Saturday, August 28, 2010

Glenn Beck, Demagodgue

Glenn Beck appears to be rolling along that familiar road of Mistaking Himself for God.  This is dismaying, but not surprising.

I don't think that he and St. Sarah Save Us and their 'truthiness' blinkered minions exalting WAR and the nobility of sending American children off to be killa kannon fodda (because the plutocracy leaves them few other employment choices, Because Lazy American Natives Just Won't DOOOOOOOOO the Jobs Imported and Overseas Foreigners Will Do, doncha know) are exactly the Abomination of Desolation in the Holy of Holies, standing where Martin Luther King stood before the idol of bloody Lincoln, but the hordes of pseudo-Christians lapping up their poison 'tea' ought to look in their Bibles and note that the Antichrist was first called 'the god of (military) Forces!!  

Michael Jackson's Kids: WRONG SCHOOL

The late KOP's two older children, formerly homeschooled and (until their father's arena public-funeral) hyper-sheltered, are now going to a campus school for the first time, at the exquisitely vulnerable age of beginning-teen.  Where?  (Showing that elite and expensive by no means has to mean protective) THE BUCKLEY SCHOOL of Sherman Oaks, California.  The Buckley School's greatest claim to fame:  Turning out ENTITLISTA COKE WHORES.  Maybe A&E will pay their fee, an Investment in the Future of exploiting the screwed-up lives of celebrity offspring in splattery 'reality' TV.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

'LAST COMBAT TROOPS' (?) withdrawing, they say...

What should be a colossal hooray and halleluJah remains fizzly in that we're LEAVING troops there in the same character and operational stance as we first entered in Vietnam.  Arrgh. WE'LL SEE.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Water bond reveals swine in museum's clothing

naturalareafan excellently reported in blessed blog Relief from the Concrete:~:~:~:~:~


The yearlong debate surrounding the $11 billion water bond shined a bright light on what government officials like to call "water education facilities" -- a category that includes the proposed San Gabriel River Discovery Center.

What did that light reveal? That such projects are little more than government pork.

Democratic legislators, Republican legislators, political observers -- people from across the spectrum pointed out that these projects are the superfluous, costly ingredients intended to do nothing more than sweeten the deal to build political support for legislation.

But don't take my word for it:

The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 10, 2010:

"Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) criticized the bond for including money for economic development projects, a water taxi service at Lake Tahoe and the construction of water education centers, saying that spending is not directly related to improving water quality.

"'It is fiscally irresponsible,' Wolk said. 'We need to repeal it, revise it and refocus it on the true needs of California.'"

The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 18, 2009:

"The bond proposal includes funding for bike paths, museums, visitor centers, tree planting, economic development and the purchase of property from land speculators and oil companies -- all in the districts of lawmakers whose key votes helped it pass the Legislature.

"'It's unfortunate that so many pet projects were put in that it has just created a Christmas tree out of this bond, and most of them don't produce one drop of water,' said Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater), who voted against the measure when it cleared the Legislature this month."

The Los Angeles Times' George Skelton, Aug. 19, 2009:

"No matter how clever and careful the writer, on occasion a work should be ripped up and retooled. That also goes for writers of legislation.

"A prime example: Sacramento's new state water bond proposal. Granted, this bloated $11.1-billion bond is laced with humor: A waterworks package that provides borrowed money -- at twice the ticket price, counting interest -- for building bike trails, buying open space and developing 'watershed education centers.'

"OK, it is not funny," Skelton writes. "It's politics. It's pork."

Skelton's right: It's not funny.

And the proposed Discovery Center is so not-funny -- government officials ignoring the will of the people, attempting to build a project that destroys what it supposedly is intended to interpret, lashing the taxpayer to a project that promises to waste tens of millions of dollars -- that you have to laugh to keep from crying.

To my mind, one of the least funny aspects is that while the county, the state and the two water districts behind the project are raising taxes and water rates, all while slashing budgets and services for things people actually need and use, the Discovery Center Authority would have us believe that a water museum and meeting hall is something other than the multimillion-dollar government boondoggle it so obviously is.

It's not funny. It's just sad.

Tea Party SCHIZ

Here's a post EPStolarion sent as commentary to an article on the growing prevalence of 'Tea Party' enthusiasts accusing each other of 'misrepresenting the brand.  She makes the under-commented-upon point that the Tea Party - and indeed, other parties - don't really have a coherent brand, dispite being 'branded' by their enemies! :~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

It's not at all surprising that the Tea Party is now being stirred by open accusations of imposters, dissemblers and hollow opportunists. It has always been thus with every political party, from the 'leading lights' on down.


This has been more obvious from the start with the Tea Party than with most other American political movements, recalling the wildly disparate swellings against draconian rule (made by ruthless controllers) of rather simple-minded monarchs in 1790s France and WWI Russia.

Of course, all attempts at e pluribus unum make strange bedfellows, but the oil and water of the Tea Party seems to be, on one side: Conspiracy theorists who loathe all ruling elites, wars, warmongers, financiers, demagogues and Globalists; utterly and equally distrust 'our Two Parties' as fused fingers of an international Establishment / World Corporate State,,, And all politicians! On the other side are those who all too often seem as given to pseudo-epiphanies of 'truthiness', Sarahdolatry and zombie dittoheadedness toward proselytizers of Chaneyesque Military-Industrial hive-being orthodoxy as the Party's mockers caricaturize them.

Yet both elements may be 'Fortress America', or separatist-ish, or of antique tradition, or other things which make them bond, without being inclined to militancy, plots, bigotry, or any other Handmaid's Tale-like dread vision of their attackers.

Those in the Tea Party now might more logically drift into other or new parties better suited to their differences, but, for the time being, their growing power is not just (disgruntled swarms of heritage-minded Americans) pouring into it to swim in the cup of wrath, but by HAVING VALID POINTS hardly expressed elsewhere!

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Goodbye, American Citizens

 Here's a super article from Michael Lind at Salon.com :

http://www.salon.com/news/us_economy/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/07/27/american_people_obsolete

Are the American people obsolete?



The richest few don't need the rest of us as markets, soldiers or police anymore. Maybe we should all emigrate

Have the American people outlived their usefulness to the rich minority in the United States? A number of trends suggest that the answer may be yes.


In every industrial democracy since the end of World War II, there has been a social contract between the few and the many. In return for receiving a disproportionate amount of the gains from economic growth in a capitalist economy, the rich paid a disproportionate percentage of the taxes needed for public goods and a safety net for the majority.

In North America and Europe, the economic elite agreed to this bargain because they needed ordinary people as consumers and soldiers. Without mass consumption, the factories in which the rich invested would grind to a halt. Without universal conscription in the world wars, and selective conscription during the Cold War, the U.S. and its allies might have failed to defeat totalitarian empires that would have created a world order hostile to a market economy.

Globalization has eliminated the first reason for the rich to continue supporting this bargain at the nation-state level, while the privatization of the military threatens the other rationale.

The offshoring of industrial production means that many American investors and corporate managers no longer need an American workforce in order to prosper. They can enjoy their stream of profits from factories in China while shutting down factories in the U.S. And if Chinese workers have the impertinence to demand higher wages, American corporations can find low-wage labor in other countries.

What about markets? Many U.S. multinationals that have transferred production to other countries continue to depend on an American mass market. But that, too, may be changing. American consumers are tapped out, and as long as they are paying down their debts from the bubble years, private household demand for goods and services will grow slowly at best in the United States. In the long run, the fastest-growing consumer markets, like the fastest-growing labor markets, may be found in China, India and other developing countries.


This, too, marks a dramatic change. As bad as they were, the robber barons depended on the continental U.S. market for their incomes. The financier J.P. Morgan was not so much an international banker as a kind of industrial capitalist, organizing American industrial corporations that depended on predominantly domestic markets. He didn't make most of his money from investing in other countries.

In contrast, many of the highest-paid individuals on Wall Street have grown rich through activities that have little or no connection with the American economy. They can flourish even if the U.S. declines, as long as they can tap into growth in other regions of the world.

Thanks to deindustrialization, which is caused both by productivity growth and by corporate offshoring, the overwhelming majority of Americans now work in the non-traded domestic service sector. The jobs that have the greatest growth in numbers are concentrated in sectors like medical care and childcare.

Even here, the rich have options other than hiring American citizens. Wealthy liberals and wealthy conservatives agree on one thing: the need for more unskilled immigration to the U.S. This is hardly surprising, as the rich are far more dependent on immigrant servants than middle-class and working-class Americans are.

The late Patricia Buckley, the socialite wife of the late William F. Buckley Jr., once told me, "One simply can't live in Manhattan without at least three servants -- a cook and at least two maids." She had a British cook and Spanish-speaking maids. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently revealed the plutocratic perspective on immigration when he defended illegal immigration by asking, "Who takes care of the greens and the fairways in your golf course?"

The point is that, just as much of America's elite is willing to shut down every factory in the country if it is possible to open cheaper factories in countries like China, so much of the American ruling class would prefer not to hire their fellow Americans, even for jobs done on American soil, if less expensive and more deferential foreign nationals with fewer legal rights can be imported. Small wonder that proposals for "guest worker" programs are so popular in the U.S. establishment. Foreign "guest workers" laboring on American soil like H1Bs and H2Bs -- those with non-immigrant visas allowing technical or non-agriculture seasonal workers to be employed in the U.S. -- are latter-day coolies who do not have the right to vote.

If much of America's investor class no longer needs Americans either as workers or consumers, elite Americans might still depend on ordinary Americans to protect them, by serving in the military or police forces. Increasingly, however, America's professional army is being supplemented by contractors -- that is, mercenaries. And the elite press periodically publishes proposals to sell citizenship to foreigners who serve as soldiers in an American Foreign Legion. It is probably only a matter of time before some earnest pundit proposes to replace American police officers with foreign guest-worker mercenaries as well.

Offshoring and immigration, then, are severing the link between the fate of most Americans and the fate of the American rich. A member of the elite can make money from factories in China that sell to consumers in India, while relying entirely or almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country. With a foreign workforce for the corporations policed by brutal autocracies and non-voting immigrant servants in the U.S., the only thing missing is a non-voting immigrant mercenary army, whose legions can be deployed in foreign wars without creating grieving parents, widows and children who vote in American elections.

If the American rich increasingly do not depend for their wealth on American workers and American consumers or for their safety on American soldiers or police officers, then it is hardly surprising that so many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the American people. The rich don't need the rest anymore.

To be sure, wealthy humanitarians might take pity on their economically obsolescent fellow citizens. But they no longer have any personal economic incentive to do so. Besides, philanthropists may be inclined to devote most of their charity to the desperate and destitute of other countries rather than to their fellow Americans.

If most Americans are no longer needed by the American rich, then perhaps the United States should consider a policy adopted by the aristocracies and oligarchies of many countries with surplus populations in the past: the promotion of emigration. The rich might consent to a one-time tax to bribe middle-class and working-class Americans into departing the U.S. for other lands, and bribing foreign countries to accept them, in order to be alleviated from a high tax burden in the long run.

Where would a few hundred million ex-Americans go? The answer is obvious: to the emerging markets where the work and investment are found. That will show all those American union members who complain that their jobs have been outsourced to China. Let them move to China themselves and compete, instead of complaining!

Needless to say, the Chinese and Indians might resist the idea of an influx of vast numbers of downwardly mobile North American workers. But like American capitalists, Chinese and Indian capitalists might learn that ethnic diversity impedes unionization, while the mass immigration of North Americans to East and South Asia would keep wages in those regions competitively low for another few decades at least.

Once emptied of superfluous citizens, the U.S. could become a kind of giant Aspen for the small population of the super-rich and their non-voting immigrant retainers. Many environmentalists might approve of the depopulation of North America, because sprawling suburbs would soon be reclaimed by the wilderness. And deficit hawks would be pleased as well. The middle-class masses dependent on Social Security and Medicare would have departed the country, leaving only the self-sufficient rich and foreign guest workers without any benefits, other than the charity of their employers.

Of course there are alternative options, which would not require the departure of most Americans from America for new lives on distant shores. One would be a new social contract, in which the American people, through representatives whom they actually control, would ordain that American corporations are chartered to create jobs in the U.S. for American workers, and if that does not interest their shareholders and managers then they can do without legal privileges granted by the sovereign people, like limited liability.

The American people also could put a stop to any thought of an American Foreign Legion and declare, through their representatives, that a nation of citizen-workers will be protected by citizen-soldiers, whether professionals or, in emergencies, conscripts. The American people, in other words, could insist that the United States will be a democratic republican nation-state, not a post-national rentier oligarchy.

But restoring democratic nationalism in the U.S. would inconvenience America's affluent minority. So instead of making trouble, maybe most Americans should just find a new continent to call home.

This marks a historic change in the relationship between capital and labor in the U.S. The robber barons of the late 19th century generally lived near the American working class and could be threatened by strikes and frightened by the prospect of revolution. But rioting Chinese workers are not going to burn down New York City or march on the Hamptons.

~~~~~~~

And see this:
http://thedustininmansociety.org/no_more_deaths/no_more_deaths.html
Which has a long hyperlinked list of persons of all races and very many national /ethnic backgrounds who have been killed by illegal aliens in the USA.  As they say: 'Note: We are aware of many more deaths caused by illegal aliens in our nation, but have only listed the names for which we can provide a news story that mentions the immigration status of the individual charged.' And: 'We remind the reader that illegal immigration is a crime, as it is to employ, encourage or assist an illegal alien. Read USC Title 8, section 1324 for more information.' ('USC' = 'United States Code'.  Go to the Dustin Inman Society page linked above, and there will be a link to that code section via Cornell Law.)  The page also has other pertinent information and other links, such as:  www.ImmigrationsHumanCost.org/text/crimevictims.html 




 




Monday, August 2, 2010

DON'T GIVE UP THE PET!!!!!!!

Here is a heartbreaking story of frustration and danger for goodhearted innocents in the face of 'DOGged' bureaucratic perversity and stupidity:
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/articles/savingbuddyspcadog.htm

Today, in wantonly deceptive euphemism, what was once called 'the pound' (as a place of empoundment - this in itself is a euphemism, as in fact it means jail/prison/killing station, with the pathetic but unhelpful nuance that those interned are innocent of crime by human standards, and are often both totally inoffensive and themselves the victims of crime [or what ought to be crime; yea, to some of us, crimes that should bring the death penalty upon the cruel perpetrators]), is now called a 'shelter'.  You get your licences there, and it's the first place to call if your animal - tagged, tatooed, chipped, or give 'em a discription & pray for the best - goes missing.  ...Or your weirdo neighbor's Burmese python, chimp, aquatic monster, or Baskerville hound is loose, or Something Looks Rabid, or something really BIG, like a horse/bear/deer/cow/cougar is wild in the streets, or there's a real emergency that a 'LOW kill shelter', the Fish & Wildlife Service, the zoo, or something better can't take care of in time (though the pound may just call, or have you call, the police, who tend to handle such things with very little patience and a strong tendency for  an ironclad Final Solution).

Woeful to have to accede to the fact that PETA 'shelters' may be the 'killingest' of them all, and that PETA higher-ups seem largely to be anti-pet: The phrase 'animal rights' has been largely perverted and co-opted by hidden-agenda, black-prop cranks who say domestic animals are all slaves - and of course, our favorite carnivores, along with us naughty non-vegans, eat other domestic animals, and maybe even kill rats and snakes and cucarachas who are, by the standards of those self-proclaimed liberators, 'purer' and more 'natural' even if they're Dangerous Invasive (dare we still say?!? =ahem=) Aliens, on account of being 'wild'. 

Next, articles like that linked above, unfortunately and historically, have hardly been unique.  Shows like Animal Cops, rightly memorializing the heroic efforts of the best of the SPCA and Humane Societies, give the impression that all such shelters may be so trusted.  Not so.  Whatever it is, check it out as carefully as you can.

And MOST OF ALL, study to be a good caretaker of an animal before you take charge of one, and don't give up on them!!!