Indebted

Greetings good citizen,

Took a mental health day yesterday but the madness just keeps on coming…with the difference being I didn’t write about it.

Hopefully today’s topic will prove therapeutic. Instead of just pointing to the problem, today I’m also going to provide the solution!

So we begin with something that has been drummed into your head since childhood, the concept of ‘debt’…and how others take advantage of this ‘mis-education’.

Thought debtor prison ended in the 18th century? Think again.
February 3, 2013 |

Editor's note: America has a long history of treating the poor like criminals, from legislation banning the transportation of poor people across state lines to anti-vagrancy laws that could land you in jail if you didn't have a job or a home. We've come to rely on the criminal justice system to deal with the poor, even as more and more Americans fall into poverty. The following is part of a series that looks at the diverse ways poverty is criminalized in America, such as laws targeting the homeless, the surveillance of welfare recipients, the re-emergence of debtor's prisons, and extreme policing tactics like stop-and-frisk.

Let’s consider for a moment something you have been taught was impossible, imagine (if you can) a world without debt.

It actually should be easy to do. MOTHER NATURE DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER!

The (alleged) ‘owner’ of resources doesn’t have to pay for them so why should you?

(Stupid question, the owner makes his money selling what you need to you! (If nobody needs it what’s the point in owning it? Talk about carts and horses!)

EVERYTHING ON THIS PLANET is ‘free’…but it is not ‘infinite’…and that’s where they get you!

Money is the ‘regulator’ that is supposed to insure everybody gets their ‘fair share’…but that’s not how it works, does it?

Especially when money is used to ‘penalize’.

[Note: This can get real confusing quite quickly so I’m going to intentionally keep the variables to a minimum.]

The truly insidious part comes in when pay is linked to the ‘class’ of a worker as opposed to the kind of work they do.

A woman is paid less than a man and a colored is paid less than a white.

When neither one has anything to do with anything except the prejudices of (…mostly, the personnel department!) Why they are not prosecuted for their crimes remains a mystery…

But the desperate need to redefine the term criminal is the subject of another essay!

Possibly the next essay.

So debt is created when one’s source of income does not meet one’s needs. Which makes for a pretty damning statistic when 45% of the nation’s households qualify for and receive SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance…program.)

But this isn’t the EMPLOYER’S problem…it’s YOURS! (For not preventing the employers from buying the politicians...)

And no, that time I didn’t digress.

So who among us treats you like a criminal if you owe them money? It’s the employer’s financial partner, the Banker.

Now the employer owns the politician and the banker owns the employer…which makes for a pretty ‘unholy alliance’ doesn’t it? Remember the politicians control public servants and public servants control the justice system along with who does (or doesn’t) become a judge.

Does anyone else see a problem here…considering current ‘conditions on the ground’?

So how do we solve this ‘daisy-chained’ problem? Lawyers are Judge wannabes and politicians are nothing more than greedy actors and bankers…let’s not go there because there’s no ‘reason’ behind a bankers actions that can’t be chalked up to a single motivation…greed.

Because money makes this whole circus go round, how do we put the brakes on this rampant corruption?

We put an end to ‘elected officials’. They only exist to keep YOU out of the decision making loop!

Now let’s ‘solve’ the debt problem (and unemployment while we’re at it.)

Since the ‘purpose of commerce’ is to provide ‘the public’ (and that means ‘all’ of the public) with the goods and services it needs to live as comfortably as possible. (Yeah, my definition is a little more ‘generous’ than the typical ‘more for me’ capitalist is comfortable with. But that’s what we’re trying to solve, isn’t it?)

Debt should be (and will become under A Simple Plan) illegal. You won’t be able to pay anyone for anything because there won’t be any cash to pay them with.

Which is to point out that we would also ‘solve’ crime in one fell swoop and marvel at why we didn’t do it sooner…and the method is to outlaw ‘cash’ and all of its ‘substitutes’.

If you’re caught using ‘script’ you’ll be exiled.

IOU’s, Walnuts, acorns, seashells…they’ll all buy you a one way trip to the badlands if you’re caught trading them! (Just don’t do it.)

YOUR MONEY IS FOR YOU! You will be paid to do what you do by the profession you have chosen to work for…just as EVERYBODY ELSE will be paid by their profession SO THERE’S NO NEED FOR YOU TO PAY THEM TOO!

The proverbial ‘stack of lumber’ will be a ‘gimme’. Maintained by the people who do that for a living…at no cost to you!

How can we do this? MOTHER NATURE DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER! It’s all FREE!

We do what we do because it needs doing…why oh why should we allow a few pinheads to get rich while the rest of us bust our backsides to make ends meet?

And it all starts with throwing the politicians out of office! [I’m all for making the lot of ‘em ‘take the walk’ too but throwing them out and making them all get honest jobs SHOULD BE punishment enough.]

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Hand Selected and Spoon Fed

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Deep Sigh…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two guys who both answer to the same masters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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

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

Sameness

Greetings good citizen,

Despite my gloomiest prognostications it seems we have survived yet another year (with our communications grid intact, many will ‘survive’ the collapse of civilization brought on by the collapse of global banking.)

So when I say we survived, I mean our ability to personally share our observations survived.

When we are plunged into a world of rumors and hearsay we will long for the days when the Corporate media at least colluded regarding what the ‘official lie’ was. My first novel is centered on what living in this type of ‘informational void’ would be like.

(Jeez, take a day off and your focus goes straight to hell!)

Anyway, it is coming up on time to reflect on the year almost past, and what a year it has been.

Once again a war has ended (but a military ‘presence’ will likely persist for decades.)

It is perhaps more remarkable to comment on the multitude of things that DIDN’T happen.

Let’s start with after four years of political frustration, the alleged winners of the last presidential election have failed to recruit a stronger candidate…although, pathetically, the so-called ‘opposition’ continues to suffer from a curious mixture of schizophrenia and failure to launch…

Then there’s the ‘elephant in the room’ of a failed economy that nobody has done anything to correct…(except throw trillions in ‘free money’ at the banking system…which the shameless bastards turn around and use to award themselves billions in ‘bonuses’.)

Perhaps the root of this dilemma lies with the concept of when a bonus is due…someone needs to stand up and patiently explain to the bankers that it isn’t proper to reward failure/incompetence.

Naturally, it is difficult (if not impossible) to explain anything to the ‘Masters of the Universe’…

Sadly, this is a beast of the 1%’s making…

When ‘bonuses’ are in fact ‘hush money’ it certainly makes things look bad…but such is the level of decay in our society.

And speaking of which, nothing has been done to reverse the debilitating effects of globalization, a, er, ‘policy/methodology’ that ONLY BENEFIT’S THE OWNERS OF COMMERCE!

This variety of ‘stick ‘em up’ capitalism MUST stop or our civilization will be utterly destroyed!

And the above phrase is not intended to imply that a ‘benign’ form of capitalism even exists, all capitalism is predatory!

It is amazing to me that nobody acknowledges that the ‘true profit’ of commerce is life itself! Equating everything in dollars and cents is both meaningless as it is useless!

What needs to be done will still need to be done regardless of if anyone pays you to do it.

Worse, are those who use price as a barrier to responsible behavior!

We have no money to pay teachers but there is plenty of money to fight senseless, er, ‘police actions’ that cost the taxpayers trillions while not making us even a tiny bit ‘safer’.

There is no money to pay workers a living wage (which would boost the overall economy) but price is no object when it comes to a security apparatus that tracks our every move…

And this isn’t a problem that is ‘exclusive’ to the US…

The misappropriation of there being NO funds to improve society but unlimited funds to oppress it is a recipe for revolution…

And THAT good citizen is something else that HASN’T changed!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Why is that?

Greetings good citizen,

The world is a losing investment for those of us who don’t ‘own’ pricing power.

The few write the ticket and the rest of us pay for it…not in monetary terms but by sacrificing what we otherwise would have been entitled to.

So it should come as a surprise to no one that volatility in the markets is now the ‘new normal’ just as 9% unemployment has become the ‘new normal’ as globalization continues to rip our civilization apart.

“The best thing people could have done last month is nothing,” said Alec Young, an equity strategist at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research. “We don’t think that it’s a smart way to manage to be taking the temperature every day because you’ll be trading your portfolio till the cows come home.”

And volatility may not herald dips in prices — a study by Sam Stovall, a strategist at S.& P. Equity Research, found that markets since 1950 have typically been calm just before the highest consecutive price declines. But, he found, volatility goes up after prices start going down and the markets can remain nervous while prices recover.

Some longtime market observers attribute the skittishness to aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis.

“When there is uncertainty in the world, there is uncertainty in the market,” said James J. Angel, a professor of finance at Georgetown University. “After a big shock, it takes years for the markets to settle down.”

As of this morning the financial world was once again bleeding from the eye-sockets. There has already been one rally that ‘almost’ pushed the Dow into positive territory but it gave out and markets dropped to roughly half of their former lows.

Why? Nobody knows.

In sales we call this phenomenon ‘running out of stupid people’ but this shouldn’t happen to the stock markets because they have that foremost of market makers working for them, they are ‘the only game in town’.

They either play the game or the play makers ruin them…it’s that simple.

But that’s the ‘free markets’ for you, my way or the highway, right?

What do you mean no?

What planet did you say you were from again?

Never mind…like the theme of this piece, we’re going to take a little time to explore ’why is that?’ (across a multitude of topics so be prepared to shift mental gears…although it is, tangentially, all related.)

What do stock markets tell us in a world with a bankrupt financial system?

Short answer, nothing.

Just as I stumbled upon a video posted at Financial Armageddon this morning where some clueless fool blamed the latest ’recession’ on sub-prime lending. It’s like blaming fire on wood.

Why did the banks engage in all of that ’crazy’ lending? Because without it the Real Estate market would have collapsed and WHY would the real estate market have collapsed? Because payrolls have been completely stagnant for far too long! THERE WERE NO (too few) QUALIFIED BUYERS!

Which, ironically, is precisely where we find ourselves this very moment. NOTHING has changed.

Why have payrolls been stagnant for decades? Because ‘globalization’ removed what little ‘leverage’ workers had to demand higher pay for increases in productivity.

BOSS: “In lieu of raises this year I’m closing the plant an moving operations to China, you can all come…IF you can get a visa!

Bad news amigos, the land of a billion people don’t want you!

Make you wonder what kind of cat starves itself to death so the other cat can live high off the hog?

Is it a pragmatic cat or just a stupid one?

In my opinion the latter but time will tell, this race isn’t over yet by a long shot (and I think the ‘communist on the outside and capitalist on the inside‘ bastards have bitten off much more than they can chew.)

So, in a world on the verge of collapse, what other questions should we be asking?

How about the ‘War on Terra’? It most certainly is a bit too late start questioning the validity of the actions taken by a few crazed politicians but it will never be too late to correct them.

Um no irony should be lost on the fact that Israel ’pioneered’ the use of military force in police work. We have merely copied their example…and the civilian casualties are written off as collateral damage in the cause to keep the world safe from terrorists.

Oh and our politicians have to avoid all shiny, reflective things or they would find themselves face to face with the biggest, meanest, ugliest terrorists on the planet.

Talk about your viscous circle! If it weren’t for the bribes we pay for the ‘safe conduct’ of our convoys through Afghanistan the fucking Taliban would have gone bankrupt years ago!

Never mind what passes for Al Quida these days costs us a billion dollars a head to kill!

And every other week we kill their number two or number three operative at somebody’s wedding/funeral/birthday party.

Which is either a testament to their (much more robust than ours) chain of command or to the need to justify the murder of innocent civilians in the cause of ‘freedom’.

For our final ‘why is that’ question we return to the issue of crime and what principally constitutes ‘criminal activity’ in this bankrupt society of ours?

Isn’t the primary cause of all crime ‘adverse possession?’

In a world were everything is free from Mother Nature (not what we’re taught but indeed it is a fact) how can anybody be in possession of something that doesn’t belong to them?

Well, people don’t ‘belong’ to anyone but our fucked up government regularly deprives people of their freedom (instead of denying them membership in society, which is how it should be handled!)

What is the fundamental issue in a case of ‘adverse possession’? That the so-called ‘owner’ hasn’t been ‘paid’ for his/her property.

Why are so many people in prison if all money is (ultimately) ‘funny’?

The prison population would be EVENTUALLY reduced to zero while membership in civil society would also ‘diminish’.

Just not necessarily ‘proportionately’.

Not all crimes justify the withdrawal of membership in society.

As you can see, good citizen, it is more than just our system of government that needs replacing.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Independence Day

Greetings good citizen,

Happy Independence Day (to my US readers.) Seems ‘independence day’ is a hit or miss sort of holiday. Some places celebrate it and others don’t.

Which is to point out that in most places the celebration merely provides lip service to ideals it supposedly embodies. How those, struggling under the yoke of tyranny, can ‘celebrate’ their ‘un-freedom’ is a cruel joke.

Hell, we all enjoy the day off (and even a few of us still get it off paid!)

How sad is it that most of us don’t; not anymore?

Yet the ‘corporate shills’ still insist that adding to thirty years of corporate giveaways will turn the economy around!

On the face of it, this seems bizarre. Over the last two years profits have soared while unemployment has remained disastrously high. Why should anyone believe that handing even more money to corporations, no strings attached, would lead to faster job creation?

Nonetheless, trickle-down is clearly on the ascendant — and even some Democrats are buying into it. What am I talking about? Consider first the arguments Republicans are using to defend outrageous tax loopholes. How can people simultaneously demand savage cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and defend special tax breaks favoring hedge fund managers and owners of corporate jets? [It is becoming increasingly apparent that the R or the D after a politician’s name is meaningless.]

