Hog-tied

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while I feel compelled to kick the ‘we can fix this’ crowd in the gonads but I usually have to wait for a a piece like this, which offers actual solutions so I can, er, ‘illustrate my point.’

First, we'll exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes for the next two years. This will put cash directly into American's pockets and boost consumer spending. We'll make up the revenue shortfall by applying Social Security taxes to incomes over $500,000.

Second, we'll recreate the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps -- two of the most successful job innovations of the New Deal -- and put people back to work directly. The long-term unemployed will help rebuild our roads and bridges, ports and levees, and provide needed services in our schools and hospitals. Young people who can't find jobs will reclaim and improve our national parklands, restore urban parks and public spaces, recycle products and materials, and insulate public buildings and homes.

How many of you can see the problem with the first proposal? Aw, come on! I expected more than that to get it! If you’ve been paying attention then you’d know that every cent in increased income has been offset by two cents of increased prices! Where the hell did you think all of those billionaires were coming from?

(REMEMBER: lower prices you never saw and pay raises you never got are what make the rich, rich! YOU work for them, not the other way around.)

Put more money in the workers pockets and the chiselers will simply suck ‘em dry!

This is why I preach revolution, jiggering the current crooked arrangement only yields more theft!

We must sweep away the corrupt institutions of the past and replace them with more advanced, just offices.

The ‘equation’ for this is really quite simple, it all starts with equality because without equality there can be no justice and without justice there can be no peace…and without peace there can be no prosperity!

How fucking sad is it that I can take credit for composing this idea thousands of years after the ‘founders of civilization’ (and the civilizations they founded) have perished?

Had (and I’m kind of tempted to be insulting here) the ‘so-called’ original ‘great thinkers’ utilized the above formula, their civilization may still be standing today…but no!

The great thinkers ignored the basic elements of civilization and the civilizations they founded collapsed, quite quickly.

Just as our civilization is on the verge of collapse.

But hey, what do you know, I’m off the reservation (again!)

Is our current civilization founded upon the ideals expressed above? Of course not!

In fact there isn’t a single society (currently) on this planet that was founded on ANY of those ideals…(Although the Native Americans came close!)

Why do you suppose the default foundation for every new society is fundamental inequality, enforced by injustice?

What kind of promises do you think have been made to those who will come out in support of the coming despot?

Was a ‘piece of the spotlight’ enough to make most of these worthless idiots sell out the rest of us?

Or like these fools did they sell us out in hope of hanging on to what little they had?

[The link leads to a video, the text doesn’t explain the article well enough.]

One of the first rules of firearms is if you have a loaded gun and a little patience, you can get all of the guns you want (because people are stupid!)

Are YOU stupid enough to kick somebody’s door in then you deserve to get ‘gut shot’!

All you have to do is wait for Mr. Clueless to stick his head out the door (he/she is probably not paying attention to their surroundings so you’ll be able to pop ‘em no problem.

Except if you miss, then you’ve got a big problem!

Even the hopelessly stupid won’t stick their head out the door without looking twice!

Which is to remind you that having a gun solves nothing if you aren’t smart enough to use it wisely!

Same goes for a pile of gold…you don’t want to die for a pocketful of basically worthless yellow metal!

Doesn’t matter how many ‘dollars’ an ounce of gold is allegedly worth when the dollars themselves become worthless.

But no, too many can’t see beyond the ‘shiny!’

Which is (largely) why we are where we are.

Okay, I can’t help it…stupid is as stupid does!

Worse, its not like we’ve got a lock on the market for stupid! There’s plenty to go around…

So, to recap…Mr. Reich is correct, we need to take ‘positive action’ to turn things around for our civilization. He is incorrect in taking the ‘easy’ path of attempting to ‘fix’ what we already have. It is not ‘broken’; it works exactly as it was intended to work!

This is why it must be replaced! (And the miscreants who benefited from the old way with it!)

Um, I shouldn’t have to point out that A Simple Plan IS based on the tenants I spell out above, in case you were wondering.

With that said, let the wild rumpus begin!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Seriously?

Greetings good citizen,

I marveled at first that this particular article is the second most e-mailed from the NY Times but here I am blogging about it so I expect it is attracting attention for the same reason it attracted mine.

What can Mr. ‘Flat Earth’ possibly have to contribute on the US employment picture?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is nothing useful

Whatever you may be thinking when you apply for a job today, you can be sure the employer is asking this: Can this person add value every hour, every day — more than a worker in India, a robot or a computer? Can he or she help my company adapt by not only doing the job today but also reinventing the job for tomorrow? And can he or she adapt with all the change, so my company can adapt and export more into the fastest-growing global markets? In today’s hyperconnected world, more and more companies cannot and will not hire people who don’t fulfill those criteria.

But you would never know that from listening to the debate in Washington, where some Democrats still tend to talk about job creation as if it’s the 1960s and some Republicans as if it’s the 1980s. But this is not your parents’ job market.

Left to our imagination is how we’re supposed to survive here in the economic desert that globalization (championed by Mr. Flat-Earth hisself!) has created for us?

Perhaps more importantly is how long the oppressed people of a desperately over-crowded continent are going to remain complacent in the face of a decidedly ‘raw deal’?

The ‘race to the bottom’ is over good citizen and the over-populated Asian subcontinent won!

The ONLY way to crank out additional value now is to screw these already oppressed workers into the woodwork.

Because at the end of the day good citizen there is NO SUCH PLACE as the ‘cheaper there’.

Wonder why the global economy is so out of whack?

It’s because the ‘fucking bankers’ invented the cheaper there through currency manipulation!

They too will pay the price for their ‘malfeasance’, likely at the end of a sturdy rope.

This leads us to another troubling topic that has been gnawing at me for the past couple of day…and don’t all of the articles disappear just when I’m ready to address the topic.

And the topic is not ‘new’.

I’m sure you’ve seen all of the headlines in the corporate owned media heralding the ‘end of the NASA era…

And I’m sure most of you have asked yourself just what the fuck they mean by that?

Is our bought and paid for media telling us that our race is run, that it is all over but the shouting, that ‘the world’ has moved to China?

I even saw a political cartoon in the local rag yesterday that pretty much said nobody from the US was going back to the moon for a ‘long time’ (with ‘if ever’ being implied!)

Um, the part that should gall each and every one of you is these dirtbags have used the worst of Western civilization to destroy Western civilization (both here and in Europe) BUT they expect to be protected from prosecution by the laws of Western civilization!

Well, they’ve cooked their own goose when it comes to legal protection. Since it is widely accepted that they ‘own’ the courts, they won’t be given the, er, benefit of a trial!

Nor will one of their bought and paid for judges be allowed to preside over the proceedings.

Moreso because there won’t be any survivors than any other reason.

But I digress into speculation!

Although I will say this much; failure to deal with the perps harshly WILL RESULT IN A REPEAT OF THE WHOLE AFFAIR!

You may not admit it but we stand where our grandparents stood less than a century ago and their ‘mistake’ was in not dealing with these criminals in the brutal manner they deserved!

Let the criminals go free and they’ll repeat the behavior they were given a pass on the first time!

Well, they got away with it last time, I doubt they will be so lucky this time.

Although it IS different this time, we weren’t facing peak oil and the resultant social collapse the end of fossil fuels will bring.

Which brings us back to the ‘useless’ corporate media that has continually failed to alert us to the massive changes that are closer than any of us imagine.

Worse, when the change is upon us it will be too late for many of us to act!

What ‘change’ am I babbling about?

I’ve been warning for years now that energy scarcity will make all non-tropical regions of the planet UNINHABITABLE!

Sure our ancestors survived in the wilderness using wood for heating and cooking…but that was when the nation’s population was a tenth of what it is today.

How long do you think the forests will last for a population of over three HUNDRED MILLION?

Those of us who live East of the Mississippi tend to forget just how ‘treeless’ it is West of the same landmark.

(‘Forget’ probably isn’t the best word here but you know what I mean.)

Not that this is any kind of an excuse for throwing Western civilization under the bus!

It’s definitely one of those times where ‘sorry’ just isn’t gonna cut it.

Worse, the pundits don’t know what to make of the ‘non-response’ coming out of the public.

We have some definite extremely negative indicators flashing here and we got nada coming out of the victim’s corner.

I tend to think this is the ‘calm before the storm’. First blood is coming and I think we’re all waiting to see what that is, then all hell is going to break loose!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

TILT!

Greetings good citizen!

Sometimes I get ahead of myself and today is one of those days. I finished and posted today's piece without writing an intro (so I'm doing it now!)

First up we have this curious story, could Rhode Island become our personal Greece?

The impoverished city, operating under a receiver for a year, has promised $80 million worth of retirement benefits to 214 police officers and firefighters, far more than it can afford. Those workers’ pension fund will probably run out of money in October, giving Central Falls the distinction of becoming the second municipality in the United States to exhaust its pension fund, after Prichard, Ala.

“Time is running out,” warns Robert G. Flanders, the state-appointed receiver, who recently closed the public library and a community center to save money. He has no power to cancel the city’s contracts with workers, so instead he has begun approaching retired police officers and firefighters with what he describes as “the Big Ask”: will they voluntarily accept smaller benefits in the name of saving Central Falls?

Some of the retirees are in their 90s, and Central Falls, like many American cities, has not placed its police and firefighters in Social Security. Many have no other benefits to fall back on.

I’m stretching things here…but only a little. While we have all heard that California is ‘on the brink’, could Rhode Island turn into America’s Greece?

You will note that this ‘crisis’ is (once again) centered on the benefits due public workers, the ‘other shoe’ nobody is talking about is how during ‘good times’, ‘excess’ contributions to the worker’s pension funds were ‘siphoned off’ for, er, ‘other uses’.

Worse than mismanagement, this is ‘malfeasance’, which is nothing more than a fancy term for ‘theft’.

It occurred to me that most of you don’t see where this is headed…you may have an idea but you are unsure as to how it will ‘play out’.

Currently we are witnessing a textbook example of ‘dominoes’, as the little fish default the bigger fish are getting taken down too.

Ilargi: After having maintained for the past few years that Greece neither could nor would be allowed to default, EU leaders have finally given in. Of course, the word now is that this can be a default that doesn't trigger a credit event, in which payments on credit default swaps come due. Good luck with that. The credibility of Europe in the financial markets is shot. Gone. Trillions more in taxpayer funds will be thrown at the issues, but it doesn't matter anymore.

Not coincidentally, the change in attitude on Greece comes at a time when Italy has come under intense pressure. It's time to cut losses. Getting Greece done will open up space and time to "save" Italy. Or so undoubtedly goes the reasoning. It's not going to work.

Italy is not the EU periphery; Italy is very much in the heart of Europe. The country's nominal GDP is over $2 trillion. And its debts are staggeringly high.

Germany is the ‘backbone of the EU’ just as Detroit ‘used to be’ the backbone of the US. No irony should be lost on the fact that both ‘backbones’ were centered on providing the exact same product to the exact same market!

(Japan’s prowess in electronics dwarfs its auto industry, which is why Japan WAS the number 2 economy, worldwide…by dint of its dominance of markets developed here in the USA.)

There’s a fairly sick ‘we can make ya and we can break ya’ story behind all of this but none of the fuckers responsible want to drop the flag long enough to take credit for it!

How sick is it when the ‘profits before people’ crowd wrapped themselves in the flag to hide their treachery?

How is it the media gets away with ‘under reporting’ a catastrophic (and growing worse all the time) unemployment crisis?

There is much of recent history that the ‘corporate puppets’ would like to disappear behind the controversy of gay marriage (like anybody actually gives a shit!)

It doesn’t cease to amaze me that media outlets around the planet aren’t constantly on fire!

The latest in a long parade of ‘happy talk’ has been the ‘predictions’ of a strong ‘back to school’ season this year

How much do you want to bet this will be because cash strapped school districts will be pawning off more of their expenses onto their students?

Reasons To Be Cheerful?!

In "It's That Time Again," I highlighted government statistics that refuted the "facts" one retail industry "analyst" was using to bolster his bullish outlook for the upcoming back-to-school selling season. But even if you ignore the broad-scale economic data he seemed to be relying on, other, more industry-specific trends provide little support for his (or any other analyst's) bullish take. In fact, the following reports suggest the retailing environment is anything but healthy.

Um, all bullshit aside, do you see any way for this to ‘work itself out’?

Is ‘austerity’ really the answer when we have tens of thousands of millionaires if not billionaires that will continue to live ‘the good life’ (at YOUR EXPENSE!)

Let me remind you what makes the wealthy, wealthy. It is pay raises YOU NEVER SEE coupled with LOWER PRICES YOU DON’T GET!

Naturally it is worse than that…if being the boss meant we could all be rich, we’d all work for ourselves! (And mindless capitalist MORONS ardently cling to this myth, that it is possible for us all to have our own little gig, selling shit to one another.)

And once again it takes a ‘killjoy’ like me to point out that there isn’t enough ‘market share’ to support anything even remotely resembling ‘capitalist utopia!’

But constant reader knows that as I have pointed this out many times. No irony should be lost on the fact that the first thing to go out the window in ‘capitalist utopia’ is the ‘employer/employee’ relationship!

A major kink because it is not your efforts that make you rich, you get rich off of your employees!

But I digress because we are rapidly coming up on the ‘unravelling’ of our civilization over ‘money woes’ that are really just ‘ledger entries’.

I think you all realize, deep down, that this all boils down to who takes it up the poop chute.

Considering the amount of criminal activity involved in getting us here in the first place, I think the criminals should…er, ‘get what’s coming to them’ (and I don’t mean paying them off, at least not in the traditional sense.)

The writing on the wall, the widespread adoption of ‘austerity measures’ that is code for the ‘privatization’ of just about everything SHOULD tell you something good citizen.

I’ll tell what I ‘see’.

Since the only thing cheaper than an employee is a slave AND the ‘employer/employee relationship is on the verge of breaking down… (Employers don’t see the ‘need’ to pay a living wage if they can feed their slaves at wholesale prices!)

And with the ‘abundance’ of surplus labor, I don’t see things looking too good for those who, er, ‘accept’ the slave option to its alternative…starvation.

Yes good citizen, you will soon be faced with the exact question…will you die on your feet or live on your knees?

I choose ‘feet’ (and I’m taking as many of the mofo’s with me as I can!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. TILT is an old fashioned term for 'fault' commonly associated with old time pinball machines. Because play could be extended by literally 'tilting the table' engineers installed a device to detect when the table was being 'tilted', causing the game to shut down.

So now you know!

Acting!

Greetings good citizen,

Are we all schizophrenic? It is a marvel that most of us aren’t considering constant barrage of bullshit we are expected to swallow without our heads exploding!

Have you asked yourself why all the drama over elevating the ‘debt ceiling’?

More interestingly, have you spent any time wondering precisely who is salivating over the prospect of cutting Social Security?

What I’m pointing at is the ‘fabricated’ nature of US political debate. Way back when there were genuine dickheads who would come up with this ‘off the wall’ bullshit just to stymie progress.

Some of them even did it not to advance their own ends but simply because they could.

This is the downside of politics…people who aren’t there to ‘do the job’, they just want to exercise ‘power’.

How unfortunate is it that these people don’t give a shit about the consequences of their actions (to them it’s all ‘funny’ and if they piss somebody off in the process, so much the better!)

Well good citizen, this ‘shock doctrine’ stuff is all out in the open now so you’d THINK they wouldn’t pull such obvious ‘stunts’…but here they are.

Which is why I believe the (fabricated) credit crisis event will be used as a ‘springboard’ to launch USA 2.0 (with new and improved fascism!)

Although you have to give Sporky Dorky credit, he knows the value of anonymity! So instead of Das Furher we will get ‘the committee’ who will execute Sporky’s wishes on a topical basis, with each edict being issued from the appropriate ‘ministry’.

Too much for your tiny imagination to handle, good citizen? Then consider this, we are fighting three wars against a fictional enemy…how much more ‘fucked up’ does it get?

Well, be careful what you ask for because you just might get it!

Let us shift from phantom enemies to the rapidly crumbling phantom economy:

An extraordinary amount of personal income is coming directly from the government.

Close to $2 of every $10 that went into [EVERY] Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security and disability, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. In states hit hard by the downturn, like Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Ohio, residents derived even more of their income from the government.

By the end of this year, however, many of those dollars are going to disappear, with the expiration of extended benefits intended to help people cope with the lingering effects of the recession. Moody’s Analytics estimates $37 billion will be drained from the nation’s pocketbooks this year.

Economics 101 good citizen, you CAN’T live in an ECONOMIC DESERT! Naturally, there are some places in the economic desert where you can survive just fine BUT you will forfeit your ability to ‘participate’ in civil society.

The problem with living on the fringes of civilization is it tends to get overcrowded pretty quickly. Like a piece of paper there isn’t a lot of room along the margins.

Perhaps more frightening than the ‘debt ceiling’ issue is the fact that NOTHING has been done to address the ‘subsidized’ economy.

The subsidized economy PROVES capitalism doesn’t work but there haven’t been any steps made to, er, ‘transition away’ from (decidedly predatory) capitalism.

Oh, and just a little ‘I told you so’, the fact that we have gone three years on what amounts to an ‘air diet’ proves money is 100% ‘funny’.

As you might expect, it won’t be even a tiny bit amusing when they pull the rug out from under us.

Something they seem prepared to do any day now.

If you were shocked by Friday’s job report, if you thought we were doing well and were taken aback by the bad news, you haven’t been paying attention. The fact is, the United States economy has been stuck in a rut for a year and a half.

Yet a destructive passivity has overtaken our discourse. Turn on your TV and you’ll see some self-satisfied pundit declaring that nothing much can be done about the economy’s short-run problems (reminder: this “short run” is now in its fourth year), that we should focus on the long run instead.

This gets things exactly wrong. The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing. Yes, there are huge political obstacles to action — notably, the fact that the House is controlled by a party that benefits from the economy’s weakness. But political gridlock should not be conflated with economic reality.

Our failure to create jobs is a choice, not a necessity — a choice rationalized by an ever-shifting set of excuses.

What Mr. Krugman points out is correct…this whole situation COULD BE turned around tomorrow, (with great political effect, I might add) but they, and you NEED TO UNDERSTAND THIS…THEY CHOOSE NOT TO!

My conservative brother-in-law goes berserk whenever anyone invokes the ‘infamous they’. Failure to name names and provide ‘proof’ the monied interests are guilty as charged makes the whole issue a ‘fantasy’, the product of a disturbed mind.

Yet it is conservative philosophy that is chock full of utter bullshit!

I’ll spare you the enumeration, it’s easier to point out that if a conservative believes/espouses a particular belief that it has no basis in reality!

As demonstrated here by Jesse of the crossroads café fame!

Gold Drops Precipitously Just Prior to Obama's Press Conference on the Debt Ceiling


Gold soared this morning on a flight to safety from the European debt crisis.

Then suddenly it started dropping sharply around 10:50 NY time.

What could have happened?

Oh, the Bloomberg is reporting that Obama will be addressing the nation at 11:00 AM on the US debt ceiling situation.

It doesn't get much more obvious than this. At least my stock index shorts are paying off handsomely as this phony rally continues to pull back.

I suspect the major players will reach some agreement on the debt ceiling by July 22, and throw a portion of the American public under the bus, to everyone's relief that a horrible crisis has been averted.

Management of Perceptions is everything in the Potemkin economy.

You have to love the plain, unvarnished truth Jesse so regularly expounds!

What’s fucking me up is I copied this bad boy around 10:30 AM, so the timing is, er, ‘off’. Maybe he meant 9:50? (Although I had just checked commodity prices and Gold was UP $8.80…)

I just read what they publish in the NY Times; Jesse HAS a Bloomberg terminal!

I doubt his info is bad…and it wouldn’t be the first time the corporate owned media reported, er, ‘misleading’ data…

But in a world that runs on bullshit, you can never tell…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

What's wrong with THIS picture?

Greetings good citizen,

The destruction of our civilization proceeds apace…and NO, I still have no frigging clue about the EXACT day/time the wheels are going to come flying off. If I knew that then I’d be psychic…and would have hit the damn lottery eons ago!

If something ‘looks’ rotten chances are good you don’t have to dig very hard to find out if it is true.

I don’t need to ‘fact check’ to buy this one. All I need is the 'if it waddles like a duck and it quacks like a duck and has feathers like a duck then it’s a damn duck!'

I’ve been, er, ‘bitching’ for a long time about the apparent, um, ‘rigged’ nature of the stock market, still, I ask you What’s wrong with THIS picture?

Not-So-Representative Investors
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: July 9, 2011

SHOW me a new study about water on the moon, or why pregnant women don’t tip over, and I’m happy as a pig in whatever it is that pigs like. I’m just a big fan of science.

So I am thrilled by a recent learned paper that says quite a lot about money and the people who make it.

The study, “Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives,” is a real eye-opener. Using the financial disclosures of politicians, the research team built model portfolios and charted their performance. They found that House members “earn statistically significant positive abnormal returns,” outperforming the market by 6 percentage points.

Senators do even better, the authors say, citing their own earlier research from 2004. Senate portfolios “show some of the highest excess returns ever recorded over a long period of time, significantly outperforming even hedge fund managers,” with gains that are “both economically large and statistically significant.”

What do you think, ‘lucky’ huh? Didn’t they send America’s Mom, (Martha Stewart) up the river for a year for what this obviously is, ‘insider trading?’

Understand good citizen, these are the same people who have NO FRIGGING CLUE on how to ‘fix’ the economy but they seem to have missed their calling…instead of sitting in Washington, the should be on Wall Street, picking stocks!

The ‘mystery’ of course is how these two, er, ‘disciplines’ are related?

It is no secret that most ‘elected officials’ are, um, ‘well off’ before they seek public office. A seat in either house of congress isn’t ‘cheap’.

Which brings us to the current sock puppet…where do guys of seeming ‘modest means’ get the necessary funding to run in hugely expensive congressional races?

And while it is not uncommon for a politician to start off their political career…relatively poor, it is highly unusual for a politician to leave office less than filthy rich!

Take our democratic hero, the former governor of Arkansas who spent eight years in the ‘highest seat in the land’.

He exits the White House and his wife win’s a senate seat…not in Arkansas, but in New York!

JUST LUCKY….right!

STOP.

Let’s put these shoes on feet you can comprehend…what is it that keeps YOU from running for ‘national office’?

Sort of a ‘no-brainer’ isn’t it? You don’t know anybody who loves you enough to float you 60 or 70 million dollars for a gig that pays 2 million for your four-year term.

Then there are the ‘sniff tests’ you need to pass to receive the nomination/backing of the ONLY TWO POLITICAL PARTIES that make a fuck…even though a vast majority of the population is currently registered as INDEPENDENT (Because they are fed up with both parties!)

As we saw in the last election, the corporate owned media simply IGNORES certain candidates and makes a big deal out of people who don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected…

And this is the ‘best we can do?’

We honestly can’t afford to fuck around like this.

We need to KNOW the people running for office are QUALIFIED and have a CLEAR VISION of what needs to be done!

I said this before the last election and it remains true today, we CAN’T AFFORD another ‘sellout’ (although the incumbent could prove to be the ‘last straw’ as far as the ‘illusion of participation’ is concerned.)

Only immediate bold action will preserve our civilization as the challenges of the future overwhelm old technologies.

If we fail to sweep away the old, we will be swept away with it.

Too much energy is being invested in preserving a status quo that should have stepped aside long ago.

Look at the article and you’ll appreciate what I’m saying.

In order to preserve the ‘status quo’ the ‘fossil fuel’ paradigm, billions MUST DIE!

The only way to ‘stretch out’ their rule is to eliminate a serious number of ‘end users’.

It is, without a doubt, a criminal 'lack of imagination' on par with the Greco-Roman failure to imagine society without slavery...

So it will come to pass that they will get what’s coming to them.

What remains to be seen is how much damage they inflict as they flail futilely to save their way of life?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Belaboring the obvious

Greetings good citizen,

The markets tanked yesterday after the employment situation took a foreseeable ‘turn for the worse’.If you don’t STOP off-shoring you won’t have ANY jobs to worry about!

Which makes you think this is what our bought and paid for politicians must be thinking, once the unemployment rate is absolute, unemployment becomes a ‘non-factor’.

(When EVERYBODY is unemployed, the unemployment rate will [ironically] be ‘zero’.)

As I stated three years ago our civilization could not tolerate another ‘jobless’ recovery…yet the corporate owned media has handed us exactly that.

It is damning enough that nothing has been done to correct the causes of the ‘employment crisis’ (they are actually, actively making it worse!) But the media’s perpetual ‘blind eye’ to the truth of the situation renders them worthless as a social service.

(And they wonder why nobody reads the paper anymore!)

why pay to be lied to?

Naturally, you can only lie for so long until the truth makes itself known:

All levels of government shed workers, and hiring by companies continued to slow, resulting in a meager 18,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The government also revised downward the small gain for the previous month to 25,000 new jobs, less than half the original estimate. [Be mindful that the most recent numbers are also only an 'estimate']

Although the government’s survey of employers showed a slight expansion in jobs, a separate survey of households found that more people were searching for work than in the previous month, causing the unemployment rate to rise to 9.2 percent from 9.1 percent in May.

Economists were stunned. They had been expecting job growth to strengthen in June as oil prices eased and supply disruptions caused by the Japanese tsunami and earthquake receded. Instead, the government’s monthly snapshot of the labor market showed that several industries, including construction, finance and temporary services, shrank. At the same time, leading indicators like wages and the length of the average workweek, which tend to grow before employers begin adding more jobs, actually contracted.

Um, not to be mean but aren’t economists perpetually ‘stunned’ by what we all recognize as ‘reality’?

Is it not apparent that economists are, once again, not looking at the correct factors?

Isn’t that how they ‘missed’ the ‘free house swindle’, by looking at the interest rates rather than the ability to pay?

But that’s besides the point, the focus of this article is on what ‘Dear Leader’ had to say on the subject through his current puppet president Obama:

In remarks in the Rose Garden at the White House on Friday, Mr. Obama went beyond counseling patience on the economy’s long return to health and urged Congress to extend the payroll tax cut passed last December. He also said that legislators should sign pending trade agreements and pass bills that would establish an infrastructure bank and reform the patent process, all measures that he said would help create jobs.

How does this ‘stump speech’ differ from what your typical Republican would offer?

Tax cuts and free trade agreements will only make matters WORSE!

How much worse, good citizen?

Collapse worse!

Continually ignored in conservative doctrine is the cycle of activity that supports civic funtion.

No taxes = no government (under monarchy/capitalism) the ‘rulers’ don’t make their own way, they take it from the ‘governed’ whether they like it or not.

Bizarrely, taxes are just a mechanism with which to repress the owners of commerce from becoming too powerful. (How unfortunate for the rest of us that St. Ronnie broke that particular ‘safeguard’?)

Which is to point out that governments have the, er, ‘authority’ to print all the money they want. The government doesn’t ‘need’ to tax YOU.

How frightening is it that we are currently, er, ‘surviving’ on the government’s ability to ‘whip up’ debt on demand? (Pure socialism.)

Without this mechanism we would be in a state of civil war right now! (And it would be that ugliest of all conflicts, the ‘haves’ vs. the ‘have nots’.)

The ‘Tea Partiers’ see this but they do not understand it. They are so locked into the ‘pay-go’ mindset that they can’t comprehend the consequences of their soon to be met demands to end this ‘wasteful spending’.

Capitalism is a bad idea on a whole range of levels.

The ‘fuck you, pay me’ mindset blinds people to the destructive consequences of these actions.

But if you want to live in a war zone, then by all means…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Civil Unrest goes mainstream!

Greetings good citizen,

I guess ‘Mr. Market’ got the wrong message YESTERDAY as the markets rose almost 150 points on a ‘strong emplyment data’.

Today the actual employment figures were released this morning and unemployment went UP! So TODAY’S markets are down nearly 200 points (But that’s okay as the markets have ‘recovered’ from their recent dip below 12,000…although nobody knows why?)

What is it that the stock markets tell us again?

It tells us how rich the already wealthy are!

(Worse, unrealistically priced stocks are the foundation of the criminal’s fortunes…so naturally they go up for no apparent reason!)

But trying to make sense out of the ‘purposefully opaque’ stock markets will only make your head hurt, let’s move on to the situation created by these illogical fantasies

The deep irony here lies in who they chose to interview on the topic…’Old Zbig’ must be pushing 90. Talk about a ‘long time coming’ we are once again confronted with the question of ‘What does he know and WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?’

Could events unfolding today have been ‘in the works’ more than 30 years ago?

I place the ‘hijacking’ of the US government at the time of LBJ’s refusal to seek a second term…which was followed by Nixon’s ‘opening’ of China…and we’ve all seen where THAT left us.

Anyway, back to the article:

A Different Time

"I don’t want to be a prophet of doom -- and I really don’t believe that we are approaching doom -- but I think we’re going to slide into intensified social conflicts, social hostility, some forms of radicalism, there is just going to be a sense that this is not a just society."
 Ex-National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski

Now some commentary from Mr. Panzer of Financial Armageddon fame:

Think back to six years or so, before the financial crisis began.

I wonder how many of us would have honestly expected to see credible individuals appearing on mainstream television programs talking about the growing threat of social unrest in the United States?

Not many, I bet.

Now, of course, things have changed. In fact, I would argue that the oddballs nowadays are those who don't see domestic upheaval as a very real possibility in the not-so-distant future.

With that in mind, here is an interview with Mr. Brzezinski from MSNBC's "Morning Joe," in which he expounds on the likely fallout from rising income and wealth inequality and a heightened sense of social injustice.

Towards the end of the interview the ‘regulars’ point out that there is already a considerable amount of ‘unrest’ seething beneath the surface of our nearly dead civilization. They also point to the unrest that is breaking out around the globe, something that has been ‘misinterpreted’ by the Corporate owned media as ‘the stirrings of democracy’ rather than what it really is, a deep-seated thirst for economic justice!

How unfortunate is it for the ‘underclasses’ of the world that their overlords will happily grant them the ‘illusion of participation’ but never free them from their financial bondage?

But the ‘illusion’ is wearing thin. The ballot box hasn’t produced ‘believable results’ in so long that people are starting to cast about for alternatives.

Why vote when nothing changes?

Well good citizen, when people no longer believe in the, er, ‘dream’, that’s when the trouble begins.

Let me take a moment to address the ‘elephant in the room’, may I?

We’ve all seen the price of energy headed for the stratosphere…part of this is due to ‘uncertainty’ and another part is due to ‘no place else to put it’.

Okay, ‘economic theory' tells us that more expensive energy will ‘usher in’ alternative sources of power.

So why AREN’T there windmills/solar panels popping up across the landscape?

Could it be to avert open revolt?

85 MILLION unemployed and these assholes are putting up CHINESE energy products!

Major WTF!

Naturally, there are two ways this can go down. One is they can start with the rolling blackouts and, er, ‘hint’ that we won’t see any improvement until we ‘get over’ our aversion to imported energy equipment. (A variant of the old ‘stick ‘em up’ capitalism is so famous for.)

The other way…(a ‘more likely’ outcome) after the ‘new regime’ takes over is you won’t dare say anything for fear of being put in a ‘camp’ for ‘re-education’.

Then we start down that (by then) familiar road of ‘massacres and reprisals’, a game that is played by despots, wherever they are found.

And make no mistake about it; we won’t ‘elect’ our next ‘leader’.

You won’t see or hear of this in any media outlet but ‘rumors’ will abound.

There is never any trouble in Dear Leader’s ‘perfect world’ nor is there any ‘dissent’.

You’re either ‘with the program’ or you’re in a camp!

Simple.

Um, regular readers have seen these essays lead to the same disturbing outcome repeatedly. So either they have formed the opinion that I have a disturbed mind or, more pragmatically, they more clearly see the ‘frail’ nature of our current civilization.

Things have already gone ‘horribly wrong’, there is no avoiding the coming despot!

It is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’…

And I’d have to opine it will be ‘sooner’ rather than ‘later’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner