in the right place.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Mutual Feelings

Greetings good citizen,

In case you were wondering, it’s NOT ‘just you’ (that suspects the world is operating against its own best interests.)

People in other parts of the world are experiencing the exact same thing, which results in a variety of ‘disillusionment’ we see displayed here:

QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"I used to think the army was to defend the country and resist and fight the Western projects in the Middle East. My conclusion, after that, was that we were serving in an army that does not protect its own people."

JAMAL ABU HOURAN, a former Syrian soldier who joined the rebels fighting the government in April.

Makes you wonder just how many US service people would echo that exact same sentiment…

And when the time comes, how many of them will join the rebels for precisely the same reason?

Life With Syria's Rebels in a Cold and Cunning War
By C. J. CHIVERS

A rebel group presents a cross-section of a nation in upheaval – an accountant, real estate agent, farmers and laborers who have taken up arms believing their time has come.

Which returns us to a more complex question, good citizen. How do you know when it’s ‘time’?

We all have the sneaking suspicion that when you’re running for cover you’ll have missed that “I should have been ready for this” moment.

Meaning most of us won’t know it’s ‘time’ until after the fact. This also means the decision to act will be made ‘for us’.

The question, naturally is ‘who will make this choice for us?’

And the answer to that question is simple, if you’ve been paying attention.

Who the hell has been trying to exterminate us?

Short answer, the > One Percent.

What is this tiny group’s most potent tool?

The Corporate owned media.

Who represents this group’s ‘boots on the ground’?

The GOP (and to a lesser extent the DNC.)

So ironically it will ‘probably’ start as a clash between the Tea Party and the OWS movement.

And you have to wonder…what happened to the leaderless, causeless ‘movement’?

Was the ‘we don’t like what’s going on’ (but we offer no alternatives) movement die of ‘lack of interest’?

How fucked up is it good citizen that they go as far as drawing attention to the 99% then they sit on it?

We’re going to ‘occupy’ (space) until you arrogant assholes straighten up and fly right!

And we all saw how THAT worked out, didn’t we.

We’re especially thankful for the raises we all got because the 99% ‘flexed its muscles’…or not.

But I digress…

What about this ‘rebel spirit’ that is sweeping the Arab nations of the world?

The Corporate owned media is calling it the ‘cry for democracy’…but those of us living under so-called ‘democratic societies’ know it must be something else because those people won’t be any better off if the current government steps down.

Like the tune says: ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!’

Isn’t that the lesson currently being taught to the Egyptians?

You can stick whatever face you like at the top, so long as that face goes along with the ‘Status quo.’

How fucking sad is it good citizen that the (currently running unopposed) incumbent US president is the exact same deal?

Which brings to mind the question of, ‘how wise is it put a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ remark like the one above most of the way through a 3 page essay?

As for the other ‘rhetorical questions’ asked here, it truly doesn’t matter who shoots who first. There WILL be blood and the best estimates at the moment dictate there will be lots of it.

Some of it innocent; but the bulk will be those who richly deserve it.

A little ‘read between the lines’ here…disregard what you see on the corporate owned media, it’s mostly bullshit anyway.

The real question is how long do these morons think they can keep a lid on things?

Are we really going to see a test of the principle, ‘you can only control that which you can destroy’?

Probably…and more the pity because these blackguards hallmark has been ubiquitous waste!

But freedom never comes cheap…a lesson that needs to be relearned repeatedly.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Eye-Opener

Greetings good citizen,

Unemployment is up, sales are down, the stock market is up and nobody knows why…we can only guess this may have something to do with astounding failure of the justice system to find ANY criminal wrongdoing throughout the financial sector. The debacle at MF Global being the latest disaster to be ‘swept under the rug’.

In a tiny ‘change of pace’ I have selected today’s top three headlines rather than the top stories out of the business section…just to demonstrate where the corporate owned media’s priorities are at:

Despite Alarm by U.S., Europe Lets Hezbollah Operate Openly
By NICHOLAS KULISH

Washington and Jerusalem insist Hezbollah is a resurgent terrorist group with Iranian backing, but the European Union treats it as a Lebanese social and political movement.

Weird how this one lends itself to the old ‘consider the source’ axiom. The warmongering whackos at the Pentagon and their Middle Eastern branch office believe EVERYBODY living near the Saudi Peninsula are card carrying members of Al Queida!

(At least that’s the assumption behind the drone strikes being carried out over there!)

If we were to lend any credibility to the claims of Hezbollah being a terrorist group we would first have to admit that the Republicans are Hezbollah’s US equivalent.

If we were to consider that it is Republican filibuster that is keeping the drone air strike program going, we might even have to conclude they are MORE DANGEROUS than a civic organization that promotes the rights of Muslims.

But that’s just a ‘perspective’, good citizen. You’re left to decide on your own if everyone who wears a turban is a threat to you and your children…or if the ‘clear and present danger’ isn’t the oil market-manipulating capitalists?

Um, Why bring it up if it wasn’t one of today’s top headlines…

No Criminal Case Is Likely in Loss at MF Global
By AZAM AHMED and BEN PROTESS

Investigators are expected to conclude that sloppiness, not criminal intent, was the main driver behind the disappearance of customer money.

Seriously? They’re wheeling out the old ‘incompetence defense’ after they hacked away decades of regulations and bought off the inspectors?

The act of ‘legalizing’ these crimes is a crime itself! There are battalions of lawyers who should be disbarred for their part in laying the groundwork for the inevitable collapse of our civilization, but no!

It is all being chalked up to ‘incompetence and sloppy procedures!’

Could the same be said of the Justice Department’s ‘failure to prosecute’?

Again, that is for YOU to decide…

Lastly, we have yet another ‘disturbing disconnect’ on display:

Years After Haiti Quake, Safe Housing Is a Dream for Many
By DEBORAH SONTAG

Two and a half years after the earthquake, the pressing need for safe, stable housing for all displaced people in Haiti remains unmet, despite billions of dollars in reconstruction aid.

I believe, statistically speaking, the western half of Hispanola (commonly referred to as Haiti) remains the most (officially) impoverished place on the planet.

Unfortunately there are a multitude of contenders for ‘second place’ here in our capitalism dominated world.

Haiti is, and has been ‘characterized’ as being a bastion of ‘shocking poverty’ so it is, er, ‘disingenuous’ to imply, as this headline does, that there ever was an abundance of ‘safe stable homes’ on Haiti.

Part of the reason why the earthquake was so destructive is due to there being no building codes to speak of over there.

Haiti is the poster child for your classic Banana Republic.

A relative handful live in the lap of luxury while the majority struggles with shocking poverty.

As close as I can tell, fundraising efforts are still ongoing to provide relief…but as the article points out, relief remains virtually non-existent, despite billions being donated.

But that’s the way Banana Republics operate, billions up top, crumbs at the bottom.

Looks suspiciously like the way things operate over here in the US, don’t they?

The >One Percenters have more than they can spend while the rest of us jump through hoops, struggling to keep our heads above water with paychecks that don’t crack our expenses…

But that’s our problem, isn’t it?

Well, I’m ready to put this ‘wake up call’ in the can (with all the rest.)

Take a good look around you and TRY to be honest with yourself about what you see.

If you don’t see a society on the edge, you gotta lay off the Kool Aide (or the Prozac, pick one!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Buckle Up!

Greetings good citizen,

Seems to be something about the ‘kill off’ message that readers find too disturbing to contemplate.

Which is sort of a shame because finding it ‘distasteful’ doesn’t lessen the likelihood of it happening a single iota.

Make no mistake about it good citizen, YOU are being ‘undermined’ at every critical juncture. Every aspect of your life is being flushed away so you WON’T have a crack at the ‘mating game’…even if it’s just to scratch your itch.

(Because we have to face the reality that most kids are conceived not when we’re calling the stork but when we’re getting our freak on! By the time most of us get around to actually calling the stork, the doctor is needed to lend a ‘helping hand’. Do you know a married couple who ISN’T in a fertility program? And for some bizarre reason THIS is NOT NEWS!)

But we digress, let us proceed with today’s offering

Feelings of decreased self-worth and desirability go hand-in-hand with job insecurity—and they make you feel about as alluring as an Uglydoll. The 2011 blockbuster film Bridesmaids follows the sexual and romantic mishaps of Annie Walker, a 30-something woman who lost her bakery in the Great Recession and finds herself working at a dead-end retail job at a jewelry store that makes her feel miserable. And even that goes down the tubes when she mocks the relationship commitments of customers. Annie hooks up with jerks and feels unworthy of a nice guy when he finally comes along. Her mojo returns only when she begins to see the possibility of restarting her business. For her, meaningful work and a satisfying love life are indissolubly linked.

Our bodies –and our hearts -- were not made to cope with long-term job insecurity. To fully open ourselves to the right person and let go physically, we need a measure of safety in our lives. But three consecutive years of unemployment over 8 percent – the worst such run since the Great Depression – is leaving us fearful and forlorn. Shredded social safety nets and weak bonds of community and kinship mean that there’s little to mute the intensity of anxiety that never seems to fade.

It’s even worse than it seems good citizen, the kids are being told that we did this to them ‘on purpose’, that we gave birth to them solely so we could collect our ‘entitlement programs’.

Another reason we should ‘cap’ all registered Republicans on sight.
What a viscous fucking lie to tell our kids! (But it is sadly consistent with everything else these deluded bastards do!)

Minds that can only hate have no time or room for thinking.

Which is to point out it would be mighty fucking stupid of us to have all of these kids then EXPORT all of their jobs! (So Wally-Mart could charge ‘lower prices’ by paying less than a living wage in a third world economy based of rampant fraud!)

Worse, this practice has destabilized the global economy…and the fuckers (think) they are going to just sit there and snicker when it all implodes.

(I think the ones who aren’t smart enough to run should be killed where we find them!)

Not that the responsible parties are particularly obvious.

It will take some research to ferret out the people behind Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’…that robs us all blind!

Anyway, stock markets around the globe are bleeding red ink (again) and nobody is ‘surprised’ except stock analysts but that’s what their paid to do…

How nice is it, being paid to be Mickey the Dunce?

Stock markets should be shut down tomorrow and all of the operators tried for treason and crimes against humanity.

But that’s just my opinion.

And almost nobody gives a flying fig what I think…more or less.

Anyway good citizen, I’ve got crap to do and people to comfort in the hour of their loss…yes, the ‘death watch’ ended this morning. She’s gone to a better place!

Hold a place in your heart for a moment for the good souls who pass through our lives too quickly.

Only the good die young, the rest of us had best buckle up, it’s gonna be a long, bumpy ride!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Capitalism 2.0

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do YOU see ANYTHING ‘new’?

Short answer, no.

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

Yup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How fucking stupid can you get?

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

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

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

So what’s left?

Fucking whacko Libertarians! (Pretending to be Democrats)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to the subject at hand.

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

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

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

The ‘answers’ lie within A Simple Plan

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Educated

Greetings good citizen,

More basic than the state of our economy is the state of academic accomplishment in our (rapidly crumbling) society.

Hey, it’s not new and it’s not hidden. You can view ads on TV that show the US 17th in math and 25th in Science…(worldwide standing)

And what’s the ‘major malfunction’ here?

The official reason is not enough ‘qualified teachers’!

Why do you suppose that is, good citizen?

Could it be the same reason nobody in the US studies engineering. They’re all studying to be lawyers or stockbrokers…with a smattering of accountants trying to get a leg up into the financial sector…

How sad is it good citizen that none of those jobs ‘go begging’? Sadder still is the meat-grinder that passes for the path to partnership in law firms NOT OWNED by YOUR family.

This is what capitalism and the, er, ‘contest’ to line your own pockets with as much as you can, as quickly as possible results in.

You end up with more lawyers than the system can use and not enough teachers.

Yet nobody faults this basic flaw of capitalism, especially those seeking the best legal representation ‘money can buy’.

[I digress to point out that everybody knows, in corrupt times like these that ‘legal talent’ is virtually indistinguishable from ‘political connectedness’. The more ‘grease’ you have, the higher the likelihood of a judgement being in YOUR favor…]

So what of our crumbling educational system that the anti-tax conservatives seem bent on choking to death?

They DON’T give a fuck; they’ll send THEIR kids to ‘private school’.

And finally: critical thinking is the birthright of every American. We should not aspire to a feudal society where only the elites are taught to think independently, evaluate evidence, weigh complex factors, and make informed decisions. But it will become one -- in just a generation or two -- if we stop making this the foundational competence delivered by our educational system. A democracy in which a majority of people are no longer capable of basic critical thinking skills cannot remain a democracy very long.

Our educational system is a product of our deepest values. And the battles we're having now are, very directly, battles over what we believe is possible in America, and what kind of country we want to be 20 years from now. The conservatives are not wrong: for 150 years, the schools have been the leading promoter and disseminator of progressive values. They are now doing their best to dismantle that system, and replace it with one that produces followers, subjects and serfs.

What is education for? We won't even be a contender in this fight until we're committed to our own clear, coherent, values-based answer to that question. How we answer it will shape the country's future.

Our schools system already SUCKS (thanks to deeply mis-guided motivations of capitalism…which, ironically isn’t taught ‘in-depth’ in ANY school system!)

Then there is the other ‘cornerstone’ of a ‘free society’. A society incapable of making decisions for itself is doomed to follow the decisions of the self-interested, regardless of the consequences or competence.

Worse, we already know that conservative ideology is base on belief that has no basis in fact, so their decision-making capability is, by default, disastrous!

Look at the two ‘wars of choice’ conservatives have spent trillions on and still can’t define what ‘victory’ looks like!

Not to put too fine a point on it but a conservative decision has become synonymous with being a ‘wrong’ decision.

How do you like your stacked conservative deck in November’s elections now?

The more we re-visit this topic (November Elections) the more irksome it becomes.

IF we’re ‘lucky’ they won’t happen…although I use the term ‘lucky’ in the broadest possible context.

If elections DON’T HAPPEN this November it will likely be because we are locked in battle to decide the future of Western Civilization, a battle we can’t afford to lose.

But I digress, let us return to the often-overlooked (despite constant media attention) education system.

Where, once again, we see conservative ‘tax relief’ efforts gutting the funding from public education.

As one might expect, the bone-headed conservative position is that our kids are ‘too stupid’, which is why they test so poorly…as opposed to the real reason our schools suck, because of the warped values of the capitalist system.

A system where people who ‘manipulate’ money are paid more than the people who actually produce a product or provide a service (like education or healthcare…)

Not that our healthcare system doesn’t cost us dearly…but again, thanks to the perverted values of capitalism, a bulk of the cost goes to paying investors!

The ‘incentive’ to become a teacher doesn’t exist (just as the incentive to become a doctor in today’s litigious society is decidedly negative!)

Understand, teachers these days make a pretty darn good paycheck as opposed to what they’d get in the private sector as a ‘grunt’…but the private sector doesn’t have a ‘continuing Ed’ requirement to keep your education credentials current.

Worse, the private sector has all but disappeared.

And the public sector is seriously under-funded as a result.

BUT, if your scholastic record is, er, ‘strong’, why wouldn’t you take a shot at becoming a lawyer or a banker? (Although those jobs aren’t going begging anymore…)

And with student loans becoming increasingly toxic, more students will be ‘forced’ into the still highly competitive market for educators.

As the tax pool shrinks to nothing, educators jobs will compete with police and fire jobs on the local budget.

How will you kids learn if the library is only open a couple of hours a week, if at all?

The battle lines were drawn long ago, good citizen, why are you still reluctant to fight?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Table Stakes

Greetings good citizen,

Nothing like starting the day with a quick peek at the world’s markets, just to see how things are going.

Naturally, with the massive sell-off of the past few days, we have ‘bargain hunters’ scouring the world’s exchanges, converting other people’s trash into their ‘treasure’.

(When we all know what we’re actually seeing is major players buying back their own stocks at bargain basement prices!)

Buyers Drive Wall Street Higher
By REUTERS 10:06 AM ET

Stocks on Wall Street rose in morning trading as a recent string of losing sessions sent investors looking for bargains.

Why aren’t these same ‘bargain hunters’ letting prices fall further?

(Weirdly, the answer is that without high stock valuations, these idiots are broke!)

I find it doubtful that investors are being ‘encouraged’ by this misleading economic report…

U.S. Jobless Claims Fall, Trade Deficit Widens
By REUTERS 9:40 AM ET

New claims for unemployment benefits in the United States edged down last week, while the United States trade deficit widened in March, the government reported.

The ‘drop’ in new claims is, er, ‘inevitable’ as the pace of ‘shrinkage’ slows…but make no mistake about it, we are still losing more jobs than we are creating!

And that idea doesn’t factor in the increasing tendency to ‘automate’ jobs away.

In our favor is the coming energy scarcity, where ‘automating’ work will become cost prohibitive…but much worse will happen before we flip that card over.

Finally we encounter this little gem, where the consumer has been added as a ‘afterthought’:

Bernanke Says Lending Spigots Are More Open Now
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 35 minutes ago

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday that many businesses and consumers are finding it easier to borrow as banks shore up their balance sheets.

Um, considering how a vast majority of the populace is NOT creditworthy we are left to wonder just WHO Mr. Bernanke is throwing wide the treasury vault doors open for?

Could it be the > One Percent?

The degree of ‘mismanagement’ on display since this whole charade began is clearly treasonous (and should be prosecuted as such…if we could find a single member of the legal community untainted by the corruption that pervades the entire industry…from Law School on up, to bring it to trial…

How fortunate is it good citizen that when push comes to shove, it is NOT the legal industry OR the ‘government’ that embodies the power of law.

No good citizen, 'We the People', ARE The Law!

NOT the guy with the badge.

NOT the guy with the robe.

YOU!

YOU ARE THE LAW!

How fucking sad is it that the criminals have used the clown with the robe and his tin-starred sidekick to ‘steal’ the law away from you?

The ‘honorable gentlemen’ of the law have lifted it beyond your feeble grasp…because you were unfit to wield it wisely.

How friggin’ sad is it that those who stole the law from you have proven even more unfit to safeguard it?

Well, good citizen, time has shown that we have arrived once again at a point where we must pluck the law from the greedy hands of the self-serving and place it beyond their reach…forever!

Thus are the fruits of revolution preserved!

Because history also shows that the law is quickly snatched back from the control of the many and returned to the self-interested few all too soon after a social upheaval.

That’s why A Simple Plan places the law beyond the reach of the self-interested (didn’t know there was an ‘upside’ to this ‘direct democracy’ thing, did you?)

The laws, (even the slightest of them) cannot be altered without a supermajority vote of the general public…regardless of the circumstances.

Which is to direct your attention back to the ‘Why’ our civilization is falling apart.

The criminals would have you think it is YOUR fault, that YOU weren’t willing to ‘pay the price’ for civil society.

When the truth is their ‘theft of justice’ is the reason civilization itself is collapsing.

We are living with the results of ‘justice for a few’ (at the expense of the rest) right now.

Until we repair this ‘breach’ in the social contract, our species is doomed.

Thems is ‘the stakes’ good citizen, whether you likes ‘em or not.

Thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Crisis

Greetings good citizen,

Sick to death of riding the media see-saw that tells you the ‘recovery’ is chugging along with one breath while reporting there are no jobs with the next?

As much as they’d love to have it both ways we all know it is one or the other…

Here are two headlines from today’s Business section:

Jobs Few, Grads Flock to Unpaid Internships
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

In a weak job market, many college graduates are taking unpaid internships that fail to deliver on their promises of experience by offering little more than menial work.

A Gateway to a Career Through Volunteering
By EILENE ZIMMERMAN

Public service work can be a gateway to careers and gives new graduates time to consider options and learn about themselves.

Geez Louise, what’s wrong with this picture?

Working for no pay sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

I completely understand the ‘paying it forward’ concept and getting a leg up on the competition by making yourself the best candidate for a position that may or may not materialize sometime in the fairly murky future…maybe.

Which assumes Mom and Dad can afford to put you up indefinitely (even putting off their own retirement) until YOU get ‘situated’.

Works for Bill and Linda…probably works for Warren as well (heck didn’t he already gift HIS kids with a billion a piece?)

Naturally the part that sticks in one’s craw here is the idea of making oneself ‘valuable’ to an employer (despite having gone hundreds of thousands of dollars into hock to learn a skill that numbnuts is unwilling to pay you full measure for!)

I mean. What’s the point? Why not just go out there and start your own venture?

But wait a minute…can’t do that can you…because there’s no such thing as ‘capitalist utopia’.

There isn’t enough ‘market share’ to go around…

Which presents us with another damning problem…the extreme ‘mismanagement’ of the income distribution.

How many workers does it take to make a single billionaire?

Because, believe it or not, there is a ‘co-relation’…dependent on what you’re selling.

Certain endeavors are incapable of creating even a single billionaire, which is why most billionaires have their fingers a many pies.

And without exception, ALL Billionaires are only billionaires ‘on paper’, it’s their stock holdings that make they, er, ‘rich’…and we know what a sham the stock market is.

Forgive the ‘tangent’ good citizen but very subject of the ‘uber wealthy’ makes my blood boil…in ‘a just society’ they wouldn’t exist at all!

They truly are ‘slavers’.

It is easy to see that very existence of the ‘privileged few’ is fostered by a corrupt justice system!

In this respect, the US has been a fraud from the outset! (Although it could be argued that the founders truly didn’t know better and it was a major victory that they resisted the traditional route of naming a new king.)

Yes, conditions were ‘different’ two and a half centuries ago and we can’t be too hard on the comparatively ignorants who established what has since devolved into a cluster-fuck.

Methinks the fact that the US is the OLDEST established government on the planet is a damning indictment in itself.

And the ‘status quo’ really doesn’t like the idea of changing horses with such an ‘enlightened’ public to ‘win over’.

Nope, won’t do at all.

It used to take days to learn what we now get instantly.

The old ‘too bad we didn’t know that last month’ worked out quite handily for the founders way back when.

Today they have to ‘buy’ silence and it has become quite expensive.

Most ‘information workers’ are kept in check with their paychecks. The editors play hardball with them and dictate, quite specifically, what they are looking for.

If a reporter want to keep their paycheck coming they will do what the guy who has the power to squash them tells them to do.

But sometimes the story ‘gets away’ from how the spin-doctors want it handled…and now we have a game of blackmail on our hands.

Not that there is a chance in hell of a story getting past the copy editors…but (and largely despite ‘syndication’) there are still other outlets who would be glad to ‘scoop’ the major players.

The problem is even those ‘fringe’ players have to be careful of what they run with.

Most of what you hear is ‘speculation’, but it is ‘sanctioned speculation’. It’s what the players WANT YOU TO KNOW (actually ‘think’.) It doesn’t have to be true, it only needs to be ‘credible’.

Thus are you always the ‘dupe’, lied to at every turn with no possibility of escape…or so they would have you think!

Rewind with me back to the beginning, good citizen.

Unpaid internships and volunteering WILL NOT solve the ‘employment crisis’ our entire civilization is faced with!

Our civilization is based on cheap and abundant energy, the problem we have now is the cheap and abundant energy of the future doesn’t have a reliable point of sale (meaning the status quo can’t go forward!)

How do you ‘extend’ the reign of the existing order?

By eliminating as much of the ‘surplus population’ as possible…

Don’t ask chuckle-head how he will sort out the surplus from the valuable, he will likely answer something as simplistic as how many commas they have next to their ‘net worth’ estimate…or whether or not they even have a Dunn & Bradstreet rating.

Stupid is as stupid does…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner