Back Flip

Greetings good citizen,

The NYSE opened ‘in the dink’ again this morning (but as close as anyone can tell, it doesn’t mean Jack.)

Probably the hell of it, good citizen. When push comes to shove, none of it actually ‘means’ anything.

The current crisis is due to a couple of too rich to know better, ‘fuck you, pay me types’ that the courts are, er, ‘unwilling’ to tell ’em to go piss up a bent rope!

Yeah, when your legal system turns feral, the whole shootin’ match goes sour!

Ironically, the only thing that will drag the survivors back to the negotiating table is a last ditch effort to restore order to a world gone mad!

How sad is it good citizen that the ‘eye for an eye’ horseshit doesn’t end until you’re both dead? (If there’s no legal system that is prepared to intervene.)

In yet another ‘telltale’ that our bought and paid for government has let the legal establishment run amuck, the government has proven totally incapable of safeguarding your investments.

Now you’re really reliant on ‘men, both good and true’ to save your sorry ass.

Understand that these fictional ‘men’ were NOT elected to do their job. The ones you DID elect are the ones responsible for the absence of law enforcement in the financial market place.

“It was just a teeny political favor the bankers asked for…it doesn’t affect you…unless you’ve got an IRA or a 401k…then you’re fucked!”

But best not to go down that path. If you start looking around and observe all of the things that are going against you it is likely you’ll go ‘postal’. (At the very least you will understand why others sometimes ‘crack under the stress’…or you’ll marvel that it doesn’t happen more often!)

Anyway, you know it’s gonna be a ‘slow news day’ when Mr. Krugman returns to the issue of the Plutocracy and the need to ‘rescue’ democracy from it.

To which I would respond if you are prevented from voting directly upon the issues, you do NOT live in a Democracy!

If the ONLY choice you get to make is who will vote in your name without EVER consulting you, you are NOT a ‘member of a democracy’.

Even by the textbook definition of the word.

Rule BY some of the people FOR the rest of us is much closer to Monarchy than anything else.

Worse, it is a defacto ‘dictatorship of the entrenched.’

But this is yet another ‘pissing contest’ that will remain ‘winnerless’

And speaking of exercises in futility

We have this ‘empty declaration’ from the, er, ‘president’ of China:

With anemic economic expansion in Europe and America, there is even more pressure on China, the world's second-biggest economy, to boost consumption at home.
Mr. Hu said on Sunday that Beijing was serious about pursuing balance in its trade policy, adding that it would bring opportunities to countries around the world.

"We will view expansion of imports as an important way to change the development mode of foreign trade," he said at a speech at the Great Hall of the People.
"We will work hard to promote a balanced international balance of payments. We will not deliberately pursue a trade surplus."

Naturally, it is that last bit about ’not deliberately pursuing a trade surplus’ that gives us something to ponder.

What do you suppose Mr. Hu’s worst nightmare looks like?

You can bet he share’s the same one the boys of Wall Street keep having…the rope doesn’t break their neck and they’re going to strangle to death before someone can free them!

Why would Mr. Hu share Wall Street’s nightmares of ‘punishment gone awry?’

Imagine tens of millions of Chinese workers thrown off the job when Western economies start reversing the effects of the ‘economic desert’ created by the ‘global race to the bottom’?

Undetermined at this time is whether or not the equipment necessary to manufacture the items will return with the work…probably not.

Yes, it will not go well for Mr. Hu if the ‘economic miracle’ that made a handful of capitalists unbelievably rich suddenly turns sour.
He may even be thinking he’ll be ‘lucky’ if all that happens is that long walk off of a short pier.

There are worse things than death…

Unfortunately for Mr. Hu, I don’t see an alternative to the Chinese economy hitting the wall like a dog that runs full tilt and reaches the end of its chain.

You just know that the chain isn’t gonna snap or get pulled out of its mooring, the dog is gonna do a back flip…the ’hard way’.

The good news is that the dog almost always survives this…

However the master sometimes isn’t so lucky…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

No Place to Hide...

Greetings good citizen (& comrades,)

One of the ‘contradictions’ of targeting the proverbial ‘one percent’ is the well known fact that they ARE NOT a ‘cohesive group’.

If not for their ‘common enemy’ (the rest of us, ergo the 99%) they would dedicate (more of) their attention toward wiping each other out.

There is much to be gleaned from this morning’s offering set as it is in the former Soviet Union.

It is a mystery on the same level as the kings stepping off of their thrones in succession after the US revolution that the world’s two (nominally communist) nations both abandoned their failed economic systems and embraced (failing) capitalism (one of whom did this WITHOUT disavowing communism!)

Well, this small ‘retrospective’ of how it went down in Russia offers some clues to what happens when revolutions are, er, ‘privatized’…

Post-Soviet privatizations shifted state-owned factories into the hands of a coterie of well-connected businessmen — the oligarchs. Partly as a result, Russia has 101 billionaires, behind only China, with 115, and the United States, with 412, according to Forbes.

Only now, capital flight, a problem in the 1990s, has re-emerged. Money is flowing out of Russia faster than it is flowing in. The net outflow is expected to reach $70 billion by year-end, and the figures suggest that the bulk of that will be from large investors.

Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist for Deutsche Bank here, notes that “the scale of capital flight has more than compensated for the rise of oil prices.”

Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ ignores the undeniable fact that when some one ‘wins’, there are inevitably losers.

Which is to point out that ‘greed’, even greed passed off as serving the greater good, is still a game of winners and LOSERS.

And after almost 400 years, the ‘losers’ are starting to pile up out there!

Which is, not too bizarrely, viewed as King Louis’s big mistake.

He didn’t ‘exterminate’ the rabble often enough, thus he lost his head (and the throne too!)

Um, I mention this because it forms the basis of my ‘kill off’ theory. The powerful feel compelled to kill off large segments of the ‘preferably’ surplus population (although it is all the same to them. As far as they’re concerned we could all be replaced with trained baboons (and they wouldn’t notice the difference!)

Greed is NOT GOOD. It INEVITABLY results in the SQUANDERING of resources!

And this is NOT an argument you want to get into with the ‘self-centered’, who, by default, view any effort expended not advancing their own agenda as ‘wasted’.

Why do you think the poor number in the billions? It is because the selfish/greedy don’t give a damn about anybody but themselves!

If we flip back a few paragraphs we would see the downright ‘shameful’ number of global billionaires…

Which opens another, er, ‘window’ good citizen.

How the hell did we leap from Millionaire to Billionaire in a single generation?

Ironically, the answer lies in ‘peak oil!’

A phenomenon that is being driven by a global population that is out of control…

Um, just because the corporate owned media, er, ‘chooses to ignore’ certain topics doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, mean they are ‘non-issues’.

Let us take our unemployment ‘crisis’ in the context of an ‘out of control’ population.

There aren’t enough jobs for the people we already have…yet we continue to ‘breed’ more ‘workers’. (Making babies is the main reason why (the children of) workers don’t suicide on their 15th birthday…despite some believing that they should!)

Funny how that ‘biological imperative’ turns into a two-edged sword…isn’t it?

And you can’t, er, discourage someone that has little else to live for from breeding or they won’t squander their lives making YOU rich!

Neat trap, eh?

Ironic that the, er, only effective/humane way to get our population back under control is to ‘level the playing field’ so the battle for survival doesn’t turn the planet into ‘scorched earth’, fit for no one.

In case you didn’t detect it, that was indeed another shot at our ‘useless’ media…not that I expect it to change anything.

Nope, I’m putting my faith in YOU gentle reader! There are more of you than you may think.

Eventually, you will start hearing people talking about the ideas presented to them here and you will find that it wasn’t a ‘waste of time’ to click through that blogger firewall after all.

But the key here is ‘eventually’.

Although I do invite you to share this with your, er, ‘friends’ (possibly revealing them as not being quite the ‘friend’ you thought they were…)

Which is to acknowledge that the self-centered don’t like ‘sunshine’.

It’s like the ‘factually challenged’ Republicans that are unable to defend their assertions with logic.

Like I said, this isn’t about ‘me’ it’s about ‘us’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. You know I seldom 'add' to a post afterwards BUT I was just visiting The Automatic Earth and read Ilargi's opening comments...which is mighty sound advice, considering what will happen if there's a 'panic' in Europe (It will cause one here as well.)

If you don't have some 'ready cash' on hand, it would be advisable to 'get some'...before you can't!

Although I suspect this will do you little good if you aren't prepared to spend it all quickly...because that's the 'other shoe'.

Prices will likely go haywire!

Just saying, ya know?

Money IS NOT wealth!

Greetings good citizen,

Occupy Boston was folded up ‘peacefully’ last night. I can’t help but wonder if the ‘kid gloves’ weren’t partly due to history. The ‘shot heard ‘round the world’ was fired not too far from Dewey Square…

And I suspect, more than a little, that there is a very deep fear of ‘repeating’ that historic event.

But that’s not the topic of today’s offering…

No, today’s offering is intended to disabuse you of the notion that when The End comes, it will drop like a bag of hammers.

When, as I have been, er, ‘warning’ (actually for years now) that it will ‘creep up on us’…gradually.

Still, at this point the same lack of bankable projects has come home to roost. A series of lavish Fed money printing operations (the euphemism du jour is "qualitative easing") flooded the banking system in the United States with immense amounts of cheap cash, in an attempt to make up for the equally immense losses the banking system suffered in the aftermath of the 2005-2008 real estate bubble. Pundits insisted, at least at first, that the result would be a flood of new loans to buoy the economy out of its doldrums, but nothing of the kind happened. There are plenty of reasons why it didn’t happen, but a core reason was simply that there aren’t that many business propositions in the industrial world just now that are in a position to earn enough money to pay back loans.

Among the few businesses that do promise a decent return on investment are the ones involved in fossil fuel extraction, and so companies drilling for oil and natural gas in shale deposits—the latest fad in the fossil fuel field—have more capital than they know what to do with. The oil boomtowns in North Dakota and the fracking projects stirring up controversy in various corners of the Northeast are among the results. Elsewhere in the American economy, however, good investments are increasingly scarce. For decades now, profits from the financial industry and speculation have eclipsed profits from the manufacture of goods—before the 2008 crash, it bears remembering, General Motors made far more profit from its financing arm than it did from building cars—and that reshaping of the economy seems to be approaching its logical endpoint, the point at which it’s no longer profitable for the industrial economy to manufacture anything at all.

I have begun to suspect that this will turn out to be one of the most crucial downsides of the arrival of peak oil. If the industrial economy, as I’ve suggested, was basically an arbitrage scheme profiting off the difference in cost between energy from fossil fuels and energy from human laborers, the rising cost of fossil fuels and other inputs needed to run an industrial economy will sooner or later collide with the declining cost of labor in an impoverished and overcrowded society. As we get closer to that point, it seems to me that we may begin to see the entire industrial project unravel, as the profits needed to make industrialism make sense dry up. If that’s the unspoken subtext behind the widening spiral of economic dysfunction that seems to be gripping so much of the industrial world today, then what we’ve seen so far of what peak oil looks like may be a prologue to a series of wrenching economic transformations that will leave few lives untouched.

What is described in the last paragraph is ‘clearly visible’ to any capitalist today. We are rapidly (and I cannot stress that point enough, think ‘the ground is rushing up to meet us’, ‘rapidly’.)

With all of the, er, ‘overhead’ associated with the financial sector (which is to point out, once again that ‘money’ IS NOT ‘wealth’) the ‘capacity’ to produce wealth diminishes as the ability to ‘pay’ for it shrinks.

One can easily see this is a ‘management problem’ BUT the, er, ‘demands’ of capital have outstripped the ability of wealth creation to produce sufficient ‘profit’.

No irony should be lost on the fact that efforts to ‘offset’ this ‘imbalance’ has come from the ‘employee/customer’ (higher prices/lower pay.)

This is akin to starving a beast of burden while working it twice as hard…

And somehow the idiots are outraged when the obvious outcome is realized!

Seriously good citizen, this is INSANITY!

We have certifiably whacko people in charge of our economy!

Which leaves us with our ‘original problem’…

What the hell can we ‘do’ about it?

Due to the extremely ‘poor planning’ on our founder’s part, these, er, ‘morons’ are, in fact, ‘The Law’ and we have no (legal) way to, er, ‘remove’ them before they drive our civilization off a cliff!

But, as I pointed out in ‘Fear Factor’ it is futile to point out that we’ve been here (many times) before.

Although, this time I would definitely say it IS ‘different’…but not in a good way.

As I have undoubtedly annoyed many of you every time I repeated it, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace (and unhindered, despite OWS best efforts.)

While some would opine that ‘A’ doesn’t happen if ‘B’ isn’t present, the difficulty of having to adopt a new commerce system coupled with the realities of ‘energy scarcity’ (that will render large swaths of this planet ‘unlivable’ for considerable periods each year) present a considerable ’challenge’.

Worse, the current ‘foot dragging’ regarding ‘alternative energy’ will result in needless bloodshed. Billions will suffer so ‘a few’ can be rich…

But as I have emphasized repeatedly, money IS NOT ’wealth’.

This is a reality that will dawn upon the clueless all too soon.

Then the current regime’s ‘mismanagement’ will be writ large for all to see…and to weep over!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pushing the limit...

Greetings good citizen,

If we start off with garden variety ‘Happy Talk’ we would observe that (as usual) The NYSE is up 120 points on the latest` ‘plan’ to save the Euro-zone.

The thing that is confusing about all of this is investors repeated ‘failure to understand’ that NOBODY has (and only the ‘cheaper there’ has any hope of EVER coughing up enough dough) to ‘save’ the Euro-zone…so WTF is the stock market rising for?

Maybe they think they can ‘wish’ the money into existence…and, ultimately, that’s how it will go down (once our so-called leaders accept that they have no alternative but to follow Zimbabwe.)

Economics 101 good citizen; if you produce no wealth you will soon not possess any!

The Western World has ‘off-shored’ (effectively) All of its ‘productive capacity’, which is its ‘ability’ to generate wealth.

It is important to keep in mind that ‘money’ (commonly referred to as the ‘yardstick’ used to ‘measure’ wealth) SHOULD NEVER BE CONFUSED with actual useful goods!

Mother Nature HAS NO CASH REGISTER so ‘wealth’ (useful items crafted from ‘free’ inputs) rely SOLELY on the ability to produce them…money is a total ‘non-factor’.

IF you do NOT possess the ability/equipment to produce a thing for yourself then you are obliged to EITHER surrender something of value for it OR learn to live without that item.

This is pretty basic stuff so I find it incredible that our politicians continue to pretend it’s not happening.

Worse, nothing is getting ‘better’ BECAUSE these nitwits have been ignoring the true problem for more than four years now! (Actually closer to four DECADES…)

Ironically, the pretty much ‘defunct’ OWS movement means they can no longer ‘safely’ continue to do so

Apparently, what I took for a ‘non-starter’ turned out to be something our criminal legislators eagerly embraced:

Last night Jon Stewart took on the recent passage of a bill that would allow the U.S. government to lock up American citizens indefinitely, without a trial. Troubling much? Even worse, Congress openly debated the subject for only an hour, and a mere 7 Congress people voted against it.

It seems to me our ‘representatives’ are more interested in saving their own ass (from being dragged to the gallows) than in protecting the basic rights of those they supposedly ‘represent’.

Conversely, if we simply ask the question of ‘why are they doing this?’ (without debating the political implications,) we could speculate that this is the ‘obvious next step’ in a non-violent ’usurpation’ of our former government.

I would ’opine’ that this legislation targets the ’troublemakers’ (like my humble self.) If I were to be honest then I’d say there’s enough ’evidence’ in these pages for them to (attempt) to scoop me up and lock me away…permanently.

Which is to say that I hope to evade capture; whether I will succeed remains to be seen. (It is just chilling to me to see an unexplained provision of the Patriot Act revealed to be exactly what it looked like! Haliburton contracts to build ‘detention centers’ within the continental US.)

But I ‘predicted’ when that ‘mysterious’ and as yet unexplained provision of the Patriot Act appeared that we should keep our eyes open for the ‘sudden disappearance’ of those ‘critical’ of the present political situation.

And I would be one of those, er, ‘troublemakers’.

Um, so now it looks like I’m going to get to see if I was right.

Not that I’m gonna hold my breath (or my tongue/keyboard hand) waiting for it.

Perhaps that recent spike in web activity was something other than what I took it to be…

Again, no point in fretting about it, Que sera-sera.

Just a reminder that you might not have the opportunity to download your personal copy of A Simple Plan in the not too distant future.

Just weird how this paranoia thing feeds on itself…but then again there really isn’t any such thing as being ‘too careful’.

I’m ‘guessing’ this legislation hasn’t passed the House yet nor has it gone for a presidential signature…and MAYBE it won’t make it.

BUT, they CAN NOT ‘drag their feet’ much longer.

If they intend to ‘take over’ their ‘window of opportunity’ is closing rapidly.

Although I am still of the opinion that they are favoring a ‘post collapse’ rescue strategy.

Theoretically, the populace will be more ‘open to new ideas’ after spending a few months swimming in their own cesspool.

There’s nothing like a few months of absolute horror to make monarchy sound like a ‘good idea’.

Hell, the new boss can call himself The Messiah if he wants to (so long as he can deliver the goods!)

How pathetic is it that the only one who will consistently ‘get the goods’ is the one offering to ‘rescue’ you (in exchange for everything you hold dear.)

Definitely a case of ‘more than you bargained’ for with ‘more for me’ monarchy.

Oddly, some adore monarchy for the ‘pomp and circumstance’ alone regardless of the cost…

But it takes all types…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Four Years Later...

Greetings good citizen,

The NYSE opened down this morning in tandem with every other exchange around the globe.

Considering how the market rallies on even imaginary good news, it is somewhat confusing to see a down open in tandem with this what the fuck have you been smoking? headline.

The report, coming on the heels of data last week showing a rise in hiring and a sharp drop in the unemployment rate to 8.6 percent in November, pointed to some healing in a sector that has been the Achilles' heel of the economy's recovery. [Um, truth be told good citizen, last week’s 180,000 upwards move, on the onset of the holiday season, was less than stellar. Worse, this drop in claims comes FOUR YEARS after this debacle began…so again, why all the ’Happy’?]

The drop in claims last week more than unwound the prior two weeks' increase, and pulled them back below the 400,000 level usually associated with improving labor market conditions.

Claims were the latest data to suggest an acceleration in economic growth in the current quarter after output expanded at a 2 percent annual rate in the July-September period.
The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends, fell 3,000 to 393,250, the lowest since early April.

The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid dropped 174,000 to 3.58 million in the week ended Nov. 26, the lowest since mid-September 2008.

Um, constant reader knows that ‘Labor Force Participation’ is still below 2001 levels (and our population hasn’t fallen either!) More people need jobs and fewer people have them so I wouldn’t go popping the cork on that bottle of bubbly just yet!

This is a crisis that gets worse with each passing minute…and the FUCKING ‘corporate owned media’ continues to ignore it!

Remember, it is the corporatist/Libertarian attitude that if you aren’t prospering in this ‘fuck you, pay me’ environment, it’s your own fault!

Fact is good citizen, we are rapidly approaching 50% unemployment.

If you’re not clinging to the social safety net for dear life then you are a member of the roving millions that make up the ‘shadow population’.

This is another aspect, a ‘tell-tale’ if you will, that our commerce system isn’t up to the job of supporting our civilization. You can find it in the police log section of your local newspaper.

A few years back there was a sharp uptick in people being issued citations for driving ‘unregistered/uninsured’ as well as for DUI.

Not quite as ‘telling’ but potentially related is the alarming increase of people being cited for operating after license suspension.

Track this information for a month and see if you don’t come to the conclusion that there are a LOT of people out there living, literally, ‘hand-to-mouth’.

What I’m trying to point to, good citizen, is that the ‘Army of the unemployed’ already has staggering numbers.

The ONLY thing saving our collective asses is their lack of organization. If an OWS type movement starts up within their ranks (under the banner of ‘the 50% looking for their fair share’, the test of the 2nd amendment will be ON!)

But I digress.

Interesting how OWS is primarily a ‘debtors revolt’ that only tangentially touches upon the lack of, er, ‘employment opportunities’.

How much larger would the movement be if they realized a temp job would be as good as it’s going to get for the majority of their adult life?

We’re talking kids here with zero future security.

Sacrificing yourself on the corporate alter for nothing in return violates the human social contract.

Worse, it constitutes ‘just cause’ for civil war.

Ask yourself, good citizen, why would you spend your time making someone else rich for absolutely nothing, to be left totally on your own when the time comes that you literally CAN’T work anymore (although a majority of you will have that choice made for you shortly after you turn forty.)

We are weeks away from yet another presidential election cycle and YOU KNOW this important issue isn’t going to be on the ballot, or worse, any politicians radar.

Why the People’s Party doesn’t withdraw their support from the worthless incumbent is both mystifying as well as damning. It tells us that the whole damn system is beyond salvage!

Like the (12) ‘steppers’ are fond of acknowledging, the first step is admitting there is a problem…is the second step really accepting that we are powerless to alter it?

Because Bubba, if we don’t ‘step up to the plate’ the problem will never get solved…and it sure as shit ain’t gonna solve itself!

Which is incorrect.

Left alone the problem will indeed ‘solve itself’ but not before it becomes a situation beyond your vilest nightmares…

(I need not add that the time to act is now, do I?)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fear Factor

Greetings good citizen,

I am hesitant to raise the subject because Blogger’s stats tracking are, er, ‘spotty’ at best but yesterday my little window on our civilization experienced a ‘personal best’.

Attention/curiosity has been growing in recent weeks (so yesterday’s ‘spike’ isn’t totally out of character.)

Anyway, thanks for sharing this site (and my decidedly twisted observations) with your friends.

That said, let us proceed with the ‘business’ of these humble pages, which are intended to provide you with something to think about rather than the much simpler objective of telling you what to think.

While there is no shortage of people complaining about the path our civilization is on, it is somewhat futile to point out we’ve been here before (many times.)

It is even more futile to point out that the only thing that has been done about the deeply entrenched crap, crud and corrosion is the hitting of the reset switch, followed by a hearty rendition of ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss!’.

And after a couple of decades of things ‘appearing’ to get better, we find ourselves right back where we started (again.)

The ‘true’ purpose of this site is to promote a sustainable alternative to the ‘perpetual expansion’ of predatory capitalism.

And, as we have witnessed ourselves (repeatedly,) if capitalism stops expanding, it immediately ‘collapses’.

Which is where we’re at today.

No irony should be lost on the fact that the only thing preventing our collapse into barbarism is socialism, the much despised ‘alternative’ to (more for me) capitalism.

Yet the corporate owned media continues to pretend that capitalism is alive, well and holding up the sinking ship of humanity.

Which is to ask ‘how much horse-shit are you willing to shovel before you realize there IS no pony under the pile?’

Speaking of ‘horse-pucky’ we have this insightful piece that sheds some light on a decidedly twisted philosophy we have come to know as ‘Libertarianism’:

From the fertile source of marginal utility value calculus the Austrians thus constructed a pristine moral and metaphysical system. But in doing so – like all metaphysicians – they allowed their imaginations to run away with them. They never noticed the point at which they crossed that fateful line; that line that separates our attempts to represent the world accurately and dispassionately to ourselves from our attempts to create a fantasy world in which we can live. The Austrians had, at first, attempted to use their imaginations to explain the world around them and, in doing so, had fallen into a dream world of their own creation.

And so the foundations of the political cult we call libertarianism were firmly in place. It is an ingenious creation which even came to include what CG Jung and other mythologists might call a central ‘archetypal’ or mythic figure. Even more specifically, what the Austrians have done is insert into their narrative what the great American mythologist Joseph Campbell called the ‘monomyth’. The monomyth is a recurrent theme in mythologies from all over the world. It is essentially a ‘hero myth’ and, as Campbell argues, can be located in most major religious narratives (Christ, Buddha etc.). In this the Austrians provided the libertarian religion with their very own version of the monomyth.

That most libertarians are ignorant of the source of their beliefs – just as most of them are not very conversant with economic theory generally, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding – only adds a sociological dimension to their cult. Their cult forms a hierarchy where those who are closer to the Grand Truth are supposed to know more than those who are less conversant. Those who are less conversant then scrutinize the Great Texts – which are largely taken to be Holy Writ – until they can advance up the priestly ranks.

If you want to go fishing in Yves’s Archives you will find a rather shocking article describing the foundations of ‘Libertarian paradise’ (better know to you as Hell of Earth.)

Why bother kicking ‘fringe’ Libertarians in the shins?

Because the Libertarians have taken over the Republican Party, good citizen. That’s why they have suddenly become so ‘radical’.

Some of you are too young to remember but ‘back in the day’ you could find ‘common ground’ with an ‘old-time conservative’. Today this is not possible because Libertarians view non-libertarians as an ‘inferior species’.

Maybe it’s just me but once you start down that road it becomes pretty obvious that YOU are the one who is a few fries shy of a Happy Meal!

Libertarianism, like its ‘soul-mate’ Capitalism is centered on ‘private property’.

A Simple Plan is centered on individual sovereignty, that we all have an equal right to the bounty of this planet. (something that can't be achieved if the so-called 'owner' refuses to part with your share...or wants/commands more than it's worth!)

Bizarrely, Libertarians equate property ownership with self-ownership. They can own property BECAUSE they ‘own’ themselves.

This involves a certain degree of mental gymnastics, but that is always the case when it comes to justifying bullshit.

Tell the homeless that they ‘own’ themselves and they’ll respond with the most famous of observations ’nothing from nothing leaves nothing’…an equation the Libertarians choose to blame on the victim.

Native Americans didn’t believe in property ownership (and their civilization thrived for a hundred thousand years!)

Conversely, capitalism’s personal best is Rome’s 400 year stretch…(and the price in blood was horrendous just to get that far!)

Looks to me like the property-less native Americans were on to something.

So don’t ‘fear’ A Simple plan because it hasn’t been tried (in recent memory.)

It is a proven successful concept that flourished for a lot longer than predatory capitalism has been around!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Jettisoning the Baggage

Greetings good citizen,

Pursuant to downgrades issued by the major credit rating agencies, stock markets around the world have been bleeding from the eye-sockets all night.

The NYSE opened ‘down’ across the board but it’s interesting to note that the Magic of Wall Street has managed to lift the FTSE (London) back into positive territory, again, for no discernable reason.

I like to open my posts with these ‘What the fuck have you been smoking?’ reports to better contrast the ‘Happy Talk’ spewed in other sections of the media.

You’ve been hearing rumblings about ‘downsizing’ if not outright eliminating (privatizing) the Postal Service for the past couple of decades.

Well now they’re actually going to do something about it.

Oddly, the question is why now and why so much?

On Monday, the Postal Service said it would “move forward” with that plan, with closings to begin as early as March. It also said it was seeking a nonbinding advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission about the closures, although agency officials said they were intent on closing the processing centers as part of a plan to save $3 billion a year by 2015.

“The bottom line is that in the last three years, we’ve lost almost 27 percent of our first-class volume,” Patrick Donahoe, the postmaster general, said in a phone interview. “In 2000, 5 percent of people paid bills online. Now it’s 60 percent. The problem is we’ve lost so much volume in blue-box mail, we can’t hold out for next-day service anymore.”

The Postal Service lost $5.1 billion last year.

Um, geez Louis (Postmaster General is a ‘political appointment’ and changes with each incoming administration) You’d think somebody was ‘unaware’ of both the purpose and the importance of the global mail.

Just to give you an idea of ‘how important’ the mail service is (here in the US) imagine a 4 way intersection and 4 different vehicles pull up to the stop sign at the exact same time.

One is an Ambulance, the other is a Fire truck, the third is a police car and the last is a postal vehicle…who has the ‘right of way’?

You’re damn right, the postal vehicle!
(Not that the driver of the postal vehicle wouldn’t yield to the other three, those civilization altering communications are more rare than our example would lead you to believe.)

As stated, the Post Office has been ‘losing money’ and years ago clueless politicians decided to make the postal service ‘self-sustaining’, which once again displays stunning ignorance of the purpose/importance of a national communications system that is the postal service.

If the electricity goes down, the mail still ‘moves’…slowly, but it will still get there…eventually.

What do you suppose they intend to do with the ‘savings’ yielded from these cuts to the postal service?

Will they divert them to fighting the perpetual ‘war on Terra’ or will they go towards funding more surveillance apparatus for the growing Security State?

But perhaps it is the ‘bigger picture’ that is being ignored here, don’t you think?

Our second offering from the same source takes this same story to the next rung down on the government ladder:

“There’s always been this promise that if you came to work and did your job, at the end there would be your reward — a defined retirement. The idea was you could retire with respect and dignity. But that whole idea has been slashed now, and I felt like, ‘What is the point?’ ”

In some places, the rise in retirement has brought welcome and needed financial news. Kansas announced last month that it would save $34.5 million over two years because more than 1,000 workers had agreed to accept cash and health insurance incentives to leave. State officials said they had yet to determine which of the positions of departing workers they considered critical enough to refill.

But some experts and workers question the ultimate result of so much leaving, saying it is already leaving some governments short-staffed (and, in some cases, obliged to pay overtime) and at risk of losing institutional knowledge and technical expertise as older workers vanish.

Is this the conservative ‘Starve the Beast’ strategy in action? No.

It IS the end result of Globalization. All of those enterprises our politicians ‘allowed’ to be off-shored no longer contribute to the, er, ‘greater good’.

So they’ll shut down the post offices (what the hell, nobody can pay their bills anymore anyway!) and cut back on police, fire and the education system (teachers first, naturally.)

In fact, as you can plainly see, they already have.

And what will be left?

A Banana Republic where the privileged don’t set foot outside their walled and fortified compounds without a platoon of heavily armed bodyguards because they know if they drop their guard for even a second they will be kidnapped and killed (in that order.)

What, you can’t afford to pay a platoon of heavily armed men to protect you and yours?

Well, you’d better have enough to pay ‘tribute’ or you’ll be taking your life in your own hands just venturing to the corner store!

And that will be the hell of it, you won’t be able to afford to escape!

Without a functioning justice system you’re a chicken just waiting to be plucked by some greedy opportunist.

And on that unpleasant note…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner