Cracked

Greetings good citizen,

Probably just the effects of being unemployed for two years but it seems I can’t look at anything these days without applying the basic principles of A Simple Plan.

The latest to rise to the test is this long overwrought issue:

A Titan’s How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling
By JODI KANTOR

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, is attempting to start a national discussion for women in the workplace with her new book, and a social movement.

How does ASP apply here?

IS (as the capitalists claim) the ‘problem’ with the world’s management team the fact that there aren’t enough women at the top…

Or is it a lack of qualifications, (which seems to me to be the more obvious problem…)

Which is to point out that under A Simple Plan, the most qualified and only the most qualified, regardless of gender, will be promoted to tackle the planet’s top jobs.

(Um, the ‘goal’ of A Simple Plan is to achieve global dominance…fairly quickly.)

Regardless of how they are fixed personally, the world’s top people won’t view the world through their personal plumbing!

Which generally appears to be the source of this ‘gender diversion’.

So let’s make a big deal about the ‘number’ of women in boardrooms and PRETEND that this is the reason the global economy is scroomed!

But lets look at a different piece of the puzzle:

Neighbors Kill Neighbors in Kenya as Election Tensions Stir Age-Old Grievances
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

In less than two weeks, Kenyans will line up by the millions to pick their leaders for the first time since a disastrous vote in 2007, which set off clashes that killed more than 1,000 people.

Um, you know I’m down on elected office in the first place and under A Simple Plan there wouldn’t be any.

How else will we ‘get over’ the human tendency to hold grudges if we don’t select our leaders through comprehensive competency testing?

While the test can’t erase an individual’s color, gender or the, er, ‘supreme being’ he/she believes in, it does ‘eliminate’ the most critical factor, incompetence.

So it is that these people are being given the ‘illusion of participation’ and killing one another over what must be some pretty foul choices.

How sad is it that we aren’t too far from succumbing to the exact same set of circumstances.

Perhaps that’s the hell of it good citizen. Elections merely exemplify our powerlessness to control our situation, especially when the only options are BAD and WORSE.

IF we are to have ANY hope of correcting what’s wrong in our society we first need to get the BEST POSSIBLE Candidates a shot at the job then have the candidates PROVE they are the ones who can get the job done!

HOW do we find ‘the best people’?

The Tests start when you join the workforce and lead to the top job…so EVERYBODY has a chance of becoming King of the Heap!

Every year you step up or move aside, depends on what’s inside you (and how far you’re comfortable with going. Fully 90% of all candidates want no part of the ‘top job’ regardless of the ‘perqs’.

And admittedly, most people want no part of the responsibility that comes with the turf.

Ironically, people who do well in the tests also thrive on the challenges the tests present.
But that’s neither here nor there…but it does raise the ‘better than you’ issue that somewhat haunts our current broken society.

Which is something the tests will be designed to screen out. If power gives you a fat head then you aren’t going to be seeing very much of it.

My but I’ve had a ‘full day’, sorry for the tardy but it is what it is…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pillar 2

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It also lays out how to restore the Justice system.

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

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

Sadly, most of us confuse justice with revenge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then there’s the issue of punishment.

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will your kids get exiled for YOUR crimes?

Only if they do as you did.

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

SOTU

Greetings good citizen,

Well, the SOTU speech last night has us all scratching our heads, because it was nothing we haven’t heard a thousand times before.

Maybe it was comforting when more competent leaders told us we were in the process of rectifying longstanding wrongs…but in my mid-fifties, I’ve heard all of this crap before and guess what, it’s getting worse!

Isn’t insanity defined as doing the same act repeatedly, each time expecting a different outcome?

Pray tell, explain to me how throwing money at an education system that trains our kids for jobs that aren’t here any more is going to help?

This is nearly as ludicrous as letting banks ‘audit’ themselves. Given the, er, ‘integrity’ of modern banking, just how ‘trustworthy’ would these self-audits be?

I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a fifty-foot pole!

But I digress, back to the ‘how we doin’ speech…

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"Every day, we should ask ourselves three questions as a nation: How do we attract more jobs to our shores? How do we equip our people with the skills to get those jobs? And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?"

PRESIDENT OBAMA, in his State of the Union address.

I’d start with a different first question. I’d start by asking how much longer are we going to put up with this BS?

Because the answer to the first question is moot. There used to be a lot more jobs here BUT our sell-out politicians signed ‘free trade agreements’ with every Banana Republic on the planet, pauperizing the nation as a result.

So don’t ask STUPID QUESTIONS like ‘How do we ‘attract’ more jobs to our shores?’ when you already know the answer.

We have to ‘out Banana Republic the Banana Republics’ and throw our STANDARD OF LIVING IN THE TOILET…(so ‘a few’ can be rich.)

Worse good citizen, you’d all have to be blind not to see that this is exactly the direction we are headed in!

Good for the capitalist, not so good for you and yours.

I’d use a stronger adjective than ‘good’ but this has to go on an unfirewalled page too.

Left unchecked good citizen our civilization is headed the way of Easter Island…all because nobody has the courage to stand up to ‘the insane money men’ and tell them ‘no!’

I do it regularly but as you can see a single voice has no effect…all I do is annoy them. (Even that remark is ‘vanity’, it far more likely they don’t know I exist!)

But we left two statements ‘unchallenged’, let us return to our ‘quote of the day’…

Our number two ‘mission’ is to how do we ‘equip’ our people to do the ‘jobs of tomorrow’?

Again, stupid question, we do it the ‘old fashioned way’…ON THE JOB TRAINING!

Our numbskull politicians would have you believe the people who perform commerce’s heavy lifting learned to do what they do in college.

We old people know better, AFTER college, your new employer TRAINS YOU on how THEY WANT IT DONE!

To the point that most college grads wonder why they bothered taking on all of that debt only to be spoon-fed everything they do.

But they don’t say anything because they write it off as ‘the cost of the job’. They invested tens of thousand in an education that will pay them back a million over the course of their career.

Without the degree (that they don’t use) they wouldn’t have gotten the job.

Simple.

But they want YOU to believe it was hard…when nothing changes.

Now we arrive at the last, er, ‘assertion’, which is as comical as it is farcial!

How do we ‘insure’ these new jobs pay a living wage?

How sad is it nobody has an answer to the second half of that statement (What is ‘a living wage?’)

Once upon a time after Europe was desolated by WWII and the last man standing was the US, a living wage was a ‘middle class’ income. Where the multiple redundant ‘middle manager’ made enough money to swing that (modest) home in the suburbs, put his kids through school and sock away enough for retirement all before reaching age 55!

Jr. got his twenty year mortgage in his twenties so it was paid off by the time he turned forty(ish) and he had the last twenty years to sock away cash to retire ‘in style’.

Now things are different.

There are no ‘middle managers’ just as there is no ‘redundancy’, the ‘market’ is supposed to take care of those trifles…if a void presents itself, the market will fill it (despite the enormous cost.)

The few have already waxed richer than their needs, pauperizing the rest of the world. Now we have enormous sums with no place to go and the global economy is locked in a dead stall…all so a few could be rich.

Since the rest of us have been condemned to death by this reckless action of our politicians, let us pray the rich are enjoying their wealth…and will enjoy doing their own heavy lifting after we’re gone.

Although I doubt we’ll vanish completely…

Stupid is as stupid does.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

(This post is ‘related’ to the larger series examining our civilization and how to repair/replace it.)

Cash, Credit and Crime

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

Revolting

Greetings good citizen,

Seems as though the only people visiting the new page are the folks who ensure you’re complying with the terms of service…which doesn’t bother me at all.

Truth be told I ‘catch’ myself (when I’m composing) all the time. The angst that I let flow freely behind the firewall doesn’t like being ‘redirected’ into, er; ‘less provocative’ terms.

However, the time has come (and for my longtime readers I add ‘once again’) to discuss the ‘purpose’ behind this blog.

While I am very ‘opinionated’, I don’t try to tell you what to think. I feel I have my work cut out just trying to provide you with things to think about.

So the focus here is not ‘what to think’ but merely to think…as in ‘at all’.

One of the obstacles I encountered in trying to popularize A Simple Plan was nobody felt the need to learn a better way of doing things. Their parents taught them what to do and they’d teach their kids, worked for them and it will work (sort of) for you.

No irony should be lost on the fact that YOU dear reader, are the first generation (since the founding of this nation) that this strategy WILL NOT work for.

You CAN’T tell your kids what your parents told YOU because THIS ISN’T THAT WORLD ANYMORE!

The now famous “Go along to get along” advice is more likely to get your children killed than to help them move ahead in life.

What advice DO YOU give your children these days?

Sorry, can’t help you out because if WE don’t derail this crazy train there won’t be anything left to save!

Sort of brings us full circle to the need to discuss ‘alternatives’ to the way things get done now.

Your parents didn’t have to worry about such things, survivors of the Great Depression and TWO ‘wars to end all wars’; they know what worked and how to make the world ‘tick’.

But that’s not the world their kids have left for yours.

The New Deal planted a rather insidious seed in the minds of the privileged few…and the fact that they nearly destroyed the world’s economy AND THEY WEREN’T PUNISHED FOR IT wasn’t lost on these people born with a sense of entitlement.

Oh how their parents ‘suffered’ paying those workers all of that money they would have had to pay the tax man! (And that’s the only reason companies ‘competed’ for help…they don’t do it in Banana Republics because the government doesn’t dare tax them the way the New Deal Democrats taxed the Wall Streeters!)

Now it’s a hundred years later and we’re right back where it all began! Only this time there is nobody on the side of the downtrodden and destitute.

Because the One Percent has added a ‘lead lining’ to the go along to get along canard. You either do what they tell you or they’ll find somebody who will (and YOU’LL never work in this town again! A ‘hangover’ from the old days.)

While this tactic is the main ingredient opposing armies are made of; nobody has the backing to field the force these battalions of the ‘dispossessed’ can bring to bear.

Thus do the ‘entitled’ continue to press their advantage.

While whole armies of the dazed and confused remain clueless as to what to do about it.

Because nobody remembers that our government was designed by the very same ‘entitled people’ we are unable to wrest control from now.

Not that most of you need any convincing that we have some dangerous if not downright ‘feral’ people in charge of, well, the world as it turns out right now.

If we, the governed, don’t clip their wings (and soon) we will be unable to.

Although the ‘bad news’ is we don’t have the tools to clip their wings with…and you’d think the people who had just fought a bloody revolution would have thought about that but no. The ones who get to decide what comes next get to toss out any ‘limitations’ on their ambitions!

Thus do we have an empty toolbox.

We shouldn’t feel bad, everybody else has a system modeled after ours…so they’re tool-less to!

Which brings us to the topic of what are we fighting for and what can we ‘replace’ the current broken system with?

Because if we only change who’s in charge, our kids will find themselves faced with the same problems we face today.

It’s not ‘who’ runs thing but HOW THEY ARE RUN that MUST BE changed!

And that’s what the next series of posts will touch upon, and ‘alternative’ to how things are currently done.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Degradation

Greetings good citizen,

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

(and Anarchists are nothing if not liberals!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you know what word it is?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress…

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Animals

Greetings good citizen,

In a rare trifecta, the top stories on today’s NY Times provide us with a ‘snapshot’ of the current status of, er, ‘our’ civilization (Which is actually two societies that are no longer even pretending to ‘co-exist’.)

What do YOU make of this puzzling first piece?

Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targets Arms Convoy, U.S. Says
By ISABEL KERSHNER and MICHAEL R. GORDON

Israel carried out a strike deep inside Syria, American officials reported, saying they believed the target was a shipment of antiaircraft weapons meant for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

So, was it a ‘surgical strike’? Did the Israeli ‘aces’ only destroy the boxes ‘addressed to Hezbollah’?

Of course not, this was like a drone attack at a funeral (anyone who was a friend of the deceased was a terrorist…and therefore deserving of ‘summary execution’, which, make no mistake about it, is PRECISELY what a drone attack is.)

Um, I’m not the only ‘unbeliever’ out there but if I’m wrong then hell is filling up mighty fast, wouldn’t you say?

How much sympathy do you think anyone has for ‘tiny Israel’ when they dispense with the entire justice system and murder with impunity?

Which is to opine that this is not ‘civilized’ behavior. If the rest of the world behaved like the Israelis regularly do it would be paved in glass already.

Moving on, we have this perplexing story that hints at communism not being completely crushed in China…(to the chagrin of the capitalists.)

Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months
By NICOLE PERLROTH

The timing of the attacks coincided with reporting for an investigation that found that the relatives of China's prime minister had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Seems it doesn’t matter what kind of government you are subjected too, it has a price and the capitalists are paying whatever it takes!

So the ‘politicians’ sell out their countrymen for a ‘better life’ for themselves…

Funny how that ‘monkey see-monkey do crap works, isn’t it?

How do you suppose we break that ‘cycle of corruption’ if NOBODY is ‘trustworthy’?

How about ‘your money is for you’?

Stopping the ‘counterfeiters’ is where it all starts. Most of what’s floating around like turds in our badly broken financial system is ‘fluff’ and prices no longer have any basis in reality.

How bad is it? Did I mention ‘trifecta’?

U.S. Growth Halted as Federal Spending Fell in 4th Quarter
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The government played a role in slowing the economic recovery as cuts in military spending and other factors overwhelmed the Federal Reserve's expanded campaign to spur growth.

Stocks Slip on Wall Street

[That last blurb snuck in and wasn’t intentional despite it being pertinent.]

But that’s nothing, I reported yesterday that GDP slipped and it had something to do with government spending.

Today it appears the story is a bit deeper and much more disturbing, our economy (such as it is) is on ‘life support’ tied to a printing press!

(Worse, the printing press is tied to a machine gun aimed at the hornets nest we call the Middle East!

How long do you think the ‘hosers’ in charge can keep this crapshoot afloat?

Probably just long enough to steal a lifeboat and load it full of the family jewels before bugging out to a tropical nirvana!

They won’t make it…but they ‘believe’ they will and to them that’s all that matters.

(Soon to be the plot of a major motion picture, yes, Hollywood IS ‘shameless’, which is bizarrely unrelated to its pervasive tastelessness… (Which has more to do with the bean counters than the art itself.)

all of which becomes moot when there is no longer a civilization to play to…

How ironic is it that the >One Percent thinks we are already there?

So, in aggregate, what do our top stories tell us?

In the first we see absolute ruthlessness in support of the ‘status quo’. Why is Israel ‘helping’ Assad? Because he keeps the Syrians out of Israel.

We’re back to the old ‘Devil you know’ scenario. Doesn’t matter if his people hate him as long as he holds up his end of the bargain and ‘peace’ reigns in the region.

Put a ‘wildcard’ in Assad’s slot and who knows what will happen next? Perhaps this new leader will unite the rest of the Arab world against the (thieving, murdering) West and upset the delicate balance of global energy supply and demand.

And everything north of the tropic of Cancer will freeze, in some cases, to death.

Our next story points at pervasive governmental corruption. How can anyour civilization survive if our ‘self-professed betters’ keep throwing the rest of us under the bus?

Then we have our ‘war-driven’ economy. What does this say about our children’s future?

As a sidebar/closer has anyone else noticed the, er, ‘eruption’ of desperate acts across the nation over the past couple of weeks?

While many of these incidents appear to be mental health related, we should still view them as the proverbial ‘canary in a coal mine’, a makeshift ‘barometer’ of social health if you will.

The more ‘nothing left to lose’ you see, the less control they have over the situation.

And it CAN BE STOPPED, they just have to ‘change course!’ (And stop treating people like animals…)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Horns

Greetings good citizen,

Our lead story from the business section of today’s New York Times was ‘almost as shocking’ as the news of Jim Neighbors tying the knot with his long-time boy toy in Hawaii…

U.S. Economy Unexpectedly Contracted in Fourth Quarter
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ 51 minutes ago

Weaker exports, a drop in military spending and a slower buildup in inventories combined to pull the economy down at the end of the year.
The government said economic output in the quarter fell at an annual rate of 0.1 percent.

So we are once again faced with the conundrum of rising stock prices while the ‘real economy’ continues its ‘death spiral’…

Can I get a WTF?

Oh yeah!

Military spending was down so (what passes for) the economy ‘slipped’?

Is it just me or does anyone else think our civilization is being grossly mismanaged?

I don’t think I going to find the answer here:

Boeing Battery Was a Concern Before Failure
By CHRISTOPHER DREW, HIROKO TABUCHI and JAD MOUAWAD 19 minutes ago

Even before battery failures led to the grounding of all Boeing 787 jets, there were problems that raised questions about their reliability.

Timeline: A Rocky Path for the 787 Dreamliner
Graphic: Battery at Center of Inquiry

How ironic is THIS, good citizen?

Boeing Earnings Exceed Estimates
By CHRISTOPHER DREW 25 minutes ago

The company said it did not expect the problems with the batteries on its new 787 Dreamliner to have a significant impact on its earnings in 2013.

Seriously?

DealBook
Chesapeake Energy Chief Steps Down
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 41 minutes ago

After months of investor dissatisfaction, Aubrey McClendon, a co-founder of the oil and natural gas producer, will give up management duties immediately and will retire on April 1.

Don’t know about you good citizen but it don’t look like ‘stepped down’ isn’t the proper description here, looks a lot more like ‘shoved aside’. Wonder who’s corn flakes he pee’d in?

Chrysler Earnings Soar
By BILL VLASIC 8:00 AM ET

The automaker’s profit in the fourth quarter jumped 68 percent and for the year was about nine times that of the year before.

Again, looks like a classic case of if you made a dollar last year and you made two dollars this year, your income is up 100% but you still only have two bucks to show for a years’ worth of effort!

So why is it that only US carmaker still standing after the collapse of the global banking industry still can’t get any respect?

European Cloud Over Ford
By BILL VLASIC

Ford Motor posted a 54 percent gain in adjusted fourth-quarter profit, despite heavy losses in the troubled European market.

In apparently ‘related news’…
Appeals Court Suspends Peugeot's Job-Cut Plan
French Automakers’ Biggest Problem? French Consumers

The next headline simply screams ‘mismanagement’!

DealBook
MF Global's Bankruptcy Nears a Happy Conclusion
By BEN PROTESS

The push to make MF Global customers nearly whole, a goal now surprisingly within reach, is a remarkable turnaround for the brokerage firm.

And nobody is happier than the management of MF Global, who didn’t have to do a minute of jail time…

And our final headline…

Media Decoder Blog
CNN President Tries to Repeat Success in A.M. News
By BRIAN STELTER

Jeff Zucker, who formally took over CNN Worldwide last week, is assembling a new morning show, the first of several building blocks for the ailing cable news channel.

Correct me if I’m wrong here good citizen but isn’t this the same guy that used to be in charge of primetime programming at one of the major networks?

All I’m trying to say here is the wasteland that is TV just keeps spreading…

Returning us to our ‘theme’ of the day, gross mismanagement.

If we don’t grab the bull by the horns it’s going to drag us over the cliff with it…although most would opine that it is far too late for that…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Handwriting (on the wall)

Greetings good citizen,

While you’re busy making sure nobody grabs your gun out of its holster (thereby distracting you from other things happening right under your nose.)

A barrel of oil has crept back up to $96 a barrel while the price at the pump hovers around $3.50 a gallon locally (funny how those two numbers, the price per barrel and the price per gallon keep becoming ‘disconnected’, yet another ‘distraction’ considering ALL MONEY IS FUNNY! The price is whatever they want it to be because THEY certainly don’t need the money! And for the pinheads out there, the ‘they’, in this instance, refers to the >One Percent.)

But wait, there’s more! How many of you noticed that the Dow is within spitting distance of setting a new record?

Which really makes you wonder why they (same they) bother because we all know the number is total fiction?

Tomorrow they could claim the Dow hit 44,000 and nothing would change (besides the fact that the rest of us would all become poorer relative to the nation’s shareowners.

Well, how unfortunate for the rest of us that articles like this feed the notion that the One Percent is planning to kill most of us off.

That same month, the online publication Market Oracle reported that “ [t]he new ‘water barons’—the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires—are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace.” The report reveals two phenomena that have been gathering speed, and that could potentially lead to profit accumulation at the cost of communities and commons —the expansion of market instruments beyond the water supply and sanitation to other areas of water governance, and the increasingly prominent role of financial institutions.

In several instances this has meant that the government itself has set up public corporations that run like a business, contracting out water supply and sanitation operations to those with expertise, or entering into public–private–partnerships, often with water multinationals. This happened recently in Nagpur and New Delhi, India. In most rural areas, ensuring a clean drinking water supply and sanitation continues to be a challenge. For-profit companies such as Sarvajal have begun setting up pre-paid water kiosks (or water ATMs) that would dispense units of water upon the insertion of a pre-paid card. It is no surprise that these are popular among people who otherwise have no access to clean drinking water.

With climate change, however, the water crisis is no longer perceived as confined to developing countries or even primarily a concern related to water supply and sanitation. Fresh water commons are becoming degraded and depleted in both developed and developing countries. In the United States, diversion of water for expanded commodity crop production, biofuels and gas hydro-fracking is compounding the crisis in rural areas. In areas ranging from the Ogallala aquifer to the Great Lakes in North America, water has been referred to as liquid gold. Billionaires such as T. Boone Pickens have been buying up land overlying the Ogallala aquifer, acquiring water rights; companies such as Dow Chemicals, with a long history of water pollution, are investing in the business of water purification, making pollution itself a cash-cow.

Understand good citizen this story would be about air if they thought they could get away with it.

Under Manslow’s hierarchy of needs, you will only survive a couple of minutes without air, a couple of days without water and roughly a month without food. Shelter is a slider depending on the hostility of the environment. In a mild climate it comes last but in a harsh one it can supercede water!

You’d think history would have taught mankind the ‘futility’ of hoarding anything, water in particular.

It also provides us with a definitive example of one of the things that shouldn’t have a ‘price tag’ attached to it.

Yet the capitalist thinks everything has a price…and they think nothing of exploiting a situation.

Worse, they are the first ones to cry, “it’s not personal, it’s business!”

Let’s take a step back and look at this for a moment…the ‘businessman’ says he’d love to help you out BUT there’s MONEY involved here. (Keep in mind that ALL MONEY IS FUNNY!)

Stick a gun in his face and all of a sudden HE’S THE ‘VICTIM’!

Did I mention the need to redefine the term ‘criminal’?

The water is no more ‘his’ than it is yours but who is the (criminal) court going to believe?

Which brings us to another ‘marvel’, the fact that you will find humans living in even the most inhospitable environments this planet has to offer.

And despite capitalist insistence that this is due to ‘rugged individualism’ it is in fact due to the overwhelming desire to escape the rabid capitalists!

How can you be ‘free’ when those who run our society do their worst to nickel and dime you for everything they can?

YOU know Mother Nature doesn’t have a cash register (and so do the creeps, that’s why EVERYTHING requires a ‘permit’ under capitalism and guess what? Those permits aren’t FREE! Worse, they can be arbitrarily ‘denied’.

But I digress, the ‘real bad news’ here is it is only a matter of time before the combination of water and energy scarcity erupts in civilization ending ‘class war’.

Under the ‘judge for yourself’ category, real estate ads have started touting a location’s remoteness as a ‘selling point’ and some even use the term ‘bug out’.

What does that tell you?

Think handwriting on the wall…(especially when they try to play the ‘who knew’ card…)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

White-washed

Greetings good citizen,

As I have opined before, nothing will be ‘fixed’ if we rely on the fools who broke it in the first place to cobble up the repairs.

So we have this story, served up cold by the Corporate Owned Media, thereby making it suspect from the get-go…

Fair Game
Making Them Pay (and Confess)
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Mary Jo White, the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has a chance to scuttle the practice of letting companies settle cases without admitting fault.

Talk about your voice in the wilderness, I haven’t hear that complaint from any sector of the C.O.M. over the past couple of years, even while there has been a rash of ‘wrist stinging’ fines doled out by federal regulators. Who let the perps just walk away afterwards without admitting guilt…although since they paid, I don’t think anybody needed to sign a ‘confession’, the check is its own guilty plea.

Which is to ask, is saying ‘sorry’ enough?

I mean if sorry was enough we wouldn’t have anyone in prison! They’re all ‘sorry’ (they got nailed, ‘dead to rights’.)

Which is to go one step further and opine that we won’t see ‘justice’ done until the ‘responsible parties’ are handed STIFF prison terms.

(Or in the case of a simple plan, which doesn’t condone imprisonment (It’s inhumane.)

Exile, which is a sort of ‘you made your bed now you’re gonna lie in it’ deal.

This is justice, served very, very cold.

Exile is one-way trip that you make the same way you arrived in this world, buck-naked.

The theory is most people won’t survive exile because exiles are usually lacking in the ‘cooperation’ department.

The concept of having to be a friend to have a friend is lost on them. These rugged individuals try to go it alone.

And should they try to win the cooperation of their fellow inmates, they have nothing to offer in return and these people usually don’t have a ‘normal’ sense of value. If you could smuggle some gold in one of your body cavities you may be able to strike a bargain…So, how much gold can you stuff up your poop chute?

But the guards would have to be mighty dumb not to scan you before placing you on the departure table.

Did I mention exiles are rendered unconscious before being released into a world where they are free to do whatever they want?

How did you think we were going to get ‘em naked? We’re going to cut their clothes off and scan (and surgically remove if necessary) any metal from their bodies before they are placed in the release pen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, am I not?

Our reporter with her thumb on the pulse of global business has asked that the newly appointed prosecutor MAKE THE CRIMIANLS ADMIT THEIR GUILT!

Apparently this will be enough. All we have to do is ‘SHAME’ a few of them and the rest will fall into line!

Now I can sympathize with her position. She can’t be too aggressive because the criminals she’s railing against cut her paycheck.

I have already pointed to the ‘propaganda machine’ as a ‘primary target’ come the revolution.

Those whose power relies on lies NEED the re-enforcement of officialdom!

Without the lie machine the criminals are lost!

But I digress again!

The focus of the article is the White-washing of Wall Street and they have wheeled out a hand picked patsy to do the job.

The people responsible for breaking the global economy have no interest in fixing it. At best we will see some mock trials and some small time players thrown under the bus while the investigation leaves criminals like Paulson, Geithner and Greenspan unmolested.

Worse, it will also stop well short of the politicians who executed the orders of the captains of industry and swept their dirt under the rug of National Security.

How sad is it good citizen that the goal of creating (and sustaining) a nation where justice prevails and freedom reigns remains so elusive?

How successful were the founders, who met in secret to draft the constitution? You don’t think they realized even back then that they were dooming their heirs to live under a web of lies?

Which leads us to wonder what the ‘original’ constitution actually says as opposed to the one we’ve all read that doesn’t seem to have any basis in reality?

Why do these elected chuckleheads keep defying the constitution they are ‘sworn to uphold’?

Maybe the real deal is so contemptuous of the common people that it has never seen the light of day.

Because sometimes it sure seems just like that…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Accountable

Greetings good citizen,

Yesterday’s ‘milestone’ for the financial markets appears to be more evidence of the criminal’s favorite pass time, fraud.

IF you think the economy has ‘recovered’ I’ve got some nice ‘drainage challenged’ real estate you’ll be interested in…

In the meantime, to consider stories such as this one anything more than ‘jaw-boning’ is a tragic error.

TOP NEWS
As Worries Ebb, Small Investors Propel Markets
By NATHANIEL POPPER

After millions of people all but abandoned the markets after the 2008 financial crisis, individual investors are pouring money into stock mutual funds for the first time in years.

Left to our imaginations is precisely who this ‘small investor’ is? He certainly isn’t the newly re-employed worker, stoking up for retirement. We already know 90% of ‘new jobs’ aren’t even full time and 80% of those pay minimum wage! So WHO is this ‘small investor’ they are referring to?

Could the answer be as unfortunate as Wall Street, in it’s usual fashion, is merely transferring funds from real estate hedging vehicles back to mutual funds, ‘ringing the cash register’ so to speak?

Because you don’t need me to tell you that this is not cause for rejoicing! This is sticky fingered Wall Street churning (and helping itself) to money that was already there.

So, small investor recovery? Hardly, small investor fleecing is more like it but Wall Street has this ‘truthiness’ problem where honesty only creates hard feelings.

Just because the ‘deterioration’ of the employment situation has slowed doesn’t mean it is ‘improving!’ (But that’s the message the meatheads would have you believe. That ‘less-worse = better!’)

It’s the same idea of when the economy contracts, that return to stability is sold by the pundits as ‘recovery’ when in fact after ‘leveling off’ for a brief period, it falls again and the talking heads pretend it’s a mystery.

But it’s not. There was a headline in the local rag the day before yesterday that one of the city’s largest employers is laying off half of its workforce AND sending the work to its plants in China and Mexico.

Still feeling ‘optimistic’, Bunky?

It seems every time they declare ‘the recovery is at hand’ I feel compelled to jump in and cry foul!

And it looks like they got me again.

The question is did they get you?

For every nineteen people who reject hogwash like this there is one who embraces it. Maybe not as quickly as they used to, they are starting to catch on to the fact people are laughing at them behind their backs…

Understand good citizen, the corporate owned media HAS TO report the economy is on the mend, even if it isn’t in order to quell social unrest and dampen ‘animosity’ towards ‘our betters’.

But as I am tiring of pointing out, no amount of jaw-boning is going to alter the facts on the ground.

Our economy (or that limp dishrag that passes for our economy) is broken and nobody has done a single thing to repair it…nobody!

So ‘recovery’, such as it is, amounts to a lesser rate of descent. We merely aren’t sinking as fast as we once were.

What do you suppose should happen to the employer who cut 70 out of 150 jobs and sent the work off-shore?

One of my other ‘hobby-horses’ has been the need to redefine what constitutes a ‘crime’.

Under our current goofy calculus, the owner can send the work wherever he pleases. He is seen as ‘owning’ the work.

But isn’t he also a citizen and doesn’t that citizenship carry a responsibility to the society he lives in?

He’s quick enough to demand justice (or the protection of society) when disaster strikes…so how come he feels no obligation to keep the society that protects him healthy and vibrant?

Because, until such feckless acts like the global race to the bottom are criminalized, our ‘global’ economy (and all but it best connected participants) is doomed.

Not the kind of world I want to raise my kids in and I’m sure many of you feel the same way.
This ‘competition’ baloney is all fake. Worse, it is the old canard of ‘I can teach a monkey to do your job’ writ large!

Which is to point out that the ‘quality problems’ that served as an excuse to cover early job exports have resurfaced in the cheaper there, indicating the problem didn’t lie with the craftsman but with management.

Which tells you what, good citizen?

It’s time to hold management accountable.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tinman 2

Greetings good citizen,

I feel good today (despite the gods having gone mad!) Which seems to be today’s theme. Yesterday I complained about society losing its values, today we will take in the leading headlines and scratch our heads, wondering what ‘our betters’ were thinking…because it is obvious they weren’t!

Robot Makers Spread Global Gospel of Automation
By JOHN MARKOFF

Manufacturers of robots and similar machines gathered in Chicago, casting automation as an indispensable engine of economic growth.

Read the last line and marvel over the twit who stated it! Employers LOVE robots, they will work around the clock without taking a break, doing whatever it is they were designed to do, until they break.

The fly in this ointment is a society filled with robots needs nothing but the energy to power them, there is no ‘economy’ for robots.

Do we really need to ask HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE to not understand that?

And yeah, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t thoroughly enjoy kicking the capitalists in the shins every chance I get!

Because it is capitalist stupidity that gives us stories like this:

BUSINESS
Boeing's Battery Problems Cast Doubt on Appraisal of New Technologies
By JAD MOUAWAD and CHRISTOPHER DREW

The 787's difficulties have raised questions about how regulators certify new technology and how they balance advances in design and engineering with safety.

Hold everything! I thing we found the twit who think robots are the answer to the automation problem [idiots!]

Was it an accident or by design that the corporate owned media runs the ‘perfect’ follow up story next?

Share of the Work Force in a Union Falls to a 97-Year Low, 11.3%
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the percentage of American workers in labor unions fell to 11.3 percent last year, the lowest since 11.2 percent in 1916.

That’s the other thing employers LOVE about robots! They don’t join unions! So the union isn’t in their face demanding more humane working conditions and that demand they really hate, more wages!

Although it has become the hallmark of capitalist stupidity that people who can’t afford your products won’t buy them, so cutting heads when sales drop is not an ‘effective strategy’.

Oh, and since robots don’t get paychecks (or benefit packages) they also don’t buy your products!

Bottom line. The same people who can no longer afford to pay for your products will eventually STEAL them…but you’re insured, right?

And when the heads you’ve cut burn your plant down, same answer, right? (Naturally, you re-open in China!) But your new employee/customers won’t be able to afford our products either so what will you do?

Same thing as these guys?

Nokia Shows a Profit, but Shares Drop
By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN 50 minutes ago

Investor hopes were raised when the Finnish cellphone maker said it would turn a profit, but sales of its flagship Lumia were less than expected.

The homeless don’t need a phone, nobody they want to talk to that isn’t within arm’s reach…which is the fertile soil revolutions are sown in.

How sad is it good citizen that we lack a unifying ideology? [Like A Simple Plan?]

Like a ticking time bomb, how long do you think we have before this bad boy blows?

Euro Watch
Data Point to Slow Recovery in Euro Zone
By REUTERS

While the euro zone economy moved a step closer to recovery this month, Spain’s unemployment rate surged to 26 percent.

Sure looks to me like that headline is missing an ‘s’, should read ’points’ but hey, I just cut and paste, ya know?

What’s up with the mixed message? On one hand they are, er, ‘asserting’ that conditions in the euro-zone are ‘improving’ then they point to sky-high unemployment and shrug…

Did I mention our civilization is SEVERELY ‘mismanaged’?

These people shouldn’t just be fired, they should be made to walk the plank into shark infested water (but that would constitute cruelty towards sharks!)

No living organism can eat that many ‘empty calories’ without being adversely effected.

I am no Luddite good citizen. In many cases automation is a larger boon to the employee than it is to the employer.

What I am pointing to is SOME things can tolerate automation and others CAN’T. Wisdom needs to be exercised rather than idiotic profit/loss ratios.

Our civilization is collapsing because society has become unbalanced due to the reckless/relentless pursuit of profits.

When profits supercede people without mitigating factors it is beyond destructive, it is catastrophic!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Ruled by Fools

Greetings good citizen,

It is hilarious that the so-called ‘Progressives’ are accusing the conservo-whackos of living in a ‘permanent fantasy world’ when they persist in serving up tripe like this…

Before we begin this latest excursion into ‘wishful thinking’ let me repeat my ‘mantra’, there is NO WAY to ‘fix’ capitalism with capitalism! All of the fixes are ‘predatory’ too!

6 Economic Steps to a Better Life and Real Prosperity for All
We've got to break out of the old ways of thinking about the economy.

Step one.) A People’s Bank
One area where this logic can be seen at work is in the financial industry. At the height of the financial crisis in early 2009, some kind of nationalization of the banks seemed possible. It was a moment, President Obama told banking CEOs, when his administration was “the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” The president opted for a soft bailout, but that was not the only possible decision.

Banking is ‘personal’ yet the capitalists have turned it into a ‘profit center’ (for themselves) by forcing the rest of us to pay outrageous prices for what we can’t do without.

How do you think a ‘People’s bank’ is going to solve this?

It won’t because it can’t. Nationalizing the banks wouldn’t make them any less predatory. They would still operate on the principle of borrow cheap and lend dear.

The ‘real alternative’ to predatory banking is to make banking an internal function of the payroll process. Your money ‘stays put’. They don’t lend it to anybody (they don’t need to.) We won’t stop the capitalist ‘crazy train’ until we put the brakes on the insane practice of money making money!

Then we get banks out of the ‘lending business’ because all of the things you needed to ‘borrow money’ for are…‘gimmes’!

If you step back and look at it good citizen, the whole borrowing process is nothing but an elaborate extortion scheme…but what would you expect from CRIMINALS?

Moving on:

Step Two.) Move to Universal Healthcare

That austerity and failing reform might open the way to "evolutionary reconstructive" institutional change is also suggested by emerging developments in healthcare.

Cost pressures are also building up—and, critically, in ways that will continue to undermine U.S. corporations facing global competitors, forcing them to seek new solutions. The federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that healthcare costs will go up from the 2010 level of 17.5 percent of GDP to 19.6 percent in 2019. It has long been clear that over the long-haul cost pressures are ultimately likely to force development of some form of single-payer system —the only serious way to deal with the underlying problem.

Again, under a ‘sane’ system, healthcare would be FREE, but that’s not what dummy is proposing here, is it?

How sad is it that Plato’s ‘unimaginative worldview’ persists to this day? (He couldn’t imagine a world without slaves.)

But anyway:

Step Three.) Build Community Wealth

“Social enterprises” that undertake businesses in order to support specific social missions now increasingly comprise what is sometimes called a "fourth sector” (different from the government, business and non-profit sectors). Roughly 4,500 not-for-profit community development corporations are largely devoted to housing development. There are now also more than 10,000 businesses owned in whole or part by their employees; nearly 3 million more individuals are involved in these enterprises than are members of private sector unions. Another 130 million Americans are members of various urban, agricultural and credit union cooperatives. In many cities, “land trusts” are underway using an institutional form of nonprofit or municipal ownership that develops and maintains low- and moderate-income housing.

I find myself speechless with the utter ‘blindness’ the above bullet point displays. We’re talking ‘whales and tic tacs’ here! All I have to say is see my initial ‘mantra’ and hold that up to this (capitalism saving) proposal!

Those ‘pretending’ to be Progressives are in fact Libertarians, free-market lovers to the end!

But I digress:

Step Four.) Leverage City Assets [!!]

Yet another arena of institutional growth involves municipal development. By maintaining direct ownership of areas surrounding transit station exits, public agencies in Washington, DC, Atlanta and elsewhere earn millions, capturing the increased land values their transit investments create. The town of Riverview, Michigan has been a national leader in trapping methane from its landfills and using it to fuel electricity generation, thereby providing both revenue and jobs. There are roughly 500 similar projects nationwide. Many cities have established municipally owned hotels. There are also nearly 2,000 publicly owned utilities that provide power (and often broadband) to more than 45 million Americans, generating $50 billion in annual revenue. Significant public institutions are also common at the state level. CalPERS, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local community development needs; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each citizen with dividends as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.

Rope-a-dope has the whole situation wrong! The only reason the capitalists ‘gave away’ free internet and in some cases free electricity was to boost the sale of hand helds!

There have been some mighty expensive ‘ruses’ perpetrated on the public to 'mask' the gutting of our economy and this dummy is just keeps falling into the traps left and right!

Next!

Step Five.) Organize for the Long Haul

You can think of the slow buildup of democratizing strategies as the pre-historical developmental work needed to clarify new principles for larger scale application. Just as in the decades before the New Deal, state and local experiments in the “laboratories of democracy” may suggest new larger scale approaches. The new direction has four aspects; democratization of wealth; community, both locally and in general; decentralization in general; and substantial but not complete forms of democratic planning. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Follow the link to the main article…

Politics is largely ‘media driven’. Control the media and politics cease to matter…but these Ivory Tower types don’t seem to get that, thus do you get the above stupidity!

And lastly…

Step Six.) Cut Corporate Power Down to Size [!!!]

To deal with economic issues, ecological challenges and local community stability, we must also come to terms with corporate power dynamics. Public corporations are subject to Wall Street’s first commandment: Grow or die!” You can’t just wish or regulate that idea away.

If I could only remember where I put that magic wand…

What is this guy smokin’?
You are right to be wary of people offering to ‘save the world’ with a few simple changes…those changes need to alter the path of humanity and not just perpetuate what’s broken.

To his 'credit' he channels my proposal regarding a shortening of the workday/week to reduce unemployment...but he only proposes 'half of the package'!

You CAN'T reduce the workweek (and resultant paycheck) without corresponding cuts in the worker's expense picture!

Employers have NO PROBLEM with what are currently 'part-time' workers. They don't want to deal with doubling the workforce for the same amount of output because it is 'no win'. (In most cases it would increase cost/decrease profit but capitalism is goofy like that!)

Ironically, we return to the age-old debate where on the surface it appears we have a ‘money problem’ when in reality we have a massive ‘legal’ one.

Until we can truly institute a ‘lawful government’ we will continue to be ‘mis-ruled’ by man…and the likes of unimaginative types such as this writer who thinks more of the same will fix things, somehow!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Only in America!

Greetings good citizen,

In yet another jaw dropping example of capitalism at its finest we have a citizen using his garden hose as a flame-thrower after a nearby fracking operation contaminated his water well.

Which is not nearly as disturbing as what the EPA did when confronted with this, er, ‘intelligence’.

I cannot stress enough that the loss of control over our justice system indicates the loss of control over our society itself, and the extent to which treason has permeated the public realm.

(The people elected to serve us are NOT serving the public but those who funded their election, the One Percent…and that is ‘treason’…which has a long standing punishment.)

Again I ask what is it going to take before you reject this greedy grasping and punish the criminals who have impoverished the rest of us for so long?

How long must we suffer before you are willing to act?

The case isn't the first in which the EPA initially linked a hydraulic fracturing operation to water contamination and then softened its position after the industry protested. A similar dispute unfolded in west-central Wyoming in late 2011, when the EPA released an initial report that showed hydraulic fracturing could have contaminated groundwater. After industry and GOP leaders went on the attack, the agency said it had decided to do more testing. It has yet to announce a final conclusion.

Hydraulic fracturing — often called "fracking" — allows drillers to tap into oil and gas reserves that were once considered out of reach because they were locked in deep layers of rock. The method has contributed to a surge in natural gas drilling nationwide, but environmental activists and some scientists believe it can contaminate groundwater. The industry insists the practice is safe.

Range Resources, a leading independent player in the natural gas boom, has hundreds of gas wells throughout Texas, Pennsylvania and other mineral-rich areas of the United States. Among them is a production site — now owned by Legend Natural Gas — in a wooded area about a mile from Lipsky's home in Weatherford, about a half-hour drive west of Fort Worth.

Geez, what a surprise, the EPA backed off once the conservo-loonies got into the act!

Color me shocked…(yawn.) Welcome to midnight in America, and they say the darkest hour is just before dawn…so you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Understand good citizen it is precisely this practice (of contaminating groundwater) that is projected to put the US back on top of the energy exporting world…because we won’t be using it here! (Or at least that’s the plan.)

Which is the ‘sidebar’ to the bizarre predictions of the worlds first country to tap out its energy reserves will suddenly ‘resume’ its role as the world’s biggest energy exporter.

What does that tell you about the rest of the world?

It should be teaching you a boatload about the ‘funniness of money’. You won’t have enough to of it to buy energy but others will (cuz they is keepin’ massa’s factories running!)

Does ANYBODY see the ‘end game’ here?

How about a little taste of today’s business headlines?

Wednesday, January 16, 2013 Last Update: 10:30 AM ET

Deepening Crisis for the Dreamliner
By HIROKO TABUCHI and BETTINA WASSENER 6:41 AM ET

The two largest Japanese airlines said they would ground their Boeing 787 aircraft after a string of problems was capped by an emergency landing in western Japan.

Yet more proof of the stunning failure caused by globalization mixed with a generous portion of unbridled greed!

And speaking of unbridled greed:

DealBook
JPMorgan Cuts Dimon’s Pay, Even as Profit Surges
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG 37 minutes ago

JPMorgan Chase touted a strong quarter, but still chose to sharply cut the pay of the chief executive, Jamie Dimon, in light of a multibillion-dollar trading loss last year.

DealBook: JPMorgan Report on Trading Loss Takes Aim at Top Executives 50 minutes ago

Funny how we start off with corruption in government and it leads us straight to the now defunct engine of the US economy:

DealBook
Goldman Sachs Earnings Soar
By SUSANNE CRAIG 49 minutes ago

Goldman Sachs reported a fourth-quarter profit of $2.89 billion, or $5.60 a share, beating analysts’ estimates.

DealBook: Goldman Profit Blows Through Expectations 8:56 AM ET
Stocks Pull Back Despite Bank Earnings 53 minutes ago

Does anyone else find it curious how the customerless banking sector manages to make record profits as the global economy founders helplessly?

Share prices keep rising but for no discernable reason…is it theft, fraud or both?

Which leads us to the next article:

Walmart Plans to Buy American More Often
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

The retailer’s 10-year commitment, totaling $50 billion, comes as it is under pressure over its overseas sourcing following a deadly fire in November in Bangladesh.

So a little ‘bad press’ and Walmart is suddenly humble and contrite are they?

Somehow I don’t think it would be that easy, just like the idiots who believe peaceful protests are the solution.

If we don’t start burning things down, nothing is going to change (and if we don’t burn most of it down what does change will be all bad!

American Airlines Reports a Profit
By JAD MOUAWAD 55 minutes ago

Lower costs helped the airline, which is operating under bankruptcy court protection, post a profit, compared with a loss a year ago.

And how did AA post a profit? They did it the ‘old fashioned way’ they wrung the savings out of their employees!

Lastly we have this story that begs the question of who thought it was a good idea to rescue these idiots in the first place (sadly, it was Hank Paulson and his successor Lloyd Blankfein!)

A.I.G. Seeks Approval to File More Bank Suits
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

A.I.G. must win a court fight with an entity run by the New York Fed, which the insurer says is blocking its efforts to go after banks that harmed it financially.

Only in America, good citizen could you read such a litany of woe and not think the bottom was going to fall out tomorrow due to public outrage…and believe you-me, the public is plenty outraged…they just can’t narrow it down to who…yet.

But fear not! The corporate owned media will offer up a scapegoat quicker than you can say debt ceiling! (Another grossly mis-reported story of politicians playing the public for chumps with the ‘assistance’ of the bought and paid for media.

But I have kept you beyond your time, good citizen and for that I apologize.

Try and remember when ‘Only in America’ was a good thing…(despite it being a lie then too.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Occupy Who?

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

Photo Credit: A.M. Stan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the answer turned out to be yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress, somewhat anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Uncertainty

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

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

Our Economic Pickle
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the other article first:

News Analysis
The Low Politics of Low Growth
By ANNIE LOWREY

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s have a look:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BUSINESS
Over 50, and Under No Illusions
By CAITLIN KELLY

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gegner