Posts under ‘Capitalism’

(Image courtesy of indiesocial.com)

I walked onto the train platform in downtown Chicago today.  A woman had just finished shopping at Macy’s and had several red shopping bags.  She was trying to put everything into one bag.  The wind picked up and blew some of the empty bags down the platform.  I took off running and stopped them from blowing out onto the street. 

Then, she yells to me that: "It’s OK!  They’re empty."  Then she sits down and waits for the train with her two bags full of stuff.  The 5 empty big red bags are just out there on the platform and she makes no effort to pick them up.  I told her that I didn’t want litter for a Christmas present, picked them all up and threw them in the trash (no recycling on CTA platforms…dammit!).

Hi everybody! 

Did you know that today is International Anti-Corruption Day?  I sure as hell did not (but I do now).  Just in case you forgot, corruption occurs when people pay money in a secret deal, in order to break the law…so they can make a lot more money.

Why don’t we look at how the world celebrated this wonderful new holiday.  Maybe we can even see some real corruption in action.  Wow!  This is so much fun.

This is one of those "little threads" that run through many of the crises facing our world today.  Like the Feds always say when tracking mobsters…"follow the money".  The money itself, in this case the Swiss banking industry is the story.  As you may remember, Bank Julius Baer managed to be in the middle of several BushCo scandals at once.  Namely:

I condemn murder in all of its forms. This is a conversation about terrorists and attacks on civilian populations.

Last week’s brutal attacks of unarmed civilians in Mumbai got me to thinking about the nature of attacks on civilians. For many years, I accepted the given definition of ‘terrorists’ as people that are so filled with evil that they want to frighten and kill us all. There are always sociopaths out there to fit into this mold. I think that for the sheer numbers of civilians killed in targeted violence, sociopaths are not the only explanation. The large role of religious / dogmatic programming in targeted violence against civilians eliminates sociopathology as a cause because the sociopath has no conscience or care for his/her impact on society. For the most part, the religious killer is convinced that his/her morality is calling for the murder of civilians.

Religious institutions have been attacking the Constitution and the people of the United States long enough.  I don’t want their money, but it is the only way to get their goddamn mitts off of my government.

Hit ‘em where it hurts!  Tax the power hungry bastards.  They cannot stop themselves and it’s up to the rest of us to do it.  Believe me, if they had to pay taxes in order to infiltrate government and tell the rest of us what to do:

• They would leave Washington and state capitals overnight.
• They would stop funding anti-gay legislation.
• We would not hear about Intelligent Design.
• They would stop trying to force regulation of women’s bodies.

These mega-churches, the LDS, Focus on Family, Pat Robertson and other charlatans would clam up in a hurry if they had to pay taxes.

The larger, politically active religions would face pressure from smaller churches and other religions that do not interfere with the lives of others.  They would ask for a separate status for their churches, but I suggest that we lump them all together.

The new rule is: even if you talk about God, you pay taxes.  That’ll stop them dead in their tracks.  Because, no matter what they tell you on Sunday…it’s all about the ‘benjamins’.

The extra benefit for the taxpayer - we can regulate them into a living hell.

bwahahahahaha….

-gadfly

“The true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies or emotions, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truthful and legal. As soon as a government departs from that standard, it ceases to be anything more than “the gang in possession,” and its days are numbered.” (H. G. Wells, as quoted in the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers.)

The enemies of democracy are the enemies of the rule of law.

“enemies both foreign & domestic…”

Our Presidents and our armed forces swear to protect the Constitution from this threat – with good reason. The Constitution is the rule of law and it is the one thing that can prevent tyrants, thieves and murderers from the ruinous world of their unchecked greed and brutality.

con⋅serv⋅a⋅tive
/kənˈsɜrvətɪv/ [kuhn-sur-vuh-tiv]
–adjective
1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
2. cautiously moderate or purposefully low: a conservative estimate.
3. traditional in style or manner; avoiding novelty or showiness: conservative suit.
–noun
1. a person who is conservative in principles, actions, habits, etc.
2. a supporter of conservative political policies.
3. a preservative.

The dictionary definition above does not make it sound so bad. I mean, it sounds like part of a spreadsheet on a CPA’s laptop or maybe something out of home economics class. How can anyone have any objection to conservative thinking if it’s this benign? Well the problem for me has always been the wide chasm of disparity between their simple sounding identity and the racism, corruption, bloodlust and tyranny that they promote.

The recent upheaval of the world economic markets has been as confusing as it has been severe. Massive amounts of money, debt and uncertainty flood the markets and the lives of us all. People turn to “experts” from many fields such as economics, finance, politics, defense, sociology and others. We want to know how this happened and how it will end. The problem is that these experts are not much help. As Chris Hedges describes in his brilliant post, The Idiots Who Rule America, the experts are a product of the broken system and can no more fix it that a flat tire can change itself.

Since the experts have yet to prove themselves useful, I have decided to look elsewhere for answers. I went to the people that know nothing about economics. People like you and me. I went to the water cooler at my office, in the break room and interviewed people there.

The question is everywhere: “How did all of this happen?” The economy. The endless war. The National Debt. All of it. Some people ask the question differently: “What were we thinking?” “Who’s responsible?”

I think that we have two problems. First, we don’t like bad news. Especially the really big, awful bad news that depresses us when we are confronted with big problems. War, poverty, disease, famine, economics etc. The general population has no idea how to manage global or national problems. Most of us are not skilled in these issues. So, when confronted by these issues, we “stick our heads in the sand” and try to forget.

Maverick used to mean finding a novel way to solve a problem. Now, it means ignoring the law, abandoning ethics and screwing everyone to get your way.

I have reached the point now, where if I ever hear someone use the word ‘maverick’ again, I may resort to uncontrolled sobbing or projectile vomiting.