The Private Sector
Posted to Left Take Sept.. 5, 2009
Listening to Mike Rodgers, and others, go on about the Private Sector...
The Private Sector will save us.
The Private Sector is your friend.
The Private Sector, benefactor of all mankind.
Huh?
Did I miss something?
Have so many people missed the part where the Private Sector put us in the hole we're in today?
Do people not realize that the almighty 'Private Sector' is exactly what is running this country into the ground?
Was it Joe Blow not producing and consuming enough that caused the cookie to crumble?
Or was it Mr. Fat Cat playing fast and loose with hedge funds, taking advantage of the unwary and overly optimistic, and running billion dollar pyramid scams?
Who exactly is it that's moving our industrial base to Mexico and China, our food production to South America, out-sourcing the IT jobs to India?
Through out the history of this country the Private Sector has proven that it will lie, cheat, murder, knowingly endanger the public health, intimidate and exploit anyone it can, and pollute everything in sight to add a zero to the bottom line.
Do you really think these people have your best interest in mind?
Has anyone else read 'The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair?
If it weren't for government regulations we'd all be eating things you really don't want to know about on a daily basis.
If the tobacco industry had it's way there would be no warning on a pack of cigarettes.
If the auto industry had it's way people would still be dying in preventable SUV roll over accidents.
Capitalists would still be employing children at pennies a day if there weren't a law against it.
Oh, wait, I don't think there is a law against it in India...
Up to now it's been better business for Pfizer to just pay the fine and keep breaking the law. We'll see if 2.3 billion is enough of a price tag to get them to tow the line.
Do you people realize that the Private Sector is auctioning off your DNA? That corporations hold patents on your genes?
A bit of George Orwell there, don't you think?
And this should be scary to more people. Think about it, a team of researchers develops a cure for cancer from X gene. That they leased from XYZ Corp. XYZ Corp now owns the cure for cancer.
How much ya think they're gonna want for that?
You really think the Private Sector is gonna give this away for free? Voluntarily?
What happens on the day that potable water becomes a valuable commodity worldwide? You think the Private Sector is gonna share?
Oh yeah, let's Privatize social security and watch it evaporate in bonuses that are more than I'll make in the rest of my working years.
A Nation of Sheep
Posted to Left Take Aug. 30, 2010
(I'm a little rusty.;-)
'A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves' - Edward R. Murrow
And who can really blame them when the sheep come willing to the slaughter?
"The times, they are a different." - Glar, 'Planet 51' (Very funny movie.)
Rambling musings of 'Capitalism... A Love Story', 'The Spy Factory', 'Inside Job' and sheep tests...
It's odd how things seem to come together for me. Every so often I'll read one thing, then see a couple of other things, read something else...
And it will hit, just how badly we are screwing ourselves over.
Background: 'Capitalism... A love Story', Michael Moore, a loose look at capitalism and a detailed look at the meltdown that was 2008. The thing I learned form this, the thing that sticks with me is 'dead peasants insurance'. I think the term is rather telling. This didn't surprise me; it really just confirmed my more rabid conspiracy theory suspicions. Wake up and smell the coffee people. This is how the ruling elite view the average American, as peasants. Who are worth more dead than alive.
'The Spy Factory', a Nova special on the NSA. Didn't surprise me either. The NSA knew there were terrorists in country, knew they were planning something, did nothing and told no one. Official explanation? Oops, rampant failure and incompetence.... Yeah, right.
'Inside Job', isn't out yet but it appears to show that the financial sector not only knew the collapse was on its way, but that they actually engineered it. Check out the trailer: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb...
All the stuff in the last two weeks about how more and more Americans don't believe that Obama is a Christian or a citizen of the U.S.
An article in this week's Time about the recent ruling on GPS tracking. http://www.time.com/time/natio...
This doesn't bother me because I'm doing anything illegal, but because I just lost another smidgen of personal freedom, and I don't see it ending anytime soon.
And finally an article about the money wasted in Iraq. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38...
The thing we need to remember here is that The Powers That Be don't view the money as wasted. It went to the right people: Parsons Corp., based in Pasadena, Calif., FluorAMEC of Greenville, S.C., Bechtel. See an Iraqi firm anywhere in that list? Did anyone even consider asking the Iraqis what they needed? Who in the hell decided they needed a convention center? Should we not have concentrated on such things as roads, schools, hospitals, clinics (Just nice little hospitals and clinics, not multi-million dollar, state if the art anything. That gave us the chance to funnel even more money to more of our friends, no doubt.), adequate electrical service, working swears...
What's the one about give a man a fish...
Shouldn't the money have gone to local Iraqi business and contractors? Shouldn't some of that money have been fed into the local economy to help the Iraqis put their house in order? Don't you think that would have generated more good will than hiring American firms to provide security?
What were our soldiers there for?
These things are part of the public record, researched, with checkable facts.
And yet few can see where we are headed.
As I read the press on the ground zero mosque I wondered what all that smoke was meant to conceal. I suspect that the dust up was meant to spark and fuel the doubts of Obama's pedigree. What with the midterms just around the corner if we can taint the image of the #1 Democrat we can tar the rest of them with the brush of association and maybe shift a few seats back...
Am I the only one who wonders what ulterior motives line what we are told through the media?
What I see in the whole Obama ain't American thing is a sheep test. IE: Yell something totally stupid loud enough and long enough and see who buys it. The ones who take it hook, line, and sinker are the true sheep. The ones who will believe what they are told without question. The ones who will do whatever they are told to do without thought. The ones who will believe that you have their best interests at heart while you strip them of every right, possession, and dignity they ever had.
And evidently we scored pretty good on the sheep test. Cuz, we are being stripped, methodically and systematically and very few are even saying anything about it. And even fewer are listening to what is being said.
I don't think that Beck is a threat to the PTB. I think he is a tool, used to corral the other part of the herd who will follow mindlessly if you wave god with the flag.
Year after year we surrender more and more of our rights in the name of safety. Year after year we watch more and more wealth sucked up to fewer and fewer people. Year after year we watch this county sink lower and lower in the quagmire of greed and dishonesty.
And now we are exporting the greed and dishonesty at the point of a gun.
We are a nation of sheep and the wolves have come calling
Alas Babylon
Posted to Left Take Feb. 3, 2011
Is America truly exceptional?
We are an arrogant lot. Does that attitude have any merit?
I know that a large percentage of us like to think we have earned an exceptional label. There are a few who are currently hard-selling this idea.
I can respect the origin of the idea. But its latest manifestation holds little appeal...
Few will argue with our exceptional beginnings. We had no king, no nobility. We started out as a group of common people who came together and committed to a cause...
OK, I started this diary yesterday and didn't get very far in trying to organize and consolidate thoughts and ideas that have been kicking around in my head for a very long time. But since I just had another one of those moments that send my thoughts soaring and it doesn't look like I'm going to bed anytime soon we'll give this another shot.
You may have seen the diary I just posted about a movie called 'Collapse'.
Watch it; scare the shit out of yourself.
And maybe then at least some of us will stop thinking like dinosaurs and avoid their fate.
For now, ask yourself, is there anything in reality like unending growth? Is there anything in the physical world that goes on forever?
Why do we expect unending growth in the market or the economy? Why do we believe that it will never end? Why do we still cling to the fallacy of unlimited resources?
It's time for a change of mind. A big, whomping, serious change of mind.
The thing that scares me most about that movie is not that it told me anything new. The thing that really scares me is that it took many things that I already knew and lays them out in a different pattern. It takes things that I'm seeing in the news right now and casts them in a different light.
We are deep in the doodoo people and if we don't start wading out soon it's gonna be too late.
For a while now I've been entertaining the idea of a new and proper use for eminent domain and this evening has shifted those thoughts, slightly. And I think it could work.
For years we have been watching high rolling investors throwing people out of their homes in the name of progress. Just so they could build another strip mall, another parking garage, another fancy shopping center.
For years we have been watching big business shipping production and our jobs to other countries.
For years we have been watching banks foreclose on the family farm.
Well I think it is time to stop watching.
This movement would have to start in the poorest sectors of our country, so it's gonna take work and time. But what if...
We the people, who are now out of work, start practicing our own form of eminent domain? What if we could ban together and take over the abandoned farms and factories, the stores in the inner cities that are sitting empty? What if we could form a peoples network? Small farms supplying local stands and shops. Small, community run factories that could supply our needs. What if we could take our country back from the bottom up?
Why do we have to wait for big business to give us sustainable energy?
Let's face it, if we decided to act independently of the upper 1%, if we all decided to pull together, and consolidate our meager earnings, our time, and our energy, there's not much they could do to stop us.
Look at Egypt, the power of the masses is speaking, and it is being heard.
I think it is time for a new revolution.
We need to start think in new and different ways.
And we need to start doing it now, before it is too late.
Is America truly exceptional?
We where once upon a time, and I think the next few years will prove if still are.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and work on my garden planing. I think that just became one of my highest priorities..
This is gonna hurt
Posted to Left Take Feb. 9, 2011
Everybody but themselves... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/201...
The Repubs have sharpened the axe...
WASHINGTON - Eager to take a quick, $35 billion bite out of government, House Republicans called for termination of at least 60 federal programs Wednesday and cuts in hundreds of others, targeting education and the environment, food safety and law enforcement.The whole article might as well be written in blood.
When the nation is at a low and people are struggling to just to get by (Forget making ends meet. For that you have to have some sort of income.), lets kick 'em while they're down.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was more pointed. "The Republican plan will cost jobs, undercut American innovation and clean energy, jeopardize our safety by taking cops off the street and threaten investments in rebuilding America - at a time when our economy can least afford it," she said in a written statement.And she's right.
But will the top 2% even notice the changes this agenda will make?
They won't notice any change in education, cuz their kids go to private school.
They won't notice the lack of police, cuz they can hire their own.
I bet most of them don't even watch PBS.
They might notice environmental changes, but I doubt it. They can afford to have their air cleaned. They might loose a house in Florida or California when the storms get really big. But they have several in other places, so, what the hey...
Food safety, probably not a big deal when you have your own, personal chef.
Besides, they've got an extra hundred thou or so, thanks to the tax cuts..
Remember that budget balancing thingy a while back?
I balanced the budget, funneled money back into some social programs, and created a surplus. Just by scaling back the war, reducing defense spending, a little bit, and getting rid of the tax cuts for the wealthy.
According to material presented by Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the cuts would stretch across a vast range of domestic programs, from the EPA to housing, the weather service, food safety and inspection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Community Development Block Grant, which provides funding for municipalities, would also be cut.Think of all the people who would loose their jobs under this plan. Think of all the cops and teachers that would be let go under this plan.
These are the people who are supposed to be safe guarding our well being.
Whose health and welfare do you think they are concerned with?
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