Today is Corporatocracy Day here in America. Black Friday is a day when people run out to buy things that they don't need... made in countries that support poor labor practices... by people making a couple bucks a day... for Multi-National Corporations paying huge bucks to senior management, while sending the jobs of the vary people who buy their products to those countries that are more than willing to allow them to carry out this treason against the United States.
These corporations have done as much, if not more, damage to the United States as any military could. Look at the infrastructure crumbling. It doesn't necessarily take a bomb to destroy property... and the gullible follow right along.
Please watch the clip below. It is from a movie I enjoyed a lot that came out 7 years ago. The movie is Fast Food Nation (2006) and it is adapted from a book entitled Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001). The movie has an All Star cast and though quirky I believe the story is told well.
In this clip, the Bruce Willis character (Harry Rydell) admits to the Greg Kinnear character (Don Anderson) knowing there is fecal matter in the Ground Chuck used to produce the company's top selling burger "The Big One."
How many times do we run across this mindset in our everyday lives. At the end watch as Bruce Willis slaps his belly as if to say, 'I'm full (fat, dumb, and happy). Don't rock the boat Don. I'm on your side until it hits the fan. Then I'll sell you out. Be careful where you tread Donnie Boy.' He doesn't care if people get sick or what effects this could have on the company. All he cares is that today he gets to be fat, dumb, and happy.
This is the mindset that is killing this country.
*** Had to take the video down due to copyright issues.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Happy Thanksgiving - November 28, 2013
How US Picked Date for Thanksgiving - Newsmax.com - Cathy Burke - November 27, 2013 - President George Washington was the first to set an official date for Americans to give thanks, but it took politicians 152 years more to get it right. It wasn't until October 1777 that all 13 colonies celebrated Thanksgiving, but its official commemoration came in 1789, when Washington proclaimed Thursday, Nov. 26 "a day of public thanksgiving and prayer," especially for the chance to form a new nation and its constitution. The timing varied in subsequent years, with other presidents trying to switch things to their own liking. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln set a date for Thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November, and that worked for the next 75 years. In 1939, however, when the last Thursday was also the last day of November, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that was too close to Christmas, so he moved the day of thanks to the second Thursday in November. Thirty-two states followed suit, but 16 others held out, and for the next two years, the United States celebrated Thanksgiving at two different times. Congress stepped in to end the confusion in 1941, passing a joint resolution declaring the last Thursday in November as the legal day for Thanksgiving. The Senate, mindful of the 1939 debacle, amended the resolution to say the fourth Thursday in November, accommodating those years when November has five. Roosevelt signed the bill into law on Dec. 26, 1941.
George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation - October 3, 1789
Abraham Lincoln, father of the Thanksgiving holiday - USA Today - David Jackson - November 26, 2013
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving - Wikipedia - This was a tradition when I was a kid.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - Wikipedia - was another Thanksgiving tradition.
George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation - October 3, 1789
Abraham Lincoln, father of the Thanksgiving holiday - USA Today - David Jackson - November 26, 2013
Thanksgiving Prayer
For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving - Wikipedia - This was a tradition when I was a kid.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - Wikipedia - was another Thanksgiving tradition.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
The Health Care Fiasco on a personal level
Three years ago I went to a Catawba County Chamber of Commerce event about the upcoming "Affordable Care Act". It was more than obvious that people like myself weren't even an afterthought when it came to all of this so called reform. We don't even register.This has never been about affordability. That was a bait and switch for the gullible.
I work in the restaurant business. No owners of such small businesses can afford to furnish health care to their workers. They would have to raise prices by 33 to 50% and people already complain about prices as it is.
When I worked at one of the local Clubs at the turn of the 2000s, we were given full Blue Cross Blue Shield coverage, but that all ended after 9/11 when everyone's premiums spiked. So we started paying around 25% of our premium as I recall and dropped a tier in our coverage.
After a couple of years, I decided I wanted to go back to work for my aunt and so I was going to have to get a personal policy. Basically if you work in a small business you are a contract employee without a contract here in North Carolina. Labor laws are a one way street here. My Insurance premium was $107 per month with a $1,000 deductible in 2003.
I am a chef by trade and so I have stayed in the restaurant business and I am pretty much locked into this area because I bought a house back in 2005. The premium amounts on my health insurance have gone up by double digits every year and so to keep it affordable, I eventually had to have the deductible raised to $2,500 and then to $3,500 -- I also have higher out of pocket expenses.
In 2010, my premium had risen to $210/month and that is when I changed the deductible to $3,500. That lowered my premium/month to $138/month for 2011, but the 2012 premium rose to $161/month, and in 2013 I have been paying $181/month. I pay that in after tax dollars, although I do get to take it off my taxes, which probably gets me back about a month's premium. I don't consider putting out over 10% of my income on a product I can't afford to use as being affordable.
Having a degree in finance and twice passing the State Health Insurance Licensing test, I know a thing or two about the Ponzi Scheme/Multi-level Marketing scheme that is the Insurance industry. The Insurance industry is one of the main culprits in this mess. Their lobbyists had major input on writing this legislation. You can thank our bought and paid for legislators, on both sides of the aisle, for the mess we find ourselves in today. They took the money, but of course they don't think they should take any blame.
On September 30, 2013 I received a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield in the mail informing me that if I wanted to keep my current policy I could. Oh how fortunate you must think I am after hearing about people losing their current policies. Well I could keep my current policy at.?.?.?.......... $424 per month. Oh, but I could get subsidies... whoopee, everything's gonna be alright. If I'd only pay over $5,000 up front, then they'd send me around $3,500 back with my taxes in **2015**. These people are freaking nuts. Does any of this even make sense?
Now, I received a letter in the mail today informing me, "We understand what you are facing. Now, you can keep your current plan."
What is even funnier is that I had planned on taking care of this today and making a decision whether or not I was going to have health insurance. This has been seeping around in the back of my mind for a couple of months and I didn't want to wait until the very last minute. Well that isn't happening, because when I went to the BCBS website it is under maintenance and says it won't be up until the beginning of December. I will have until December 15 to decide what I want to do.
Where was this understanding a couple months ago when these idiots had to have known that there weren't just glitches, that this is a wholesale fiasco with dead end stops and people's health will truly be in peril as a result of all of this. They took a system of bureaucratic red tape and coated it with super glue.
I'm to the point where I'm most likely going to do without insurance next year. I'm not going to participate in their convolutions. I saw where the "Exchange" policy for me would be $295 per month. I pay that up front and they reimburse me on the backside -- or will that be in the backside bwahahaha! I ain't doing that. I'll just have to gamble and not go to the doctor. Frankly, I think we should all walk away from the system. We need to break these people, because they evidently don't care if they break us. No good businessman treats their customer like this!
And for you Republicans running around peeing in your pants with glee, the status quo isn't working either. If this fiasco were to be repealed, you have offered nothing that will help working class Americans. Health savings accounts do nothing for people like me. Nothing has been done to curtail costs and help with affordability, which businesses can't afford and doesn't allow them to compete against your globalist corporate buddies. Premium costs are going to keep escalating out of site just as they have.
Thank You, but no Thank You for all of this.
I work in the restaurant business. No owners of such small businesses can afford to furnish health care to their workers. They would have to raise prices by 33 to 50% and people already complain about prices as it is.
When I worked at one of the local Clubs at the turn of the 2000s, we were given full Blue Cross Blue Shield coverage, but that all ended after 9/11 when everyone's premiums spiked. So we started paying around 25% of our premium as I recall and dropped a tier in our coverage.
After a couple of years, I decided I wanted to go back to work for my aunt and so I was going to have to get a personal policy. Basically if you work in a small business you are a contract employee without a contract here in North Carolina. Labor laws are a one way street here. My Insurance premium was $107 per month with a $1,000 deductible in 2003.
I am a chef by trade and so I have stayed in the restaurant business and I am pretty much locked into this area because I bought a house back in 2005. The premium amounts on my health insurance have gone up by double digits every year and so to keep it affordable, I eventually had to have the deductible raised to $2,500 and then to $3,500 -- I also have higher out of pocket expenses.
In 2010, my premium had risen to $210/month and that is when I changed the deductible to $3,500. That lowered my premium/month to $138/month for 2011, but the 2012 premium rose to $161/month, and in 2013 I have been paying $181/month. I pay that in after tax dollars, although I do get to take it off my taxes, which probably gets me back about a month's premium. I don't consider putting out over 10% of my income on a product I can't afford to use as being affordable.
Having a degree in finance and twice passing the State Health Insurance Licensing test, I know a thing or two about the Ponzi Scheme/Multi-level Marketing scheme that is the Insurance industry. The Insurance industry is one of the main culprits in this mess. Their lobbyists had major input on writing this legislation. You can thank our bought and paid for legislators, on both sides of the aisle, for the mess we find ourselves in today. They took the money, but of course they don't think they should take any blame.
On September 30, 2013 I received a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield in the mail informing me that if I wanted to keep my current policy I could. Oh how fortunate you must think I am after hearing about people losing their current policies. Well I could keep my current policy at.?.?.?.......... $424 per month. Oh, but I could get subsidies... whoopee, everything's gonna be alright. If I'd only pay over $5,000 up front, then they'd send me around $3,500 back with my taxes in **2015**. These people are freaking nuts. Does any of this even make sense?
Now, I received a letter in the mail today informing me, "We understand what you are facing. Now, you can keep your current plan."
What is even funnier is that I had planned on taking care of this today and making a decision whether or not I was going to have health insurance. This has been seeping around in the back of my mind for a couple of months and I didn't want to wait until the very last minute. Well that isn't happening, because when I went to the BCBS website it is under maintenance and says it won't be up until the beginning of December. I will have until December 15 to decide what I want to do.
Where was this understanding a couple months ago when these idiots had to have known that there weren't just glitches, that this is a wholesale fiasco with dead end stops and people's health will truly be in peril as a result of all of this. They took a system of bureaucratic red tape and coated it with super glue.
I'm to the point where I'm most likely going to do without insurance next year. I'm not going to participate in their convolutions. I saw where the "Exchange" policy for me would be $295 per month. I pay that up front and they reimburse me on the backside -- or will that be in the backside bwahahaha! I ain't doing that. I'll just have to gamble and not go to the doctor. Frankly, I think we should all walk away from the system. We need to break these people, because they evidently don't care if they break us. No good businessman treats their customer like this!
And for you Republicans running around peeing in your pants with glee, the status quo isn't working either. If this fiasco were to be repealed, you have offered nothing that will help working class Americans. Health savings accounts do nothing for people like me. Nothing has been done to curtail costs and help with affordability, which businesses can't afford and doesn't allow them to compete against your globalist corporate buddies. Premium costs are going to keep escalating out of site just as they have.
Thank You, but no Thank You for all of this.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Crony Socialism is destroying our society
(from Wikipedia) Crony capitalism is a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, or other forms of dirigisme.[1] Crony capitalism is believed to arise when political cronyism spills over into the business world; self-serving friendships and family ties between businessmen and the government influence the economy and society to the extent that it corrupts public-serving economic and political ideals... In many cases, the term is used interchangeably with corporate welfare.
You who support "'friendship' capitalism" are giving critics of capitalism, including socialists and other anti-capitalists, the ammunition that they need to help destroy the free market. You cannot sustain manipulating supply and demand economics. Everything will eventually come back to equilibrium. It will happen outside of existing market dynamics and past history shows that this is what happens. It happened in the Soviet Union with black markets, when people didn't want to wait in lines to get rationed essentials. It happened during the Nixon administration when they tried to institute price and wage controls and inflation started spinning out of control. It is happening now with the gyrations of the housing market and most commodities as the "Too Big to Fail" Banks have been given trillions for virtually free to invest and manipulate markets and are causing our economy to fail.
There are these people in our American society that sit on the fringe of the Republican party who are very intolerant of others. They want to fight everyone and everything. They don't want to personally fight. They seek to have vulnerable people do their fighting. They aren't going to negotiate and build a consensus about anything. They seem to believe that they are 100% in the right and somehow moderating their position to try to move issues forward is always deemed to be a taboo "Compromising of Principles".
At the same time these self described "Patriots" complain about the cultural division in society, they go right along with creating these labels. Real Patriots don't beat their chest. They act. These simplistic labels play right along with those who want to divide and conquer our society. These people are the ones who want to label any Democrat as a socialist. Of course that kind of rhetoric is non-constructive and keeps anything political from moving forward. They are so blinded by their prejudice that they fail to recognize that there is socialism on both sides of the political spectrum.
The leftist socialist paradigm is communism. The rightist socialist paradigm is fascism. The Communist ideal focuses socialism upon the worker, while the Fascist ideal focuses a social agenda upon Consolidated Corporate structures being controlled by and through the governmental structure. In a Fascist system, those who control the corporations control the government. A government of, by, and for the corporations.
Communism doesn't work for the same reason that Pure Democracy doesn't work. There has to be some form of representation of the people (workers) and that leads to power structures, so then the reality becomes about those in the power structure and not the workers. Those on the extreme right dismiss any of the marriage between the State and Corporations as just good business and they allow it to run a muck through their perverted ideal of laissez faire economics, which is not, never has been and never will be the reality.
I believe in the free market (free enterprise), but there cannot be a free market without rules. The rules have to be instituted and obeyed by everyone. This might seem to be conflicting, because any rule making/enforcing organization is governmental by nature and the ideal free market system has as few rules as possible. Rules need to be as simple as possible and wholly enforced. We need to be as Libertarian as possible, while understanding that rules and justice ensure trust.
What we see now is a completely convoluted system of rules that are arbitrarily enforced. There is a lack of trust in our economic structure. We have become a nation where "the elite" take precedence over the law. Those in power have created barriers to entry through this complexity of regulations that keep start-up entrepreneurs from entering the system. This is the reason we have seen a stifling of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. These Corporate socialists want to limit competition and filter everything through their system of control. This is what keeps them in power and the rest of us under their thumbs.
If we are to move forward there has to be a leveling of the playing field. We are operating in a culture of corruption. If we don't immediately institute rules to bring back a system based upon merit, then we are going to see a complete economic collapse. Look! the signs of this implosion are all around you.
You who support "'friendship' capitalism" are giving critics of capitalism, including socialists and other anti-capitalists, the ammunition that they need to help destroy the free market. You cannot sustain manipulating supply and demand economics. Everything will eventually come back to equilibrium. It will happen outside of existing market dynamics and past history shows that this is what happens. It happened in the Soviet Union with black markets, when people didn't want to wait in lines to get rationed essentials. It happened during the Nixon administration when they tried to institute price and wage controls and inflation started spinning out of control. It is happening now with the gyrations of the housing market and most commodities as the "Too Big to Fail" Banks have been given trillions for virtually free to invest and manipulate markets and are causing our economy to fail.
There are these people in our American society that sit on the fringe of the Republican party who are very intolerant of others. They want to fight everyone and everything. They don't want to personally fight. They seek to have vulnerable people do their fighting. They aren't going to negotiate and build a consensus about anything. They seem to believe that they are 100% in the right and somehow moderating their position to try to move issues forward is always deemed to be a taboo "Compromising of Principles".
At the same time these self described "Patriots" complain about the cultural division in society, they go right along with creating these labels. Real Patriots don't beat their chest. They act. These simplistic labels play right along with those who want to divide and conquer our society. These people are the ones who want to label any Democrat as a socialist. Of course that kind of rhetoric is non-constructive and keeps anything political from moving forward. They are so blinded by their prejudice that they fail to recognize that there is socialism on both sides of the political spectrum.
The leftist socialist paradigm is communism. The rightist socialist paradigm is fascism. The Communist ideal focuses socialism upon the worker, while the Fascist ideal focuses a social agenda upon Consolidated Corporate structures being controlled by and through the governmental structure. In a Fascist system, those who control the corporations control the government. A government of, by, and for the corporations.
Communism doesn't work for the same reason that Pure Democracy doesn't work. There has to be some form of representation of the people (workers) and that leads to power structures, so then the reality becomes about those in the power structure and not the workers. Those on the extreme right dismiss any of the marriage between the State and Corporations as just good business and they allow it to run a muck through their perverted ideal of laissez faire economics, which is not, never has been and never will be the reality.
I believe in the free market (free enterprise), but there cannot be a free market without rules. The rules have to be instituted and obeyed by everyone. This might seem to be conflicting, because any rule making/enforcing organization is governmental by nature and the ideal free market system has as few rules as possible. Rules need to be as simple as possible and wholly enforced. We need to be as Libertarian as possible, while understanding that rules and justice ensure trust.
What we see now is a completely convoluted system of rules that are arbitrarily enforced. There is a lack of trust in our economic structure. We have become a nation where "the elite" take precedence over the law. Those in power have created barriers to entry through this complexity of regulations that keep start-up entrepreneurs from entering the system. This is the reason we have seen a stifling of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. These Corporate socialists want to limit competition and filter everything through their system of control. This is what keeps them in power and the rest of us under their thumbs.
If we are to move forward there has to be a leveling of the playing field. We are operating in a culture of corruption. If we don't immediately institute rules to bring back a system based upon merit, then we are going to see a complete economic collapse. Look! the signs of this implosion are all around you.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Economic Stories of Relevance in Today's World -- November 24, 2013
Fake Employment Numbers – And 5 More Massive Economic Lies The Government Is Telling You - The Economic Collapse Blog - Michael Snyder - November 19th, 2013 - According to a whistleblower that has recently come forward, Census employees have been faking and manipulating U.S. employment numbers for years. In fact, it is being alleged that this manipulation was a significant reason for why the official unemployment rate dipped sharply just before the last presidential election. What you are about to read is incredibly disturbing. The numbers that the American people depend upon to make important decisions are being faked. But should we be surprised by this? After all, Barack Obama has been caught telling dozens of major lies over the past five years. At this point it is incredible that there are any Americans that still trust anything that comes out of his mouth. And of course it is not just Obama that has been lying to us. Corruption and deception are rampant throughout the entire federal government, and this has been the case for years. Now that some light is being shed on this, hopefully the American people will respond with overwhelming outrage and disgust. The whistleblower that I mentioned above has been speaking to John Crudele of the New York Post. In his new article entitled "Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report", he says that the huge decline in the unemployment rate in September 2012 was "manipulated"...
“This Is Really A Symbol Of What’s Going On In This Whole Country. We’re Losing Middle-Class Jobs” - Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden's - November 21, 2013 - We wish we could say we didn't warn Boeing's machinists about the key trend taking place in the US economy under the Obama "recovery" but unfortunately we did. Three years ago, to be specific, when we wrote: "Charting America's Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society" and followed it up with "A "Quality Assessment" Of US Jobs Reveals The Ugliest Picture Yet" in which we explained that while the propaganda machine was fixated on numeric, quantitative, job additions every month, what has subversively going on, was the constant deterioration in the quality of jobs - and specifically the declining wages - available to those Americans who had not rotated outside of the labor force permanently (currently at a record 91.5 million). We say "alas" because it once again took several years before our cautions to be felt by the broader population, in this case the Boeing machinist union struggling to extract a wage increase from its employer: Boeing, whose stock keeps hitting new record highs with every passing day. The machinists' lament is well-known to virtually everyone who relies on labor instead of capital to exist: pay us more. Bloomberg reports:
Not a genuine housing market recovery - Fox News - David Stockman - Neil Cavuto - November 18, 2013
The Race to the Bottom - The Hickory Hound - April 29, 2010
Rand Paul: Janet Yellen 'Will Be a Disaster for the Economy' - November 24, 2013
“This Is Really A Symbol Of What’s Going On In This Whole Country. We’re Losing Middle-Class Jobs” - Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden's - November 21, 2013 - We wish we could say we didn't warn Boeing's machinists about the key trend taking place in the US economy under the Obama "recovery" but unfortunately we did. Three years ago, to be specific, when we wrote: "Charting America's Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society" and followed it up with "A "Quality Assessment" Of US Jobs Reveals The Ugliest Picture Yet" in which we explained that while the propaganda machine was fixated on numeric, quantitative, job additions every month, what has subversively going on, was the constant deterioration in the quality of jobs - and specifically the declining wages - available to those Americans who had not rotated outside of the labor force permanently (currently at a record 91.5 million). We say "alas" because it once again took several years before our cautions to be felt by the broader population, in this case the Boeing machinist union struggling to extract a wage increase from its employer: Boeing, whose stock keeps hitting new record highs with every passing day. The machinists' lament is well-known to virtually everyone who relies on labor instead of capital to exist: pay us more. Bloomberg reports:
That's ironic: when we said it first three years ago, the mainstream media mocked it. Curious how things change when that hope you once believed in becomes a "zero balance" nightmare at the ATM machine, eh? Blame it on the Fed, blame it on globalization, blame it on corporations who have a virtually unlimited labor, cheap and global pool to pick from, but the bottom line is US workers have zero leverage.“We need to focus on how many jobs there are that give an adult a chance to earn a decent living,” said Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center in Eugene. “Too much of the discussion has been about the number of jobs, and that’s obviously important, but there’s also a crisis in the quality of jobs.”
Not a genuine housing market recovery - Fox News - David Stockman - Neil Cavuto - November 18, 2013
The Race to the Bottom - The Hickory Hound - April 29, 2010
Rand Paul: Janet Yellen 'Will Be a Disaster for the Economy' - November 24, 2013
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