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#Post#: 1118--------------------------------------------------
Corruption in Government
By: AGelbert Date: May 13, 2014, 8:37 pm
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Senior EPA Official Steals Millions from Taxpayers
May 13, 2014
[quote]EPA Hoodwinked by Its Highest Paid Climate Specialist
Senior policy advisor John C. Beale of the Environmental
Protection Agency's Office of Air and Radiation pulled off a
million dollar con in which he found a fix for his career
doldrums by convincing his bosses that he was a top-secret CIA
operative.
This required him to be out of the office for extended periods
of time—claiming to be traveling the globe on clandestine
missions in the interest of homeland security.
Yes, this EPA official was vicariously acting out some sort of
James Bond fantasy instead of going to work—and getting paid for
it.1 He occupied his time taking lavish vacations on the
government's dime.
Beale took 33 airplane trips between 2003 and 2011, costing the
government $266,190. On 70 percent of those, he traveled first
class and stayed in five-star hotels, traveled by limo, and
charged more than twice the government's allowed per diem limit.
Between vacations, he would just putter around his Northern
Virginia home doing pretty much nothing at all—and certainly not
working. Beale told one shameless lie after another.
For example, in order to be granted a handicap parking space, he
claimed to have contracted malaria in Vietnam. However, not only
did he never have malaria, he never served in Vietnam!2 How long
would you guess he got away with this fraudulent scheme—a month?
A year? Try two decades! :o ??? >:(
Justice, After a 20 Year Long Con...
[/quote]
Full story at link with excellent health advice too!
HTML http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/05/13/epa-official-steals-millions.aspx
Agelbert NOTE: Just imagine what the GW deniers are going to say
when they find out the EPA was Hoodwinked by Its Highest Paid
Climate Specialist... :( Unsaid in the article is that this B A
S T A R D got away with this mainly because of the systemic FEAR
inside our government of questioning anything and everything
that has to do with the "company" (in house nickname for the
main defender of predatory capitalism all over the world -> the
CIA). >:(
#Post#: 1170--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corruption in Government
By: AGelbert Date: May 20, 2014, 5:55 pm
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Published on Tuesday, May 20, 2014 by Common Dreams
'Justice for Sale'?
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/gaah.gif
Critics Slam Fed Deal With Tax Dodger-Abetting Bank Behemoth "As
usual, no current senior officials were
targeted.
HTML http://www.desismileys.com/smileys/desismileys_6656.gif<br
/>
HTML http://www.desismileys.com/smileys/desismileys_1730.gif
[img width=240
height=120]
HTML http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2009/347/2/6/WTF_Smiley_face_by_IveWasHere.jpg[/img]
Pray tell, what is the deterrent value?"
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/nocomment.gifhttp://www.pic4ever.com/images/237.gif<br
/>
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-311013200859.png
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer
HTML http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/20-4
#Post#: 1553--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corruption in Government
By: AGelbert Date: July 18, 2014, 2:36 pm
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PART 1 OF 2 PARTS
[quote author=knarf link=topic=3040.msg51434#msg51434
date=1405702116]
I fooled around with writing an autobiography mainly for my
children who both live about 400 miles away, and are 36, and 38
years old. I included this essay by Joe Bageant, because it says
what i would say if i was as talented at writing as he was.
Joe Bageant: Americans Are "Hope Fiends" Because Honestly
Looking at the Present Situation Would Destroy Just About
Everything We Hold As Reality
An awareness of class makes clear who is screwing whom. That's
why American capitalism's official line is that we are a
"classless society."
March 1, 2010 |
Near midnight and I am making tortillas on an iron skillet over
a gas flame. Some three thousand miles to the north, my wife and
dog nestle in sleep in the wake of a 34-inch snowstorm, while
the dogs of Ajijic are barking at the witching hour and roosters
crow all too early for the dawn. While my good Mexican neighbors
along Zaragoza Street sleep.
Yet here I am awake and patting out tortillas, haunted by the
empire that I have called home most of my life.
I like to think that, for the most part, I no longer live up
there in the U.S., but southward of its ticking social,
political and economic bombs. Because the US debt bomb has not
yet gone off, Social Security still exists, and the occasional
royalty check or book advance still comes in, allowing me to
remain here. And so long as America's perverse commodities
economy keeps stumbling along and making lifelike noises, so
long as the American people accept permanent debt subjugation --
I can drink, think and burn tortillas. Believe me, I take no
smugness in this irony.
There is a terrible science fiction-like awe in the autonomous
American economic monolith, in the way that it provides for us,
feeds on us and keeps us as its both its lavish pets and slaves.
The commodity economy long ago enslaved Americans and other
"developed" capitalist societies. But Americans in particular.
The most profound slavery must be that in which the slaves can
conceive of no other possible or better world than their
bondage. Inescapable, global, all permeating, the commodities
economy rules so thoroughly most cannot imagine any other
possible kind of economy.
------
It comes down to owning stuff, and that the stuff we own also
owns us (as anyone paying rent for a storage locker can attest).
Transmogrified by industrial materialism, we have become what we
own. More specifically, what we are observed by the rest of our
society as owning. In the commodified society of industrial
materialism, owning is being. So much so, that politicians bandy
the term "ownership society" about, not only without causing the
public to gag, but to cheers. Even liberals who claim to dislike
the term don't want to be in a "We don't own shit society."
Early modern capitalism was more or less understandable, if not
always pleasant. One can see why a pre-industrial world that had
owned less would embrace owning a bit more. Who gave a damn if
it came from Adam Smith's "unseen hand," the hand that was
taking care of the already rich, who in turn managed the order
of the world as seen through the lens of aristocratic and
bourgeoisie English commerce. "If we work our guts out Nellie,
we can buy a pork knuckle every Sunday. And a featherbed, if you
get my drift. Woo Hoo!"
Enter the reign of the bourgeoisie, self-appointed and
self-interested middlemen to anything and everything. The sheer
complexity of the industrial revolution and associated finance
was a dog that could fatten many fleas.
When the bourgeoisie did not get what it felt was a good cut of
the action from the monarchies, it raised hell, sometimes enough
to cause revolutions. If they won, as they did in America, they
took credit for establishing democracy. If they lost, they
fobbed it off as a "people's revolution," leaving the working
slobs, the actual producers of wealth, to face the king's
hangmen.
Even when "the people" occasionally win one of those "people's
revolutions", we never really win. Not in the end. For instance,
here in Mexico, contrary to what we've seen in Zapata movies,
there has never been a successful people's revolution in terms
of lasting and real egalitarian reform. Just armed struggle, and
many promises of reform, always to be abandoned after the
revolution. They were subsequently wiped out by the politically
potent urban middle class, in league with traditional elites,
such as the haciendados and corporatists. The bourgeoisie never
gives up its profitable connections to the elites. Same as in
America. The bourgeoisie lives at the pleasure of the elites.
However, in the people's revolutions it was mainly "the people"
who got killed. So they get naming rights. The people own their
revolution only in death. Just as in the U.S., the elites here
and the business classes get everything else and rent it back to
us as mortgages or whatever.
You can argue that people have always screwed other people for a
buck, or a drachma or a shekel. You will win with that argument
every time. However, the real issue is about how many people got
screwed and how hard by how few. Under 250 years of capitalism,
the rising take from the ongoing screw job has grown
astronomical. Enough to buy every political tub-thumper in
Washington and a Supreme Court. Enough that if the elite cartels
on Wall Street rip 300 million Americans for trillions, leaving
them squinting at the fine print on their eviction notices, they
cannot do jack about it. Except pay the next ransom demand for
their credit . On their credit cards. Then sign their children
into future debt slavery.
We are all Mexicans now
Thanks to the autonomous commodities economy, Mexico literally
cannot keep itself in tortillas. No longer food self-sufficient,
Mexico, where corn was first bred and developed into a staple,
buys corn on the world market. The price of tortillas in the
tiendas along my street is up 40 percent and climbing at ten
times the rate of Mexico's minimum wage.
Mexico was food self-sufficient in 1982. Minimum daily wage then
was the equivalent of 8.2 kilos of eggs, or 23 liters of milk,
or 33 kilos of tortillas. Eighty-five percent of the people had
access to government medical care and the country was fifth
worldwide in GNP growth. Now, thanks to international financial
pirates, Mexico cannot even keep itself in tortillas.
This has happened repeatedly to Mexico, each time due to a
different pirate gang, the French, the English, the Germans. But
most often, it is the Americans and their institutions and
policies, the IMF, GATT and NAFTA. Mexico is continually robbed
from within and without. Within lives the tapeworm of
government-business corruption feeding on money passing through
the nation's economic bowel. From without come the assaults of
American and global corporate financialism.
Loathe as Americans are to believe it, the Mexican people and
the American people are in the same situation of being mugged.
However, they are robbed at a different rate and from different
positions in the global pecking order. We rob the Mexicans and
global capitalism robs us. Fortunately we can still afford to
buy our national food staple from Dominoes. Which makes us a
superior people.
Humping the Big Lie
Meanwhile, somebody has to hump The Big Lie, maintain the
appearance to the rest of the world that American cowboy
capitalism is stable. Also keep Americans sold on The Big Lie's
flip side, the number two tune: "We are the richest and most
blessed people on earth because of capitalism (but currently
going through a rough patch). Proof is offered: "Step right up
and see for yourselves! Just look at the spectacular services
and goods that bury us in wonderment! Now go buy a PT Cruiser."
Decades ago, the spectacle of commodity capitalism, the sheer
variety of possible stuff to own, ways to be, possible
appearances of being, came to constitute a commodity in itself
-- enchantment as a product, product as enchantment.
Materialistic enchantment as commodity was so powerful in scale
and scope, and so thorough in mind saturation that it came to
colonize our consciousness in what Guy Debord aptly deemed "the
society of the spectacle."
No ordinary person could ever have withstood such a colonization
of human consciousness as the American people have seen.
Consciousness being simply awareness, there was no surviving the
onslaught. The tsunami of false possibilities and pseudo choices
constituted entire constellations in the psyche, of goods, and
images of goods large and small: hair dryers, iPods,
anti-bacterial wipes, cable television, ammunition, plastic
siding, gourmet foods, this HP notebook computer in my lap, the
Prius and the Porsche, even words such as Google, Microsoft,
China Mobile, Vodafone, Marlboro… They all have psychological
and social meaning in our commoditized consciousness, that
battlefield where each commodity vies for preeminence with every
other commodity in the shifting exposition of stuff we are
permitted to labor to pay for.
It can now be honestly stated that mere goods and services
express the citizenry and the American culture in its entirety.
Citizenship in a consumer society is consumership. Consumer
culture consumes all rival cultures, replacing them with "pop
culture," which is simply deeming the marketplace as culture.
Hip Hop is a good example. So is the modern cinema, and all of
the music and book publishing industry. Corporate industry and
its products are not culture, despite all the new definitions of
culture bourgeois academia and the marketplace come up with on
behalf of the corporations that fund both of them.
Your iPod shall set you free!
Freedom and personal identity exists as freedom to choose
identity from among the commodities, and particularly the
entertainments, offered. The Mac person as opposed to the
Windows person. The Mariah Carey or Rihanna Fenty fan as opposed
to the Eric Clapton fan. Each is convinced he or she is
different because of their chosen commodity. Yet at the root of
this, they all purchased a computer or a CD from a faceless
corporation grounded in the toxic wastelands and sweatshops of
Asia and elsewhere. Those who, in a fit of defiance, choose Indy
music choose a product originating in and listened to through
digital equipment produced in the bowels of monolithic corporate
commodities generators.
We may gaze at the hologram and dream of living larger, or
conversely, living the uncorrupted "simple life" on that little
organic farm in Vermont. In the end though, the lucky ones among
us, all those people out there in anonymous Terra Condominia,
out there in the sprawling suburban nether land, must be content
with a flat screen television. Watching those commercials for
the Super Bowl commercials, delivered to us breathlessly as
"news," The News is the liturgy of the commodity economy --
whose scope and omniscience no man can grasp, but only consume
as manna. We are feasters at the table of goods and services,
most of which are not only unnecessary, distractive and mind
killing, but earth destroying in both their manufacture and
their use. This matters not a bit in an illusionary world of
appearances. The commodity economy in its bounty, also offers us
a chance to "buy green." To text a link to the Earth First
website.
It ain't fascism, it's practicality
If our national and individual minds have been colonized,
occupied, then we necessarily live in an occupied nation. We
have arrived at the destination where the trajectory of material
consumer capitalism was always headed, toward an occupied (and
preoccupied) totalitarian society. Rational, practical,
productive and autonomous.
Cliché as the word is, you would have to call it overshoot. In
judging the arc and trajectory of that technical rationality
Western society so prides itself upon, we reduced the
Enlightenment, the original launching pad of ration, to the
merely practical, material and economic. The practical is
scripture now. Without it material production and profit, the
only concerns of capitalism, do not exist. All power rests in
the practical.
What is most practical is hierarchy and specialization.
Technical specialization -- within engineering specialization --
within scientific specialization. All contained within the
economic specializations of the state sanctioned economy and
ideology governing the conditions of our daily existence. By
definition, this is totalitarian.
Totalitarianism calls ideology philosophy. It salutes itself in
every medium and every product, material, legal, political. And
we salute it in return through meaningless work and consumption.
In all likelihood, you the reader are younger than I. Possibly
less cynical and surely less tired. You may believe yet that
violent overthrow of such a monstrous system is still possible.
A year or so ago, I still believed that. Events in the world and
at home have since convinced me otherwise. Maybe the system
could have even been changed from within forty years ago. If it
could have been and was not, then that most certainly is the
greatest failure of my generation. The Sixties were a critical
point at which important choices were offered us as a people. At
the time, a minority realized revolution was still possible and
warranted. Violent revolution, if necessary. But as a
generation, we were no better at acting in unselfish concert
than yours.
[/quote]
#Post#: 1554--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corruption in Government
By: AGelbert Date: July 18, 2014, 2:36 pm
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PART 2 OF 2 PARTS
[QUOTE]As Chris Hedges recently pointed out, violence today only
assures the survival of the most violent, criminals of one sort
or another, petty or international. Beyond that, the state now
has the technological capability to inflict the most violence in
every case, and therefore win. Realistic thinkers say aloud that
what is so far advanced can no longer be stopped or turned
around by revolution, violent or otherwise. Most other thinkers
on the subject secretly suspect the same.
Mr. Popularity and the marmot
The rest of the country is oblivious, lost in the anxious clamor
for an economic "recovery." The voice of the state defines
recovery for them as a return to former levels of the
unsustainable superheated capitalism, and increased indebtedness
of the populace. "Oh when, oh when will the bankers loosen the
credit markets so we can again buy things?" As if their debt
slavery were a great gift! The banksters simply do not issue
more credit to people they know are dead broke -- because they
broke 'em, they will continue to make more money by letting the
people wail, and taking the people's money directly from the
state as bailouts. Stretched out over the coming years, we will
see more of them. It should give us chills.
President Obama at some point asked himself if bailouts for
those who caused the collapse will truly result in an end to the
"current crisis" (a term calculated to make our slow inevitable
collapse look temporary). How does getting the masses to accept
more debt add up to anything but worse crisis later? Obama is a
smart fellow, smarter than George Bush, which is what got him
elected, right? (Of course after Bush a marmot could have run on
the "smarter than Bush" ticket and looked good). So he must have
asked that. And like any highly educated (indoctrinated)
American politician who has interiorized the capitalist system
-- you do not become a presidential candidate without
interiorizing capitalism lock stock and barrel -- his first
reflex was: "The system must be saved at all costs!" Members of
Congress, whose butts arrived in the Washington through the same
processes as Obama's, agreed. That cost us all plenty.
Obama is himself a commodity, the most telegenic political
commodity since Kennedy. One that suits American style
capitalism best this particular historical political moment. He
is a useful illusion, the same as George W. Bush was a useful
illusion. What is the difference between George Bush managing
the country through media performances and Obama doing the same?
Both are telegenic, which is everything today, but in different
ways. One was stupid but radiated virility and manly appearance;
the other is attractive for his intelligence and so smart he's
stupid. Both lives are absorbed in "appearing to be" in the
Great American Hologram of appearances. We are a nation
following the appearance of national leadership.
------
It is cold comfort that we are not alone in this ultimate folly.
Globally, it is estimated that the economic crisis has seen at
least $50 trillion in financial assets -- approximately equal to
the value of the entire global GDP -- wiped out. Given the
bullshit "science" that is economics, and that economists serve
the purposes of the money masters of their particular age, and
that money is always in motion, it is very doubtful that anyone
really knows the global GDP. But the illusion that someone does
is necessary in preserving and controlling perceptions of the
present system. Otherwise the concept of money itself would have
to be reexamined and changed to fit the world reality. Better to
proclaim a "crisis" and scare the shit out of the peasantry,
than give them an opportunity to question the new feudalism of
credit cards, mortgages, car loans, educational loans and
general debt slavery. The word crisis scares people, flogs them
into anxious submission, lest some fucking socialist come along
and ask, Why don't you take charge of your own lives and
destiny? Do you really need these people?
The "crisis" was set in motion by institutions lending each
other non-existent money none of them can pay back.
Consequently, the masses are once again expected to produce
enough material value in the world to make the funny money real,
and shore up the system one more time. To "raise the money" to
do this will require generations of future productivity shoveled
into the furnace of corporate capitalism's banking machinery.
There was nothing left to steal, so extorting the future was the
only option left. Assuming the skimmers and the scammers manage
to extract enough public monies to pump up corporations one more
time, there will be another and bigger disaster not far down the
road. We don't need the Oracle of Delphi to predict this.
Capitalism is unstable as hell, like an unbalanced dreidel that
keeps tilting ever more wildly off center until it falls over or
eventually hits the wall. We can now see the wall from here:
Massive ecological collapse and species extinction. "Economic
downturn," even "crisis," does not quite describe that
approaching wall. All of America hopes we will miss that wall at
least one more time.
Americans are hope fiends. We always see hope somewhere down
every road, chiefly because honestly looking at the present
situation would destroy just about everything we hold as
reality. Personally, as I often state and catch readership hell
for, I do not like hope. When Obama ran it up the flagpole for
us to salute, and so many saluted, my blood chilled. Made me
feel that we were all in deeper shit than I had supposed
(Nevertheless, I reluctantly voted for Obama. At the time it
seemed It was either Obama, or continuing war, debt, and
diminishing civil liberties. Ha!) Hope is magic thinking,
believing that somehow, some larger unknown force is in motion
to set things right.
The world is what it is, and its injustices are set right by
peoples and nations morally intact enough to challenge its
malevolent forces.
Hope is political pabulum for an infantilized nation.
A shot at economic justice (gets you shot at)
On those rare occasions when I do see nations take concrete
steps toward liberation, the heart is cheered at having at least
some reason for reality based optimism. After more than a
century of taking it up the shorts from autonomous capitalism,
Latin America is moving toward alternatives to the free trade
cowboy capitalism that has so long raped them.
One step is ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de
Nuestra América). ALBA is aimed solely at meeting human need
instead of profit. Bartering and mutual economic and material
aid outside of so-called free trade agreements. Out of the reach
of global banking. For example, Venezuela gives Cuba over
100,000 barrels of oil daily at production cost. In exchange
Cuba has sent 20,000 state-employed doctors and medical
staffers. And if Venezuelans' medical problems require higher
medical specialism, they may travel to Cuba for specialized care
free of charge. No profits allowed. Take it or leave it.
The takers are lining up. Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Saint
Vincent , the Grenadines , Dominica, Honduras, Antigua and
Barbuda, Nicaragua and Bolivia. ALBA nations are in the process
of introducing a new regional currency, the SUCRE. (Sistema
Único de Compensación Regional, or Single Regional Payment
Compensation System) to replace the U.S. dollar. Now a common
virtual currency, it is scheduled to become a hard currency.
Countries such as Argentina are experimenting with an economy
based on worker self-management and balanced job complexes.
Venezuela is developing community owned and directed banks. A
common goal is to develop an economy not dependent, as is
capitalism, on limitless exponential growth, but on consuming
fewer resources, operating without debt, and using less or none
of the global banking system's money. When the IMF and the
world's banksters dubbed these nations "developing countries" (a
fine example of Newspeak, that both renamed miserable poverty,
and suggested that the international bankers' robbery was
benefiting those countries), this is not the kind of development
they had in mind. This is pure wide-open socialism based on the
universal socialist and democratic socialist vision. The stuff
of capitalist nightmares.
The traditional answer to such challengers to autonomous
capitalism has been simple. Kill 'em. And we do our best. The
U.S. has always had its provocative agents and hit squads
working in those counties. Castro has survived or foiled some
638 assassination attempts, one every few weeks of his long
presidency. Attempts on Chavez are so common the Venezuelan
press no longer bothers to report them. After all, besides being
old hat, they don't seem to be working anyway. Which means we
will be forced to bomb the piss out of Venezuela and Cuba at
some point. But they will have to get in line behind Iran.
By the way, a Latin American country does not have to be
socialistic to get hammered by capitalist interests. Even
Mexico, governed by corrupt capitalist and business overlords of
the first order, men who have consistently sold their country
out to foreign capitalist interests both before and since its
revolution, is a target for covert action and sabotage -- from
Israel of all places. In October 2001, a month after 9/11, two
Israelis, MOSSAD agent Salvador Guersson Smecke and another
Israeli who slipped into the country covertly, were arrested
inside the halls of the Mexican congress, while posing as two
rather lumpy looking photographers. The lumps turned out to be
nine hand grenades, a dozen sticks of dynamite, detonators and
detonator wiring and two Glock 9mm automatics. Immediately
following the arrest, Ariel Sharon sent a top envoy, who sprang
them, following strong pressure from Israeli government. They
were whisked off, leaving Mexicans to wonder, What in the hell
was THAT all about?" One neighbor here in Mexico says wryly,
"That must have cost the Israelis millions in bribes." (*see
footnote)
Born with the disease?
It would be nice if we could neatly lay all the blame on the
nasty monolith of autonomous capitalism as an outside malignant
force of its own. A systemic pathogen that somehow infected a
decent and unsuspecting America. Looks like I just did, in fact.
Nevertheless, America and its national character were founded on
the purest greed. From the beginning the people who came here
wanted more of the material world. Sure, there were some
religious dissenters (of which too much has been made for
propaganda purposes). But the English and Dutch stock companies
that established the first colonies came looking for profits.
And the common people who came here were looking for "a better
life," which to them was, above all else, becoming as wealthy as
possible. America was its own self-selecting process.
Read Tocqueville's description of earlier Americans' relentless
buying and selling fever. Everything and everyone was always up
for sale from the start. Read about the greed and stinginess of
the "refugees from religious persecution," such as slave owning
Quakers, Presbyterians and Methodists. Read about how the
founding fathers ripped off the Revolutionary War veterans for
the IOU script they so patiently held for many years in payment
for fighting, buying it up for pennies on the dollar, then
passing legislation to pay up on the script. Or how not only the
business class, but also the supposedly bucolic and wise
heartland American farmers cheered as the government troops shot
down hungry striking miners, burned out their families, lest
they disturb the order of the Republic of commerce.
There were the exploited working masses then, just as there are
now. And there was always the petty bourgeoisie, more than happy
to do the dirty work of the most elite owning class, in hopes of
currying its favor. Always happy to sanction the "wet jobs" on
the Italian, Polish, Chinese and Irish immigrant laborer. You
could then, and you can now, depend on the true middle class,
that 15% or so, capitalism's commissars, to crush the working
class. They will do anything to remain in a more privileged zone
of consumption, the boundaries of which are maintained by
agreement of state authorities. From their petty perches, they
have deemed themselves "the middle class." In reality they are
the mitigating class, the petty anointed whose job it is to
obscure class awareness in America.
Shut up and let the green stuff talk
An awareness of class makes clear who is fucking whom. That's
why American capitalism's official line is that we area
"classless society." Denying the existence of class, deeming all
Americans (excepting a few too-obvious-to-be denied cases, such
as inner city blacks and the poorest of immigrants), "middle
class" was one of American capitalism's great strokes of genius.
It blurred the line between workers and capitalism's middle
class commissariat -- the petty business, mid-management,
teaching and owning class managing the rest of us for the
elites.
And just in case that line was not blurred enough, the
bourgeoisie, particularly the academic institutions,
successfully wrote the labor and the working masses out of
American political history as taught in the public schools. We
workers now have no continuous organic chain of memory and
experience from which to draw.
The owning/business class has always been institutionalized as
the state and the custodians of the entire American social and
political process. History as we learn it in school is the
owning class' version. Despite what we were taught, America's
Constitution is mainly a property rights document, and those
with the most property are naturally ascendant at all times in
this country. Generation after generation of this ascent was
bound to lead to what we see now. The ultimate triumph of
property and money. A Supreme Court that, without the slightest
hesitation, declares that money is speech and as such, will do
most of the talking from here on out. The autonomous economy now
has a tongue.
We can well imagine its future admonishments, its smug edicts,
proclamations of terror afoot, more need for surveillance camera
eyes, oil pipelines for its circulatory system. The autonomous
economy not only has the bullhorn of the national media. It has
a voice capable of drowning out what little of the people's
voice remained, replacing our small national dialogue with
soulless monologue. The bourgeoisie will listen closely though,
for opportunity, a buck to be made in Kevlar, or perhaps the
next new antidepressant for a demoralized, passive and
discouraged republic.
In all honesty, I am sick of thinking about it, tired of burning
up unrecoverable hours at the end of my 63-year old candle
writing about it. So are many of my colleagues in cybernetic
left-space.
Distance and solitude seem the only refuge. Which is why I am
"aging Mexican," and almost monastically absorbed in the small
daily rituals of sustenance these days. I do not kid myself that
it is permanent or a real solution to the unbearable ugliness of
the American condition.
But at the moment, four AM, a cricket chirps in the orange tree
by my window, and my tortillas are perfectly lovely.
[/quote]
#Post#: 1555--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corruption in Government
By: AGelbert Date: July 18, 2014, 2:40 pm
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This is the FRUIT of BAD GOVERNMENT by
1) predatory,
2) conscience free ('liberated' from guilt feelings by the
almighty Freud in order to avoid 'neurosis'),
3) social Darwinist,
HTML http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-devil19.gif
4) game theory (cooperation is a guise to fool and destroy the
competition) fucked up world view,
5) situational ethics (an oxymoron!),
6) if it feels good-DO IT
corporate consent manufacturing propagandists in the service of
S H I T CANNED ETHICS for SHORT TERM PROFITS!
The SOLUTION lies in GOOD GOVERNMENT; the PROBLEM is that
CORPORATIONS ARE the present BAD GOVERNMENT! They support
imprisoning people that speak truth to power and giving the
people the mushroom treatment for the same reason they ignore
global warming and pollution: S H I T CANNED ETHICS FOR SHORT
TERM PROFITS!
As part of being responsible, caring human beings, we have to
pressure our government to take major action to stop the
degradation of the biosphere from climate change. This is
causing death and disease to both domestic animals and wildlife,
all of which have done nothing to deserve such a horrible fate
at our hands. It's time to eliminate the excuse our fossil fuel
loving oligarchy uses for "resources" wars for oil that bring
nothing but misery to us and profits for them.
I started a petition on Care2: Demand Liberty From Fossil Fuels
Through 100% Renewable Energy WWII Style Effort. I'm hoping that
if enough people sign my petition, we can make a difference. I
have 302 signatures. Will you help me collect more by adding
your name?
Here's a link to the petition:
HTML http://www.thepetitionsite.com/420/529/456/demand-liberty-from-fossil-fuels-through-100-renewable-energy-wwii-style-effort/
Thank you and please pass it on. The biosphere you save may be
your own.
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/>
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#Post#: 1563--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corruption in Government: How a Corporatocracy "Works&q
uot;.
By: AGelbert Date: July 19, 2014, 2:43 pm
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How a Corporatocracy "Works". >:(
[I]Corruptisima re publica plurimae leges.[/I]
The laws, LOTS OF LAWS, are on the books. However, they are
enforced on the little guy, Joe and Jane public, not the
corporations that fill the campaign coffers of the politicians
[I](that end up working for said corporations after - and
before- "public" office)[/I]. This is a fascist dictatorship
with the trappings of "democracy". And the very ones claiming to
be against "big and intrusive" government are the ones who
actually support the fascist criminal government agenda!
How many times have you heard this clever doubletalk? "We need
small, less intrusive government because it helps those poor
overtaxed and overregulated corporations benefit society through
a free market" (Oh but it [I]DO SOUND PURTY,[/I] DON'T IT?).
The irony of the doubletalk from these feudalist tyrants who
despise and work 24/7 to make sure there is NO FREE MARKET while
claiming they believe in LIBERTY is that they LOVE GIANT,
OBTRUSIVE, WAR LOVING, FASCIST GOVERNMENT! They want as strong,
big and mean a government as possible JUST AS LONG AS
CORPORATIONS RUN IT!
That way, they can get we-the-people to PAY for our own fascist
policing and lack of freedom while the corporations and those
who run them are never prosecuted for any crimes of ANY TYPE
from pollution, to slave wages to money laundering to sex rings
to child p o r n ography, etc. (i.e. whatever is "profitable"
while being grossly immoral, unethical and criminal = LIBERTY!
).
Libertarians are ORWELLIAN in EVERYTHING they do and say. Prison
is too good for them! They want less freedom for the little guy
and gal while corporations run ragged over the people and the
planet.
For those readers that think critically [I](ignore all
pro-corporate fascist agenda talk disguised as ""anti-strong
intrusive government")[/I], here's our situation:
The SOLUTION lies in GOOD GOVERNMENT; the PROBLEM is that
CORPORATIONS ARE the present BAD GOVERNMENT! Clever Libertarians
and other right wing apologists for rampant and consciense free
GREED present "too much" government as "hampering" the "free
market" in true Orwellian mindfork.
The method in the madness of these greedballs is to OBTAIN EVEN
MORE DESTRUCTIVE POWER FOR THE CORPORATE ELITE AND LESS FOR THE
PEOPLE, thereby making a mockery of the terms "democracy" and
"free market".
These predators KNOW what they are doing. [I]S h i t canned
ethics for short term profits is what these people are all
about.[/I] They are always looking for someone to kick. Don't
let them get away with their clever lies and distortions of the
truth.
"It is argued that mega corporations are vital economic engines
of growth and contributors to society, whether as a result of
jobs created or from products or services provided. It is
undeniable that the Japanese zaibatsus and Korean chaebols have
played a vital role in the material ascendancy of those
countries.
But when the genie escapes the bottle, when he no longer serves
his master (customers or the public), when he takes control and
makes rules to suit himself to the detriment of others - that is
when we should worry. We should worry about the unbridled
insatiable greed and lack of accountability increasingly
characterising the behaviour of these people." 264
Icecubes in Rockets © RLL/G.Chia 2004
Help stop them now before it is too late!
Demand Liberty From Fossil Fuel Polliution
HTML http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2014/06/petition-president-obama-be-delivered-september-demand-liberty-fossil-fuels-through-10
#Post#: 1644--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corruption in Government
By: AGelbert Date: August 1, 2014, 8:10 pm
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HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0xzsbSbVUE&feature=player_embedded<br
/>
The Neocon Israel Firsters Planned and Executed 911 with the
help of the Mossad! >:(
#Post#: 1692--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corruption in Government
By: AGelbert Date: August 13, 2014, 1:24 pm
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[img]
HTML http://images.dailykos.com/images/99252/lightbox/wildfires720.png?1407777044[/img]
#Post#: 1695--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corruption in Government
By: AGelbert Date: August 13, 2014, 9:37 pm
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Do You Trust the Government? 87% of Americans Don’t
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by Kevin Mathews
August 11, 2014
Americans are seriously lacking faith in the system – in fact,
trust in the U.S. government is at an all-time low. According to
the latest CNN poll, just 13% of Americans agree that the U.S.
government “can be trusted to do what is right always or most of
the time.”
Instead, nearly everyone (75%) says that the government works
properly just “some of the time,” a troubling figure. Certainly,
a healthy, functioning democracy would not brew so much distrust
amongst its population.
“The number who trust the government all or most of the time has
sunk so low that it is hard to remember that there was ever a
time when Americans routinely trusted the government,” said
Keating Holland, the head of CNN Polling.
This is a notable departure from the legitimate trust that
existed decades ago. Through the 1960s, Americans held favorable
opinions toward the government. The majority of respondents in
the ‘60s said they trusted the government “always or most of the
time.”
That all changed when the Watergate scandal struck. By 1974,
only 36% of Americans expressed good faith in the government.
That number has never rebounded above 50% since then, with one
prominent exception: the period immediately following the
September 11 attacks in 2001. While the outpouring of collective
patriotism resulted in an upswing in the figures temporarily,
the numbers have dropped steadily since, presumably impacted in
part by the U.S.’s hasty decision to declare war with Iraq, a
country uninvolved in 9/11.
Speaking of Watergate, in conjunction with the scandal’s 40th
anniversary, CNN also polled Americans about their feelings on
Watergate. The age gap on this issue is quite telling. Americans
over the age of 40 declared Watergate a major problem, while
those under 40 labeled the incident politics as usual. Of
course, the fact that younger American citizens are collectively
shrugging at Watergate isn’t a sign that they view that sort of
behavior as acceptable. More accurately, it reflects the growing
distrust toward the government and the belief that
underhandedness like Watergate is standard practice in modern
politics.
In addition to government-related questions, the poll asked
Americans whether they had faith in the private sector. The
amount of Americans who trust corporations is similarly abysmal:
just 17%. That said, the correlation between these low fingers
isn’t altogether surprising considering that the unholy alliance
between corporations and U.S. politicians prompts many Americans
to look at them as essentially the same entity.
HTML http://media.giphy.com/media/HjPbLbmep2aJO/giphy.gif
Read more:
HTML http://www.care2.com/causes/do-you-trust-the-government-87-of-americans-dont.html#ixzz3AKSpiqky
[move]
Americans are finally GETTING DA PICTURE...
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[/move]
Corporato-PIGocracy 'R' US
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/d2.gif<br
/> [img width=060
height=040]
HTML http://www.envisionyourdreamsllc.com/Golden-Pig.jpg[/img]<br
/>[img width=80
height=045]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-241013183046.jpeg[/img]
#Post#: 1740--------------------------------------------------
Ron Paul is, and always was, a racist fascist. IOW, he is a Lib
ertarian.
By: AGelbert Date: August 24, 2014, 4:18 pm
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Ron Paul is 100% pro international corporations while fronting
for small government. What he and his oligarchic friends want is
a what multi-national corporations want.
THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATE "small government" PLAN:
The neutering of all national governments (creation of many
small, weak and beholden to corporate money "rump" states) in
the entire planet so they are only the police state front behind
which corporations rule and flaunt all laws that make people
running corporations responsible to the law. Ron Paul is, and
always was, a racist fascist. IOW, he is a Libertarian.
[img width=640
height=980]
HTML http://image.slidesharecdn.com/rp64-120121110325-phpapp02/95/ron-paul-the-most-dangerous-nazi-in-america-1-638.jpg?cb=1374344705[/img]
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