Tag Archives: capitalism

No Divine Appointment

30 Jun

Who are we to decide anything in Iraq/Afghanistan? Why because it’s so easy to trash their chronic dictator style of governance as oppressive and unjust? So what, oppressive and unjust circles the globe. Redrawing territories, ousting leaders, medieval laws, get over it, none of our business. Unless, that is, you slip up and get honest about the oil. We have misdirected trillions of dollars away from our dire domestic needs, infrastructure, economic growth, education, you know the list, and blown it instead on private security for BP, Exxon, Occidental Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Chevron, Halliburton and others. But America is addicted to oil you say, and yes we are. Addiction is bad by anyone’s definition. What do experts say you do to eliminating an addiction, you stop using baby. Even Nancy Reagan gets it “just say no”. It’s not rocket science and not an over simplification. Many consider the US to have the most innovative people on the planet. Some alternative energy systems (solar, wind, hybrids) have already, despite all big oil efforts, been successfully introduced into our market place. Imagine the untapped potential. There’s a staggering amount of money to be made with alternative energy but we’ll have to cut the big boys loose to sink or swim, you know, capitalism style. We must stop subsidizing the big boys with corporate welfare: legal tax evasion, trillion dollar protection rackets overseas; it has destroyed their incentive, made them lazy welfare kings eating bon bons and driving Cadillacs on our dime. They have the option to take a chunk of their massive profits and retrofit their companies to alternative energy production or slip into an earned oblivion. To compete they’d have to actually work, build, invest instead of just brokering. The rest of us are constantly expected to adapt to the ever changing world usually with zero disposal income to retrofit a damn thing. The citizens will transition to alternative energy . . . . we moved from radio to TV, movie rentals to Netfix, rabbit ears to cable, land lines to cell phones, typewriters to computers, desk tops to IPads, 8 cylinders to 4 cylinders, leaded to unleaded. The list is endless. These conversions happen at an ever increasing pace. We hardly blink. We love upgrades. We’ve come to expect them. However, by in large our elected representatives are hopelessly indentured to big oil so cutting the cord will have to come from the citizens; we’re going to have to save ourselves from the ever hungry war/oil twins.

Power To The People

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Iraq: The Arguments for More

20 Jun

DEBT: IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN

Why is it we owe the Iraqi/Afghani people anything?

We’ve never felt that we owed the Indigenous people of this country anything for invading their homeland, slaughtering them, diseasing them, decimating their food supplies, kidnapping their children, humiliating them, warehousing them in outdoor jails . . . to name a few.

We’ve never felt that we owed the kidnapped Africans in this country for turning them and their children into generations of slaves, selling them, trading them, raping them, whipping them, hanging them, working them, humiliating them, warehousing them in sheds . . . to name a few.

So why are the Iraqis/Afghanis so very special in our conscience? Certainly we’ve been carefully guided by our leaders for years to believe that we have a moral responsibility to do right by these countries that we’ve invaded, but why? What exactly has moved us to step so far out of character and spend gobs of our sacred money on people we don’t even approve of? Have we had an epiphany? Have we experienced metamorphosis? Have we come to Jesus? I’m not feelin’ it. I smell oil.

SECURITY: IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN

In the last ten or twelve years, globally speaking, do you feel more like a respected citizen of the planet or more like a preferred target? If you travel outside the U.S. are you perceived less like the ugly American or more like that ugly American? And how do we measure security? Women, for example, often measure personal security differently than men. Understandably it is not unusual for a woman to experience apprehension in certain situations that wouldn’t necessarily alarm a man. Young children can often be oblivious to danger and old people are often fearful of an abundance of hazards real or imaged. It’s a subjective thing. We want to feel safe, it’s primal. We want to believe that we can orchestrate safe. We do all that we can; we take the generally accepted precautions in our daily lives but simultaneously, deep in our bones, we also know that our whole existence down here is a crap shoot. How much will you believe to feel safe? I smell oil.

Power To The People

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Letter to My President

14 Jun

NO on more money, soldiers, or equipment being spent on Iraq. There is no face to be saved, that childish notion was never an option. Every minute spent there only compounds the idiocy of our original transgression in 2003. Bush has definitely moved on, by what right are we still held hostage to this atrocity, why aren’t the rest of us allowed to move on? Whether we left in 2004 or left today or leave ten years from now there will be no difference in that county; women will continue to be regarded as chattel regardless of the rotation of men in power. This is the true raw measure of our irrelevance in Iraq. Despite all of our killing we’ve just been treading water in someone else’s befouled pond. Time to exit; take the usual pounding from the right wing about the resulting cataclysmic nation security failure that’s sure to come. It’s time to face the reality of our power within the universe. It’s time to get humble, go home and attempt to clean up our own abundant messes.

We can start with a job for me. I am 67 years old, worked damn hard all of my life, was laid off almost three years ago, cannot afford to retire, mortgage not paid off, have burnt through all but a few thousand dollars of my savings. These are the “Golden Years” American style. My daughter is 32 years old, was laid off four years ago, back living with me. Unemployment long since gone for both of us. I still send out resumes frequently, sometimes get phone interviews, occasionally get a face to face interview. Face to face interview from last week . . . was told they received thirty resumes for the one position, they granted interviews to only three applicants. I got one of those interviews but not the job. And my country’s priority is to dump obscene amounts of money into the black hole known as Iraq and Afghanistan, eh, to keep me safe. Hoorah.

Instead of sending me back a flowery form letter how about sending me a job, I live in the San Francisco area.

Power To The People.

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Uncertainty My Ass

19 Oct

There’s a nasty myth being promoted by the right wing, being heavily circulated and co-signed by the media, and going undisputed by elected democrats.

This is the myth that businesses are hoarding dollars on their Balance Sheets and refusing to hire because the poor darlings are wrought with uncertainty about the economy. Pure crap.

First, with regard to the campaigns: both republicans and democrats have been falling all over each other with vows to maintain or exceed existing aids for businesses (such as tax breaks) and promises to create additional ones (such as reduced or revised regulations). Assurances that businesses are held as a protected class abound and are well advertised. By all, businesses are currently being touted as the very saviors of the America way of life. A business owner, big or small, would have to be brain dead to have missed these positive and well disseminated pledges.

Second where’s the need, just for example, to make capital expenditures when the margin can simply be grown by squeezing the workforce? This is not just people being replaced by automated machinery or computers, this is people being laid off in droves and the remaining work force made to do their work too with no additional compensation; doing it just for the privilege of remaining employed (for now). Albeit lazy, this is hardly a revolutionary approach to growing margin and collecting bonus. Laying people off is a hell of lot easier than hustling market share . . . . margin remains steady or even increases, where’s the uncertainty in that?

This “uncertain economic future” ruse has been cultivated to both explain away increased profits while keeping the work force in a constant state of gratitude for having even the crappiest jobs. Workers are afraid to take sick days, afraid to take vacation days, afraid to take lunch hours, and above all, afraid to complain about anything. Hoorah.

Power to the People

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Capitalism

9 Oct

To be clear, capitalism as a concept, or even the word itself, does not appear anywhere in the Bible. It doesn’t appear anywhere in the Declaration of Independence and it doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution. So why, in this country, is it promoted and accepted unequivocally as sacrosanct? We lay claim to it yet we certainly didn’t invent it. Capitalism has been around since the first cave woman picked more berries than she and her family could eat. She traded the excess to some other woman for fire wood and capitalism was born. Openly or covertly capitalism is practiced everywhere in the world 24/7. That, however, doesn’t make it holy. It is the way of the world. At the ground level it’s the marriage between human beings and natural resources but for Christ sakes it’s not a religious experience. Like all things, capitalism is as capitalism does. In an evolved society capitalism is capitalized on, not prayed to. Like all things, if it’s not working for the common good then adapt it, we are a people who invented versions; we stand in lines at midnight to purchase them. The so called experts on capitalism propagandize that it can’t flourish in a harness. These are people with an agenda; their actual expertise is in amassing and protecting personal wealth. Not the same thing. For better or worse capitalism is like the common weed, extremely hardy and engineered to massively reproduce. The exercise is not to eradicate it nor glorify it; it’s a tool to be used creatively to improve the lives of the citizenry.

Power to the People.

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