the corruption of power

The government strong-arms Bank of America to stop dealing with Assange's Wikileaks because the government can't think of anything else to do, feels it can't defend itself against the truth, and so must set about to "influence" corporations and other governments and assassinate characters in order to curtail a truth teller.

I don't know if Assange did the criminal things he's accused of doing (apparently legal entities in the UK believed he hadn't, since they released him from custody), but I do know what our government does to people, I know how it lies to hide truth that it finds inconvenient, I know how it corrupts bureaucrats into doing its dirty work.

[In fact, there is no 'it' in the government; 'it' does not act, corrupt agents of the government act, against the ideals of our democracy. Higher up agents corrupt lower agents to act in a conspiratorial fashion to subvert the rule of law. Politicians and quasi-governmental agents (corporate goons) put their own interests ahead of the people.]

Under the broadest definition of terrorism, which our government chooses to use all the time to characterize fanaticism and computer malfeasance, the government itself is a terrorist organization. Yeah, it doesn't actually kill people...well, now wait a minute...yes it does. Maybe we don't need so broad a definition after all.

I'm less and less happy with this government as time goes on. I thought we elected Obama to end this shit. Meet the new boss... The US government is a terrorist organization in the same way as local cops are the most powerful street gang in any given area. Authoritarianism claims its privilege to overpower any dissent. What democracy?

Gotta Revolution.

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moral concerns

Never mind the moral concerns, if you're prosecuting a war, at whatever level, whether as leader of a nation, as a grunt in the field, as paper pusher in an office, or as a citizen who supports the efforts of any of the former (including spouses and children who give aid and comfort and thereby further enable the bellicose actions of the various warrior classes), then you are compromising (at best, or far worse, debilitating) the future of this planet and the human species.

Lives are being lost, lives of people who might have one day contributed significant knowledge and wisdom to our great adventure, who might have acted to relieve much suffering and further death, who might have advanced us much farther along toward becoming the benevolent and humane species we are capable of being, who might have found a way to more effectively negate the nastiness strain that currently runs through our basic human nature.

And an incredibly enormous amount of money is being wasted on campaigns and munitions, money that could be used to advance us in the same ways as people who are dying might have, that could be used for medical and genetic research, that could raise humanity up to levels previously unthought of, not only some few of us, but everyone. Those of us who think this is a bad idea, who smugly claim that wars (and poverty) kill off the worst of us, can go to hell (and will).

President Obama: You are responsible here. You market yourself as a caring politician, which is why we elected you, despite the intense opposition of warmongers, greedmongers, and bigots. And yet you allow their policies and practices to proliferate, you even adopt them and adapt them to your own political agenda. This is not acceptable. You are selling the future of the planet and its populations for present day political convenience. Stop it! Come out from among them.

Actually, now that I think back on it, these are moral concerns.

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insurance tax

There's only one reason that I have car insurance: because I'm required by law to have it; because the insurance companies conspired with the state legislature to guarantee them a little bit more income. If you believe that the legislature passed the law in order to protect the consumer, then grow up, you naive idiot.

If I weren't legally required to have insurance, I would not have it, because insurance companies are rip-off companies who greedily suck up your premiums but do everything they possible can to get out of paying off on claims, and when they think they can't possibly not pay off, they delay payments for as long as possible.

I think of car insurance as just another tax that the state levies for the privilege of driving a car. But it's a tax that has been privatized, with the proceeds going to insurance companies instead of benefiting state citizens. It's way past time for state-run automobile insurance. "But that's...socialism!" Yeah, like we're not a socialist country already.

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false advertising

I'm completely fed up with grocery store advertisements (which are really nothing more than an extension of the more general corporate hype that falls just short of outright lies--when it doesn't cross the line from the start). Do they really think, when they advertise a product as selling for four for nine dollars with a coupon for fifty cents off (which gets doubled), that I'm not going to bother with doing the math? Or, worse, do they actually believe that selling an item two-for-one without advertising the actual price is going to dupe me into believing that they haven't jacked the price up to nearly twice its previous cost to compensate for the one "free" item you're getting is going to trick me into believing that I'm really getting one whole item free? Or even worse, when they advertise the savings of a "buy one get one free" item as $6.48, do they really not know that I can calculate the actual price as $3.24 and understand that last week's price at $2.98 means that this is not in fact a sale, but a price increase? In fact, the large majority of the items listed in stores' "sales" flyers are not really sales at all, but either the regular item price or are discounted only by pennies.

These advertising "techniques" offend me. They suggest to me that stores think I'm stupid. Maybe these ads do con some (stupid) people into believing they are getting some kind of great bargain, but if they do, is it right that the stores take advantage of people's ignorance in this way? What's wrong, I'd like to know, with simply stating the price of a single item outright, with no complicated mathematical formula to work out? That way buyers would be able to detect immediately who has the cheapest prices and a true competitive marketplace would prevail. Oh...excuse me; that is what's wrong with it. Can't have any of that kind of truly competitive capitalist stuff going on. That would be a betrayal of our great system of corporate pseudo-capitalism.

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mutual destruction

Like a lot of people, I disagree with that right-wing, supposedly Christian bigot in Florida who plans to burn the Quran on 9/11. He disgusts me. But what disgusts me even more is the government's attempt to intimidate him by sending FBI agents to harass him.

On the other hand, if you were an establishment-minded, right-wing bureaucrat who agreed with the idea of burning the Quran but, public sentiment being what it is, were too afraid to speak out, sending in the FBI just might turn out to be the tipping point:

People disgusted with the would-be Quran burner, using the logic that, if the government is out to silence him, then he must be doing something right, might turn around and defend him (like I almost did) when they see him being harassed by federal agents.

Meanwhile:

In Pakistan, about 200 lawyers and civil society members marched and burned a U.S. flag in the central Pakistani city of Multan, demanding that Washington halt the burning of the Muslim holy book.


Ah, isn't that, like, calling the kettle black? If burning their holy book is offensive to them, then refusing to burn the U.S. flag would be the appropriate response, because the message sent would be, "Look at us. We're not like you. We're not the offensive assholes you are."

As it is, they are.

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meet the new boss...

Is Obama responsible for the poor economy? He is now. Yaah, he inherited the mess from King George, and he started a few projects that helped a lot; but he balked when his approval rating began to slip, and what could have been a great recovery becomes the victim of political pandering. He's just another politician, after all. He's...

But, to be fair, it was a bit naive of me to think he'd make any kind of significant difference. He's still killing people in Afghanistan. He's promoting nuclear energy, threatening to resurrect that specter without proposing any kind of solution to the very real and potentially deadly problem of what to do with the nuclear waste. He's...

Yeah, he wrapped himself in some good-looking packaging, but he is, after all, just another politician. Back to the drawing board.

Gotta Revolution.

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I may be idealistic, but I'm not stupid.

I don't believe that the government has the right to tax me. I do however believe that the government has the power to do whatever it wants to do. So I pay my taxes. Imbibins.

I don't believe in government welfare of any kind. I don't think that the government should be giving free money to anyone, including aid to foreign countries. But if the government is going to do give away money anyway and they consider me eligible to receive it, despite what I believe, I'm going to take it. Imbibims.
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bigotry

This is a drastic idea, so bear with me until the end before you exercise your biases to conclude that I am wrong:

I'm becoming increasingly fed up with society's effort to label bigots as being, not only "wrong", but even evil. There's nothing “wrong”, per se, with bigotry. There is something wrong with systemic bigotry; social institutions must be exorcised, as much as it is possible, of prejudice in order that all citizens function within society on an equal footing. But individuals have the inherent right to believe whatever they so choose (or are conditioned or manipulated) to believe, and to systematically attempt to deny them that right (which is what our government and its cultural counterparts are trying to do) is acting in a prejudicial manner toward the individual bigot (by, for example, establishing harsher, more discriminating penalties for "hate crimes"; all people should be punished equally for their (pre-defined) bad actions, regardless of race, creed, color, gender, or degree of bigotry).

Everyone whether s/he wants to believe it or not, is prejudiced. It's a fact of human psychological nature. You cannot get away from it. Even the most "advanced"-thinking liberal who tries to see the best in every person discriminates between individuals. (To deny this premise is to discriminate, thereby exhibiting a prejudice toward its obverse.) Bigots have every right to believe as they do, and who are you to try to deny them that right? To do so is to deny the basic freedoms given to us by natural law. Bigots, of course, do not have a right to act upon their beliefs so as to deny others their rights and restrict their freedoms, no more than you have a right to restrict theirs.

The tipping point here is: What constitutes "behavior"? Are ideas expressed in fact acts as opposed to mere beliefs? It's a sticky point. I want to think that they are not; much case law says that in some significant sense they are. I was taught that in this country we have freedom of speech. I was not taught that the freedom of speech that we are guaranteed by our constitution is limited or that freedom of speech is a relative concept. This is a failure of my education. Black and white-minded teachers (my parents included), as a result of their own poor education and prejudice, failed to instill in me a sense of social, cultural, and physical relativity (and I myself, being autistic, failed to intuit and absorb it from my observations and perceptions of social interaction, as many intelligent and/or educated people do). To this day I must continually guard against falling back into a rigid, didactic, either/or, black-or-white mentality. The world, the universe, is not black and white, but many shades of gray; in fact, throw all of the various hues and tones of color in there too while you're at it.

To be safe, to safely guard our rights and freedoms, as with the presumption of innocence, it is best to err on the side of beliefs. Unless an idea/belief is both overtly an act with concrete, demonstrable, and negative consequences, it should be considered a mere belief and should be exempt from actionable decisions against it. Bigots are people too. And every single person, even the most liberal, accepting, caring one, has within at least a tiny spark of bigotry that, given the right (or wrong) circumstances might grow into a flaming inferno of hatred. It's our right by natural law to feel the way we do, though we must be careful how we act on those feelings, because society itself can be as much of a prejudicial prick as any single human being can. And just as there is safety in numbers, so is their danger for those who are not included among the numbered group.

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digital scam

There was absolutely no reason to switch broadcast tv over to digital except for corporations to make more money. Most people who were either content to receive the lower quality analog signal (i.e., those who chose not to pay for cable) or those who could not afford it were satisfied with broadcast television as it had been. The quality of the picture was not an issue for them. And, as far as the extra bandwidth for each channel goes, nobody's putting any content on it that is not either duplicative or out and out dedicated to full time television sales (infomercials, etc.). And I used to get all local stations. Now, even with an antenna, I get only three.

The switchover to broadcast digital was a total scam of the public by the media conglomerates. All you have to do to verify this is to look at the additional sales the switchover generated: new TV sets (so that converter boxes would not be necessary), antennas (because no one is in a location where they can receive the high quality signal necessary from every station in their area), converter boxes (because no company sold any box for a price anywhere near to the $40 coupon the government issued). The whole deal was a huge corporate con game.

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because they're lips move

I always assume that anyone who wants me to pay them money, for any reason whatsoever, is lying to me. It's better than assuming they are not and end up getting burned.

And I always assume that anything any official corporate or government spokesperson or politician says is a lie. Because, odds are, it is. They'd have little reason to speak otherwise.

Because they all know very well that to speak out is to invite trouble. Never call attention to yourself unless absolutely necessary. And always deny everything you can.

I'd say that the exception to this rule is for advertising purposes, but it's only half an exception: you must speak up to advertise, of course; but most ads inherently lie.

I'm assuming here that exaggeration is a form of lying. If a product or service is as good as they claim it is, they would have no need at all to advertise it. People would know.

And while I'm on the subject of advertising, I don't care how well meaning your organization is or how much I might socially or politically agree with you, if you're going to call me up and leave a message on my machine that goes on and on forever (the last one, today, was over a minute long), at best I'm going to disregard it; or, worse, if I'm in a foul mood, I'm going to refuse to support you altogether or even switch my allegiance to your opponent if their "cause" is anywhere intelligible (because I find myself on the fence about a lot of issues). Stop calling me, assholes! I don't want to hear your messages! My phone is a utility, not your mechanism of mass communication.

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lying bastards

My credit card companies (as well as others, especially Verizon), using the rationale of saving trees via eliminating paper use, prompt me, every time I log into their websites, to change to electronic billing, and yet they continue to mail me paper advertisements for any number of reasons, none of which have anything to do with billing. What's up with this? Are they really interested in saving paper, or what? Verizon is the worst. They send me (coated, the worst form of) paper solicitations to expand my services at least once a week; and I get additional copies of this junk sent to “resident” with the weekly junk mail. They don’t give a frell about saving trees, they're just trying to save money so as to increase profits for their shareholders, disingenuous bastards that they are.

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corporate grifters

People are increasingly recognizing the fact that insurance companies are no longer honest, legitimate companies, that they've slowly ruined whatever little bit of good reputation they had when they began resorting to all kinds of nefarious practices and excuses in order to prevent paying claims so as to increase their profits.

As a consequence, people are opting out of insurance (only the most gullible, socially brainwashed people, those who work for companies that provide it cheaply, or the rich still have it), figuring that the downside is not as bad as getting ripped off would be if and when the insurance company failed to pay off after a legitimate claim was filed.

Therefore, the government has to get involved (spurred on by lobbying, of course) and start mandating that insurance policies be purchased. First, a long time ago, it was house insurance (which, to be fair, banks, not the government, mandated; for good reason); then it was car insurance; and next it's health insurance.

Why do you think that companies increasingly fail to provide insurance to their employees? They recognize it has become a scam business and they don't really want to continue to participate; or, if they feel that their employees will not like it, they require that their employees pay a part of the premium, which has been increasing over time.

Employees, in order to maintain their insurance, must now buy into the scam; and when they do, human psychology dictates that they adopt a belief consistent with their behavior: They're paying for it, therefore they must believe that it's worthwhile. It's classic con game psychology. Once they've got you hooked, you maintain the hold.

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bad company

Last night, Geraldo defended a NY top cop (didn't catch his name), stating that he was a friend and a "good man". The guy was accused and recently convicted of having his home remodeled for less than the going rate, which constituted corruption (bribery?, since the work was done by Mafia-types?) in the eyes of what Geraldo considered to be an overzealous judge.

The "news" piece started with the cop's wife complaining about how her family life has been upset and they have suffered a great deal as a result, as if that had anything to do with anything. "Real" criminals' family lives are equally upset by arrests and convictions. Too bad. It goes with the territory.

Next came Geraldo's defense. His primary points were that other dignitaries (he named one or two of them; again, I didn't catch the names) got much lighter sentences for the same crime and that the prosecutors and especially the judge were overly strict.

Listen, Geraldo. It's right for the judge to be strict, since this is a cop who's supposed to be protecting the public from this kind of nefarious activity. If you want to argue the point, argue the case for the others having gotten off with a wrist slap for being the corrupt assholes they were. You do the crime, you do the time.

And the guy being your friend and a "good man" is irrelevant. Besides, truly good men don't do corruption. If you had argued that he was innocent, that would be a different matter; but, since you didn't, I'm assuming that even you thought he did it. He got what he deserved. And one day so will you. Meanwhile, watch out for those chairs.

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legalizing corruption

The government is supposed to be preventing or at least acting to minimize, corruption, by catching criminals and punishing them, rather than by doing what they're currently doing, legalizing the corruption, which is what in fact the current system of lobbying and the way they "punish" corporations are: bribes to pass legislation that favor interest groups and wrist-slapping companies with fines instead of sending malfeasant executives to jail.

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controlled inflation

Conservative business people claim that they don't want wage and price controls because they see it as a form of socialism and they want a "free market" instead. But they know goddam well that we haven't had a truly free market for nearly a century and that we already have wage and price controls. The fed controls the prices via ill-controlled inflation, manipulating the money supply in the way criticized by the Austrian School model. By this method, business is assured that prices will continue to slowly rise and deflation will seldom if ever occur, and if circumstance get so bad that deflation cannot be prevented, then the government will step in and divert huge blocks of taxpayer money into the business system to make sure that the value of the business inventories does not drop (as with GM and the banks recently); because inflation benefits business and deflation benefits consumers.

And wages are controlled via the INS, which works to insure that a constant supply of lower level workers enter the US every year so that business can hire them at wages that keep the entire wage system as low as possible by making available to employers not only low cost day laborers, temporary workers, and entry level employees, but also shifting the indigenous worker class up one level (or into unemployment; the choice is theirs) where they can pay them less than they normally would have to; and so on up the wage scales, which leaves all that much more room at the top for huge corporate bonuses to high ranking executives.

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