Well, here’s what a spokesman for Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, told Greg Sargent of The Washington Post: “You can’t help the wage earner by taxing the wage payer offering a job.” He went on to imply, disingenuously, that the tax breaks at issue mainly help small businesses (they’re actually mainly for big corporations.) But the basic argument was that anything that leaves more money in the hands of corporations will mean more jobs. That is, it’s pure trickle-down.

And for those of you too young to remember, the original champion of ‘Supply Side’ economics was that economic ignoramus himself, Ronald Reagan!

And guess what good citizen, there isn’t a business out there that has one more employee than absolutely necessary, so ALL of that ‘extra cash’ goes directly into the employer’s vault…to be distributed as a ‘bonus’ to Senior management.

I’ve already said my two cents on the subject, that every multinational corporation should have their charters revoked and every one that claims the US as it’s ‘home base’, their executive board should all be hung for treason!

Seems I’m not the only one ragging on St. Ronnie this July 4th. Just because Dimitri lives on ‘the other side of the pond’ it doesn’t make his observations any less valid:

Once the Federal Government regulated the banks and finance houses who depended on it for security, status and directions in policy. Then “The Gipper” let them off the leash. He had already come to depend on the industrial and military complex that President Eisenhower had feared.

The Bush family ran with them and the Clinton’s bought the banks and funds idea that the way to equality and diversity was lending large scale in property and consumer goods to the poor who were never going to be able to pay off the debts and therefore provided a major income stream of interest, charges and penalties to the finance houses who lent the money and backed the Clinton’s, the Bush family and later Obama.

This gets more and more complicated but the upshot is now the banks and finance houses provide personal financial security to the Senators and Congressmen who take their advice about policy, decisions and the rest from them.

Thus should Washington be totally ‘dismantled’ and replaced with an interim council that will oversee the competitions for leadership upon which division society is based.

The quicker this transition is made, the quicker the economy will ‘recover’.

Why do I make such a baseless claim?

Simple, because the ‘focus’ of the current system has been the prosperity of the owners. Under A Simple Plan the focus shifts to the prosperity of our entire society!

You will be astonished how well we all can live once we put an end to senseless greed!

And the ‘paychecks all around’ system does precisely that!

Try and play the ‘win the difference’ card and you’ll ‘win’ a one way trip to a hot and sandy hell or a frozen one…but you don’t get to pick!

It is a myth (perpetuated by the greedy few) that ‘we all aspire to great wealth’. The fact remains that the greedy few have more than they can possibly spend…so what fucking ‘good’ does it do them?

Short answer: none!

BUT the mother fuckers DON’T WANT YOU TO HAVE IT!

Just a little something to ponder as you chow down of fried chicken and watermelon!

Have a pleasant (as you can manage) fourth!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

One step closer...

Greetings good citizen,

Can you say ‘Police State’?

It was bad enough that we had cops that seemed indifferent to crime or couldn’t recognize criminal activity, but now they are being granted ‘expanded authority’!

Well, guess what’s being ‘sacrificed’ so they can exercise their expanded authority? YOUR civil rights!

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

The F.B.I. recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.

Just how far are you willing to push that ‘if you haven’t done anything wrong then you’ve got nothing to worry about’ meme?

Especially in the hands of the people who decide what is and isn’t, er, ‘wrong’.

There’s a reason why these idiots don’t prosecute bankers; but you aren’t quite so invulnerable, are you?

Most FBI agents are lawyers (so not busting bankers is sort of a ‘professional courtesy’ if any of these lawyers hope to have a second career with an, er, ‘influential law firm’ after departing Federal Service…)

There is a sort of weird disconnect here as TV portrays the FBI as ‘dedicated public servants’ rather than putting their more opportunistic traits on display.

How do you make partner in a large firm without years of ‘sweat equity’? You get some dirt on a major client of the firm…then, shazam, you’re a full equity partner!

But you won’t see that in the plot of you favorite cop show, will you?

But that’s propaganda for you…

I’m going to guess this new legislation will NOT make the hunt easier for those seeking a shortcut to future financial security. Their bosses will be on the alert to keep the field agents digging where they’re supposed to dig, in the trash of the malcontents, seeking the necessary evidence to brand them ‘insurgents’.

That’s why they want to go digging in YOUR trash! (Chances are good they’re already digging in mine!)

If there were a meme for the day it appears to be the growing disconnect between the people and the rulers.

They insist they are trying to make us ‘safe’ but it becomes evident that they are really only interested in their own safety, they are attempting to protect themselves from ‘retribution’…thus are YOUR rights being thrown out the window.

The old meme has a new caveat: ‘you have nothing to worry about if (you’re rich and) not doing anything wrong.’

If your disenfranchised and complain about it, you might find yourself branded a ‘terrorist’, even if you don’t have so much as a slingshot to execute your ‘reign of terror’ with!

Um, the ‘class war’ is turning ugly and it won’t be long before we witness open warfare in the streets of Europe. (IF they don’t ‘censor’ such broadcasts…)

We really are just inches away from martial law.

And nobody is doing a fucking thing about it…which should frighten you good citizen!

Where have all the ‘good men’ gone?

Apparently they were all bought off or fired!

Which leaves us where?

I guess it’s up to you and me.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Political Meat Puppets

Greetings good citizen,

Where is our ‘Hero’? Who is poised to spring into action and thwart the evil plans of those who would conspire to throw the beautiful ingenue under the train?

Didn’t we elect a ‘savior’ last November, putting an end to the reign of the evil (albeit clueless) Meat Puppet?

I mean the new guy had a good head on his shoulders…so WTF happened? Did somebody whack him between the eyes with a baseball bat, knocking him silly…or was it all just an act?

Perhaps we need to back up a few steps here and have a good, hard look at what this poor slob ‘inherited’.

The nation WAS badly broken, even then. You could even make a solid case that it’s been broken since the Gipper turned over the reins to his faithful Indian companion…George. (Who, like the current incumbent, will also fail to win re-election…talk about your massive coincidences.)

Given the ‘icy slope’ Worldwide Capitalism is sliding down and the yawning chasm lined with jagged rocks at the bottom, questions as to whether or not our current situation is ‘salvageable’ are rendered ‘moot’.

It’s no longer a question of ‘is this going to hurt’? It’s a question of ‘how bad’…or what, if anything, will come out the other end.

Survival is NOT assured. If things go badly we could indeed be staring at an extinction level event. While this is not likely, it is still a possibility. Weirdly, some don’t care…but that’s a whole other ‘can of worms’.

Maybe its just a sign of the times and maybe it’s part of maintaining what little credibility you have left…but tonight’s offering is NOT the product of the GOP or their de-ranged outriders, the Tea Partiers! This story is, in fact, from today’s Alternet.

Obama Adopts Bush Plan to Hide Outsourced Job Data

The U.S. is hemorrhaging jobs thanks to terrible trade policies. Instead of fixing the problem, Obama wants to hide the data.

March 4, 2010 |

The Bush administration had a nasty penchant for trying to bury bad economic news - a nasty penchant that I was intimately familiar with when working on the House Appropriations Committee. One of the most egregious examples of this came in 2003. Here's the Washington Post on 1/2/03:

U.S. Drops Report On Mass Layoffs;
Data Helped States Track Patterns of Industrial Demise

By Kirstin Downey
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 2, 2003

Citing a shortage of money, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will stop publishing information about factory closings across the country, a decision that some state officials and labor leaders are protesting.

The monthly Labor Department analysis, known as the Mass Layoffs Statistics report, detailed where workplaces with more than 50 employees closed and what kinds of workers were affected.

Luckily, because of progressive pressure and public outcry, this Bush move was overturned by Congress. But now, the same kind of thing is back. According to today's Washington Post, it looks like the Obama administration is reprising the same scheme:

Obama administration plans to close International Labor Comparisons office

By Alec MacGillis
Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Like a scorekeeper for the world, a tiny unit within the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks globalization's winners and losers, and the results are not always pretty for the United States. Manufacturing jobs here, for example, have fallen faster since 1979 than in Canada, Germany or Japan. Compensation for those jobs dropped here in 2008 but jumped in South Korea and Australia. Soon, however, Americans may be spared the demoralization in these numbers: The White House wants to shutter the unit that produces them.

In his State of the Union address, of course, Obama called for a massive expansion of the NAFTA trade model into Colombia, South Korea and Panama. So you can bet this announcement by the White House is no accident - it's preemptive.

Apparently, no matter which party is in power, when bad news hits, the response is bury the news - don't address the actual problem.

So, it has become apparent that Mr. ‘Let’s Hope for some Change’ was yanking our crank the whole time. It is obvious that he doesn’t (and never did) ‘get it’.

Naturally, this brings us back to what might be called this week’s ‘theme’…does any of this matter ‘in the long run’?

Well, from the perspective of giving the criminals from the previous administration a ‘fair trial’, that’s sort of screwed…not the trial part…or the justice part…just the ‘fair/impartial’ part.

Will these wretches ‘get theirs’? It will be a miracle if they don’t…the only possible way they won’t ‘reap what they have sown’ will be for them to die…soon.

Mr. Audacious on the other hand is unlikely to be so lucky. The tide of popular opinion continues to ebb as far as he’s concerned.

Small comfort to think things would not likely be much different had we been graced with the first female president. Perhaps most damning aspect is the fact that both of them passed the party’s ‘sniff test’ to receive its endorsement.

What does this tell us about those letters following a politician’s name…albeit, the ‘D’ (for the moment) doesn’t stand for ‘De-ranged’, a word more commonly associated with the ‘R’ designation these days.

Push come to shove good citizen, there isn’t a nickel’s difference between the two…and that is damn disturbing!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

GOP wins!

Greetings good citizen,

It’s hard to say if yesterday’s Republican victory is the result of ‘voter apathy’ or if it is the Legacy of GOP governor Mitt Romney, who ‘gifted’ my home state with ‘mandatory’ health insurance…which, as one would expect, sucks. People who end up on the ‘free’ end of the system (due to low/no income) find, as one would expect, no service providers willing to accept what the state plan pays.

So the ‘financially challenged’ end up where they started, no coverage at all BUT, they are no longer ‘counted’ as being uninsured, they do indeed have ‘insurance’, insurance that no healthcare provider accepts but what are ya gonna to do?

Which brings us to the ‘Republican victory’…are we staring at ‘voter apathy’ or, as I have been saying, is the ‘Ballot box’ broken? It doesn’t matter what you scribble on the ballot if your ‘betters’ have already decided the outcome for you.

This, good citizen, is the difference between participation and the illusion of participation that is passed off as our ‘free and fair’ government.

Sadly, your ‘right’ to decide who will make decisions in your name without ever consulting you has also been stripped by those who control the farce that we have come to call ‘government’.

No irony should be lost on the fact that those who benefit the most from the ‘status quo’ are the same people seeking to strip from you the protection of the government. Hell, they even campaign as being ‘anti-government’, but you have to ‘read between the lines’ to fully understand what they are ‘against’.

In a nutshell, they are ‘against’ you being protected from their machinations. They really do want to charge you for the air you breathe, but they have to crush the government in order to lay claim to your air supply!

Um, for those of you who are extremely ‘literal’, I am not claiming that conservatism/libertarianism’s ‘sole objective’ is to eliminate the word ‘free’ from our language…that’s only part of their agenda.

What makes this even weirder is the root word ‘liberty’ actually means ‘freedom from tyranny’…and tyranny is exactly what these idiots advocate! They want to be ‘free’ to charge you for everything!

Which begs a different question: Can you be ‘free’ in a society where nothing else is?

Short answer: no! You will be, by default, an economic slave; forever forced to act against your own best interests as you ‘serve’ the interests of the ‘owners of money’.

Interesting phrase; that last bit, our circumstances today are pretty close to that not particularly desirable outcome.

You do indeed toil your life away, against your own best interests, while you serve the ‘owners of money’…and let’s not forget the central premise, nobody owes you nothin’. Should they decide they don’t like looking at you anymore, they are free to hire someone more pleasing and it’s ‘tough nuts’ to you! If you can’t live on what they pay you: it’s not their problem, it’s yours!

We’ve drifted pretty ‘far afield’ here, from Republican victory to the predatory mindset of the followers of the Chicago School of economics…the ‘basis’ for libertarianism.

In a shift from matters economic (although you never get completely away) we turn our attention tonight to what, for me, was a local election

G.O.P. Senate Victory Stuns Democrats

By a decisive margin, Mr. Brown defeated Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, who had been considered a prohibitive favorite to win just over a month ago after she easily won the Democratic primary. [Voter turnout was reported to be 50%, there is all kinds of rhetoric as to ‘why’ voters, some who claim to have never voted Republican before, to switch sides. Since the public is unable to verify poll results, we will never know the true results with any degree of certainty.]

With all precincts counted, Mr. Brown had 52 percent of the vote to Ms. Coakley’s 47 percent.

“Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken,” Mr. Brown told his cheering supporters in a victory speech, standing in front of a backdrop that said “The People’s Seat.” [Um, if you don’t believe the ballot box is broken here in Massachusetts then go ahead and explain 6 successive Republican governors in an overwhelmingly Democratic state?]

The election left Democrats in Congress scrambling to salvage a bill overhauling the nation’s health care system, which the late Mr. Kennedy had called “the cause of my life.” Mr. Brown has vowed to oppose the bill, and once he takes office the Democrats will no longer control the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome filibusters. [This opens the door to some very interesting scenarios, especially if people suspect we are dealing with another ‘stolen election.’ Once an unheard of phenomenon, the ‘upset victory’ particularly by conservative politicians, has become the ‘norm’ around the world.]

There were immediate signs that the bill had become imperiled. House members indicated they would not quickly pass the bill the Senate approved last month.

And after the results were announced, one centrist Democratic senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, called on Senate leaders to suspend any votes on the Democrats’ health care legislation until Mr. Brown is sworn into office. The election, he said, was a referendum on both health care and the integrity of the government process.

Beyond the bill, the election of a man supported by the Tea Party movement also represented an unexpected reproach by many voters to President Obama after his first year in office, and struck fear into the hearts of Democratic lawmakers, who are already worried about their prospects in the midterm elections later this year.

Mr. Brown was able to appeal to independents who were anxious about the economy and concerned about the direction taken by Democrats, now that they control both Beacon Hill and Washington. He rallied his supporters when he said, at the last debate, that he was not running for Mr. Kennedy’s seat but for “the people’s seat.” [This is a bizarre way of looking at what boils down to the equivalent of the ‘House of Lords’, who until 1923 had seats that were appointed by the governor rather than elected. The Senate exists to ‘counterbalance’ the popularly elected House of Representatives. Each state gets an ‘equal number’ of Senators while more populous states can enjoy larger contingents of Representatives. By making the Senate the ‘playground of the rich’ and requiring that all legislation passes both houses, do the wealthy retain complete control over the legislative process. There’s nothing ‘fair’ about this.]

That seat, held for nearly half a century by Mr. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, will now be held for the next two years by a Republican who has said he supports water-boarding as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects. Opposes a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions and opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they leave the country. It was a sharp swing of the pendulum, but even Democratic voters said they wanted the Obama administration to change direction.

“I’m hoping that it gives a message to the country,” said Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover, a lifelong Democrat who said she cast her first vote for a Republican on Tuesday. “I think if Massachusetts puts Brown in, it’s a message of ‘that’s enough.’ Let’s stop the giveaways and let’s get jobs going.” [While the government does indeed ‘have the power’ to legislate new jobs and to eliminate debt, our corporate overlords would be seeking regime change if such legislation were proposed, never mind enacted. They haven’t pushed civilization to the brink just to have it undone with the stroke of the legislative pen!]

Mr. Brown ran strongest in the suburbs of Boston, where the independent voters who make up a majority in Massachusetts turned out in large numbers. Ms. Coakley did best in urban areas, winning overwhelmingly in Boston and running ahead in Springfield, Worcester, Fall River and New Bedford, but her margins were not large enough to carry her to victory. [The idiots in my own community voted Republican by a two to one margin…but what do you expect from an affluent town that voted for W twice?]

In a concession speech before cheering supporters, Ms. Coakley acknowledged that voters were angry and said she had hoped to deal with the concerns.

“Our mission continues, and our work goes on,” she said, echoing well-known remarks by Mr. Kennedy. “I am heartbroken at the result, as I know you are, and I know we will get up together tomorrow and continue this fight, even with this result tonight.” [Strangely, I wonder if people will realize that we can no longer trust the ballot box? The upcoming mid-terms are likely to be far more interesting than anyone currently anticipates.]

The crowd at Mr. Brown’s victory rally, upset by reports that Democrats might try to vote on the health care bill before he takes office, chanted, “Seat him now!” Mr. Brown, for his part, noted that the interim senator holding the seat had finished his work, and that he was ready to go to Washington “without delay.” And he effusively praised Mr. Kennedy as a big-hearted, tireless worker, and said that he hoped to prove a worthy successor to him. [Given the long delay in getting ANY legislation through Congress while they enjoyed a majority sort of serves what has become GW’s third term right.]

Ms. Coakley’s defeat, in a state that Mr. Obama won in 2008 with 62 percent of the vote, led to a round of finger-pointing among Democrats. Some criticized her tendency for gaffes — in a radio interview she offended Red Sox fans when she incorrectly suggested that Curt Schilling, a beloved former Red Sox pitcher, was a Yankee fan — while others criticized a lackluster, low-key campaign. [She won the primary handily, what happened yesterday was a repeat of a now familiar conservative ‘upset victory’. Something’s rotten here, it always is when a candidate comes out of the dark the way Brown did.]

Mr. Brown presented himself as a Massachusetts Everyman, featuring the pickup truck he drives around the state in his speeches and one of his television commercials, calling in to talk radio shows and campaigning with popular local sports figures.

The implications of the election drew nationwide attention, and millions of dollars of outside spending, to the race. It transformed what many had expected to be a sleepy, low-turnout special election on a snowy day in January into a high-profile contest that appeared to draw more voters than expected to the polls. There were reports of traffic jams outside suburban polling stations, while other polling stations had to call for extra ballots. [Ironically, when I went to vote yesterday I had the place to myself…]

The late surge by Mr. Brown appeared to catch Democrats by surprise, causing them to scramble in the last week and a half of the campaign and hastily schedule an appearance by Mr. Obama with Ms. Coakley on Sunday afternoon. [Understand, he ran on ‘nothing’, worse, all I heard about the Brown candidacy is what he wouldn’t do, there isn’t one thing he went on record as a goal to accomplish. For all I know, he’s going to Washington solely to polish the damn ‘Junior Senator’s seat!]

“Understand what’s at stake here, Massachusetts,” Mr. Obama said in his speech that day, repeatedly invoking Mr. Kennedy’s legacy. “It’s whether we’re going forwards or backwards.” He all but pleaded with voters to support Ms. Coakley, to preserve his agenda. [Probably shouldn’t have come to that but you reap what you sow. All of this foot dragging and compromising has produced nothing…and Mr. Obama didn’t have time to waste.]

As voters went to the polls, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, made it clear that the president was “not pleased” with the situation Ms. Coakley found herself in. “He was both surprised and frustrated,” Mr. Gibbs said. [I have had the chance to view local election results and it sure looks ‘screwy’, there are far more ‘conservative’ votes than normal.]

Although the race has riveted the nation largely because it was seen as contributing to the success or defeat of the health care bill, the potency of the issue for voters here was difficult to gauge. That is because Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage, thanks to a law passed when Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor.

Thus Massachusetts is one of the few states where the benefits promised by the national bill were expected to have little effect on how many of its residents got coverage, making it an unlikely place for a referendum on the health care bill. [Those lying sacks of shit! People here were hoping for the ‘public option’, the crap Romney saddled us with is worthless as most healthcare providers refuse to accept it.]

On Capitol Hill, the fate of the health care legislation was highly uncertain as Democratic leaders quickly gathered to plot strategy in the wake of the Republican victory. [Left unanswered is why they waited so long? They let the majority slip through their fingers…but they have fumbled repeatedly on other issues as well.]

Sentiment about how to proceed was mixed, with several lawmakers saying the House would not accept the Senate-passed plan. Top officials had said that approach was the party’s best alternative, and many members said they still believed it was crucial that Democrats pass a plan. [Note what passes for ‘conventional wisdom’ coming from the same idiots who want you to believe Massachusetts has ‘nothing to gain’ from the healthcare reform bill!]

“It is important for us to pass legislation,” said Representative Baron P. Hill, a conservative Democrat from Indiana.

Reporting was contributed by Katie Zezima, Danielle Ossher and Bret Silverberg in Massachusetts, and Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn in Washington.

Understand good citizen if we get saddled with an ‘insurance mandate’ like we have here in Massachusetts, it will force a large number of people into making some extremely difficult choices. It’s no longer ‘heat or eat’, it becomes ‘buy insurance OR pay for heat OR pay for food’…because if you can’t do two, you sure as shit can’t do all three!

Worse, there is absolutely zero reason to believe that the ‘mandated insurance’ will provide you with blanket health coverage. You can get insurance today that only costs a hundred dollars a month. The ‘catch’ is the first hundred thousand dollars is all you!

You are only insured if a ‘catastrophe’ strikes, like you break every bone in your body, forcing you to spend the next six months in traction and the following six months in rehab.

In the strange alchemy of insurance, you’re covered…just not for very much.

Let’s suppose a hundred dollars a month is too rich for your blood, your only economic support comes from food stamps, you don’t have any money. Well, surprise, surprise, if you don’t have money, you can still get coverage…it’s just that the coverage is next to useless. You can see a doctor but the first problem with that is finding a doctor/clinic that will accept your basically free healthcare plan. There may not be anybody in your state (or in any of the surrounding states) who is willing to treat you. There might be somebody two states away but then transportation becomes an issue…nevermind ‘timeliness’. Clinics are only required to service just so many ‘indigent’ patients, once they’ve satisfied this requirement, they can thumb their nose at you as they turn you away.

If there isn’t enough service to go around, tough, it’s not their problem, it’s yours!

Which is to ask why should this be any different?

The only ‘perspective’ to add here is it’s no accident we have the oldest government on the planet…not because it works so well, nobody is buying that horse pucky, but because the status quo is so firmly entrenched.

You certainly don’t need me to tell you that ‘entrenched = corrupt’, that’s axiomatic.

If we are to turn things around, we need to start over from scratch with a brand new crew and a new way of doing things.

Nothing less will succeed.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner