Category Archives: Culture and Politics

Our Constitution’s most obvious rights

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There is no right more clearly defined in our Constitution than the right for each citizen to vote and to have that vote count. It is plain in the language and woven with every thread through every clause in the document and its amendments.

Moreover, as clearly defined and as thoroughly woven is the requirement of one vote for one citizen.

Strip out these two principles and the Constitution is shredded paper, meaningless and valueless.

Clearly then, the primary responsibility of our Federal Government and our Supreme Court must be to battle for these two principles. They must guarantee one citizen, one vote, and whatever steps must be taken to ensure these is therefore the duty of the Federal system.

What rational claim can be made by the Court that any citizen of any state has no standing when another state’s actions destroy the value of a vote outside that offending state’s border? What is the recourse when some states wage war against these principles in any election, and most especially and undeniably, in an election that concerns representation to the Federal Government?

The fraudulent methods employed by the Democrats in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and other states have made our votes worthless.  I have, and many have, seen evidence, even if the Supreme Court wears blinders. Even if the evidence did not exist, ballot methods that can violate these two key principles, that citizens vote and each vote counts, must be corrected by Federal action. In this case, that action should have come from our Supreme Court.

The claim by the Court that citizens from other states, because of state borders, have no standing in this matter is ridiculous, implausible, and unconscionable.

A crime in another state has affected me. What can be more Federal than that?

Yet, do not look to us, says our Supreme Court.

Such dereliction by the Court and the abdication of the responsibility, dumping it willy-nilly to criminal states, can and seemingly has resulted in the negation of the will and votes of tens of millions of Americans in all states.

With no fair vote, we have been robbed and made slaves.

So who now protects our rights? If not the Supreme Court, if not the Federal Government, then who?

It is a simple answer:  We do. You and me. All of us.

Just as it always has been.

J.D.Richter  —  Thestirredpot

 

 

Where the real monsters are

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In January of 2019, Elizabeth Goitein, in an article in the Atlantic magazine, did her best to paint President Trump as a monster posed to invoke emergency powers which would include locking people out of the Internet, instituting massive voter fraud, and controlling the news media.

As of yet, December 2020, she has not explained why President Trump has done none of these things or why her liberal loves have done them all. And I don’t suppose she will.

But she did make one salient point–and made it many times to the point of monotony. President Trump has broad emergency powers. He could have forced Facebook, Twitter and the media to allow the truth to be told. Yet he did not. That he has not yet evoked them seems to be the most damning indictment of Goitein’s arguments. President Trump has had many justifications, all of them valid, to force the media liars and political criminals to tell at least part of the truth.

Yet he did not act. I think he should have. Perhaps he wanted to and could not? It is possible that there are too many corrupted bureaucrats for him to make such an order stick. I have read reports in the last couple days of corrupt USPS officials, corrupt FBI agents, and corrupt judges. All are reports that I can confirm or at the least satisfy me that they are credible. At the same time, most of the major news outlets refuse to report on anything that faults the Democrats and will create any story that damns the President. All of them seem to think this is right and natural.

It is sad to think that we have become a third-world country where the government and media serve only select people, in this case, a select party. Yet, there it is. And we had best confront this reality.

I believe that if President Trump does not use his emergency powers act to save our Republic, or is not able to because of government corruption, Joe Biden will assassinate our country as soon as he can manufacture the excuse. We will have had our last fair election in 2016. And it will be the last one this country ever has.

It is up to use to demonstrate to the President that we support him. You can do so with phone calls and letters, and when the time comes, as it will soon, show how him with our bodies in the streets.

*****

Organize where the censors cannot stop you. When you march, talk to your police. Most of them feel as you do. They are sick of the criminals in high places. Do not expect the fake news networks to cover this fairly, so treat them as the criminals they are–they will cover that at least!

J.D.Richter – Thestirredpot

SECOND AMENDMENT: BANNED FROM FACEBOOK

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For writing something similar to the first few paragraphs below, I was recently banned from Facebook:

“The Second Amendment does not grant the right to arm. That right belongs to any people bold and brave enough to be free, for those who do not seize this right are slaves. The Second Amendment, perhaps uniquely, recognizes the right to arm as necessary to preserve the other critical freedoms such as free speech and free elections.”

Yet, we no longer have free speech, free elections and a free press in this country. Those who have manipulated our elections and our press will do everything in their power to eliminate what freedoms remain.

Our right to arm is the greatest threat to these would-be tyrants, so they say the Second Amendment must go.

Do remember this: The Minute Men knew that they could not stand alone. There are millions of us who legally elected a man to be our President. So, if we stand together, and stand wherever we must, we can still be free.

J.D.Richter – Thestirredpot

Caught Red Handed

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This post is in response to the Rudy Giuliani video: “Caught Red Handed, TRUMP WON Georgia”

Mr. Giuliani mentions the media and big business. CBS, NBC–all of them–are owned by corporations. The news groups do not operate in a vacuum. They have owners, and too many of those owners are afraid of us. They fear Americans exercising their right to vote for candidates that represent real voters. It is that simple. This corruption did not happen overnight. It has been growing and permeating our society for decades. It has rotten roots everywhere. We can see that–whenever our people act, they are countered.

The only way we will win is if we back the President in whatever manner it takes. I believe we will need to be in the streets, demonstrating to the criminals that President Trump has our power behind him. If we all march, the game is over, and we win. If we do not, well, you figure it out. So get organized. Be ready to act. Whether you are in Vegas or Virginia, the criminals and Democrats will not give up. It does not matter what the courts say. The media has the lunatic left primed for chaos. If we win, do you think they won’t riot? Do you think this will not be an excuse for the Democrats to try to seize the government? What choice do they have? The whole corrupt kingdom is starting to come down. Yes, this is my prediction. Do you have a more likely one?

And if we cannot get the courts to stand up, what then? Do we let our government be stolen? Just as in any third-world country where the government is corrupt, only the power of the people in their masses can make the change. If countries in the Middle East can have hundreds of thousands in the streets, so can we. We can do this, if we act together. If we are too timid to take a stand, we get what we deserve.

Can you see it turning out differently? Do you think the Democrats will admit their crimes? Next year, if we lose now, we have no voice. President Trump and Rudy Giuliani are likely to be treated as criminals, and we probably get some sort of “political correction.”

It is almost certain that the President will need our help before this month is out. Are you a patriot enough to be ready?

J.D.Richter – Thestirredpot

Wall Street and cancer have a lot in common.

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(I’ve updated this slightly for 2020 but not much.  What has changed most is the vaster pile of company corpses, mangled and murdered by stock-price-driven company management.)

Actually, Wall Street is a cancer.

Some part of the body that once had a function but has grown, mutated, and acts to kill the host.

The key to understanding Wall Street is to come to grips with the fact that what goes on there is not, for the vast majority of activities, investment.

How can that be with thousands of screen and print ads screaming their desire to help you with investment?

Understanding starts by looking at actual investment.

Consider, there’s a car wash down the street, or an apartment building, or whatever.  You want to buy it or maybe lend some money to it.  In all cases, you are providing capital or gaining ownership in order to produce something that can be exchanged.  Maybe you want to produce more of that something.  Maybe you just want to continue the production–usually buying a row of apartment buildings comes with the intent to continue to see renters.  Or maybe it’s to tear the apartments down and put in a mall or a restaurant or a factory?  In any case, you are intimately involved with the fate of your investment.  You want it to become something greater, to produce more of something, maybe not even the same something, or at least continue to produce.

On Wall Street what matters is if the stock price rises or falls.  That is not the same thing as increased or better production.  In fact, it rarely is.

Most Wall Street “investors” don’t have a clue what it is they are “investing” in.  Certainly, pure investment does contain a gamble.  But that does not also mean that pure gambling is investing.

From a certain viewpoint, everything is a gamble.  But when the only concern is the show of the dice–or the show of the stock price–then it’s not investing.  It’s speculation.  It’s playing the ponies.  It’s rolling the roulette wheel.  It’s gambling.  And gamblers and speculators will do anything they can get away with to get the dice to show what they need for their return.  That anything doesn’t have to be good for the company.  It doesn’t have to be good for the rest of the gamblers.  It just has to make someone a winner.

That something could be stripping employees of the retirement they’ve earned.  It could be running the company into bankruptcy with whatever damage that causes to people and other companies.  It could be giving the technology to a foreign company.  It could be anything.  So long as it makes for a more predictable bet, some speculator is planning it and trying for their own killing.

When you set up casinos to get a cut from this sort of gambling, then you have Wall Street.  The brokers and “investment” firms are the “house.”  They own the games.  For each play, they get a cut.  It doesn’t matter how much–or more often, how little–you or I walk away with.  What matters is that there are enough plays that the house percentage makes them rich.

This frantic monument of speculation does virtually nothing beneficial for investment, but it does turn investment from its necessary function and makes it cancerous.  The cancer metastasizes to distant parts of the economy.   It is the correct term for what Wall Street has done to our industries–especially those who lead those industries.

Chairmen and CEO’s are today much more concerned with what Wall Street thinks–that is, where the stock price is going–than they are with the welfare of the company they are to manage.  Most bonuses for upper executives are made in terms of stock options.  Regardless of how the bonus terms are couched in the individual executive contracts, the key driver in executive decision making is the stock price.

And Wall Street is only concerned with what they think will make the stock price change for better or worse.

But, say the objectors, that is exactly what we want:  Companies should respond to Wall Street.

Perhaps.  If Wall Street was concerned with increased or better production–and was intimate with the companies enough to have sensible things to add–then maybe.  But that is not the case.

What Wall Street knows is what every gambler and speculator knows:  They make money if the price changes.  The price changes when other speculators are convinced the price should change.  What convinces other speculators is rumor, popularity, conjecture, fear or elation.  What convinces other gamblers is a perceived chance to scratch the itch of their greed.

That it is good to be tied to Wall Street is common knowledge–but it’s not real knowledge.

It is just what we’ve been taught.

Just list the major accomplishments of Wall Street in the last 100 years:  The Great Depression–and immediately following this triumph of investment:  World War II.  (You don’t think so?  Take just a few minutes to look up the causes of the fall of the Weimar Republic, the German government that Hitler was able to corrupt into Nazi Germany.)  Just between those two, the Great Depression and World War II, measure if you can the depth and breadth of horror spread across this planet by the insatiable greed the speculators on Wall Street.  And this is just the beginning.

After WWII, we see the metastasizing of Wall Street’s cancer into our government and our foreign policy.  From Guatemala to Iran, our government has been on a spree of “protecting American interests,” which translates directly into doing what Wall Street wants.  The Cold War was a marvelous excuse to subvert, malign, overthrow, and murder in the name of profit.  If you have not read “Inside the Company” by Philip Agee or “Legacy of Ashes” by Tim Weiner, then you don’t know enough about U.S. foreign policy to have an opinion–and you should have an opinion.  Not that every effort in the Cold War was a waste or criminal, but consider this:  Would there have been a Cold War if there had not been a World War?  And consider this–while remembering the Cold War’s supposed foreign policy success–which four communist countries saw the most violent opposition from the United States?  The answer is easy.  Just look for the four, existing, wholly communist countries.  Still drawing a blank?  Try these:  China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

If the punitive violence that was so much a part of our country’s policy was successful, then why are those countries still standing?  Even the countries where we did succeed very often hate our guts.  Drawing a blank?  Think of Iran.  What?  You didn’t know it was one of our successes?

Oh, the list goes on.  Wall Street has given us recessions in virtually every decade since WWII, sometimes more than one, all of them brought on by panic of one sort or another on Wall Street.  You might ask this very good question:  What does Wall Street’s panic have to do with production?  With the creation or growing and sale goods?  The answer should be:  absolutely nothing.  Why should our economy fall because some gambler thinks he’s not going to make the killing he’d hoped for?  The speculator’s effect on the economy is wholly that of a parasite that has grown so invasive that the parasite is determining the health of the host.

There is no need for us to allow Wall Street’s machinations to determine our economic health.  That is the greatest and most damaging lie from which our economy suffers.  If Wall Street served its real purpose of providing one of the places for companies to find extra funding–and did that function without the gambling and speculation–which means without the panics–then the economy would not rise and fall with the fear level in the stock market.  It is possible that there would be no measurable fear level when investing.

There’s more.  Business decisions are driven by what will make the speculators pant.  Insane decisions are made in the board room and the legislature driven by the need for speculators to have a reason to speculate.  For instance, where was information systems industry developed, including the computer chip, the LCD and the software?  Which country was the industrial powerhouse of the world?  Where are those devices made today?  What industry is left in this country?  It might have been before you were born, but it was the U.S.  Where are these industries now?  Mostly not here.  Who drove the decisions that sent all of that overseas?  The answer is, by and large, Wall Street–and congressman in Wall Street’s pocket.

The greatest economic advantages a country and a people could hope for were squandered, given away, sent off to our competition, because some gamblers in the stock market thought they saw a way to make a stock price rise or fall.

And today, after Wall Street and their bankers figured out how to gamble on the value of our homes, our home prices first inflated and then crashed.  So now, if you don’t want to risk your capital speculating with stocks, you do not even have the safe haven of real estate.

But there’s more.  The crash in our economy brought on by the Wall Street investment fiascos echo around the world.  In 2008, Governments teetered on the edge from Europe to Asia.  Many of them still suffer.  We already know what follows economic chaos.  If somehow you don’t, then you needed to open your ears to the saber rattling in the press, echoing that from Washington.

These things are not accidents.  That is the one thing that history teaches.  The fools who start the chaos may not understand or care about the results, but they pull their triggers deliberately.  Those who claim otherwise depend upon your ignorance.

Is it possible I’ve missed something here?  Sure.  But something important?  I think not.  The complexity that is modern economics is artificial.  Real economics is as simple as “I have something you want” and “What do you have that I want?”  The complexity we have in investment exists largely because it affords opportunities to siphon from the flow of exchange and much less so because it facilitates exchange.

To anyone who thinks Wall Street is a friend of this country, I say, think again.

The New Meritocracy?

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There’s nothing new about it.  And it’s not a meritocracy.

In the “Economist” magazine of January 20, 2011 was an interesting article, “Inequality – The rich and rest.”

What was most fascinating was how carefully the article tiptoed around the issue of wealth generated on Wall Street, that top one percent whose wealth has grown so fast and so great that they in fact now rule.  The magazine went so far as to call them a “new meritocracy.”

Really?  A new meritocracy?  Does anyone else hear the bitter laughter?

In what way do they merit?  Aside from sitting on the lines of production and commerce in order to skim a huge percent for themselves?

In every age of man has been a type of person unable or unwilling to produce and exchange and whose proper name is parasite.  They can always be determined by their lack of exchange for the income they extract.

Currently, having destroyed our housing market and our home values with their outrageous speculation–and thus having killed that victim from which to feed, the Wall Street parasites have added the commodities market to their menus.  For years these markets operated to maintain even prices and even flows of commodities.  Bush allowed the speculators in.  Obama continues to allow them.  For each gallon of fuel and for each loaf of bread, the parasites have now added their tax.  Not a tax for value.  Just a tax to keep themselves rich.

Laughably, many parasites still call themselves “investors.”  Anyone can look up the word.  It has to do with the building of the future.  This most commonly does not apply to Wall Street.  That avenue is dominated by speculators who don’t give a damn about tomorrow but only in getting their cut from inflating stock prices or betting against those prices as they fall.  Worse, the parasites have injected themselves with stock options into the board rooms of almost all major companies, infecting them with the same attitude, causing our companies to destroy themselves in endless, churning foolishness in order to give the speculators an excuse for betting one way or the other.

The results of the parasites feeding are the fevers and comas of our economies.  Being parasites, they cause illness.  They always bleed the maximum from body in which they are lodged.  It is the amount of blood in their swollen abdomens by which the parasites judge their value.  And it is this sort of justification that we hear when the parasites of Wall Street are crowing over the tens and hundreds of millions in yearly pay.  They are not measuring their value by what they’ve produced and exchanged.  Rather, they measure the quantity of blood sucked, the comparative size of their gullets, and pretend among themselves that is a measure of actual worth and not merely thieves bragging over their cut of the take.

They consider themselves clever because they are careful to ally themselves with the government–they buy some guarantee that their brand of thievery is “legal.”  There is nothing new here–it was the practice used by the pharaohs, the senators in Rome, the protection-racket thugs who became Europe’s aristocracy, and used also by warlords, pirates, slave owners, and so on right up to the Soviet commissars.  Our particular parasites practice the same shopworn tactics:  Don’t produce a product.  Take a cut from everyone else.  Use the government for protection and as an enforcer.  Become the government whenever possible.

There is so little new in what they do that it is incredibly humorous to hear these “capitalists” grumble and moan about socialists and communists.  What they really are saying is that they don’t like the competition from the other parasites.

The Wall Street parasite’s frenzied gorging, infecting the rest of the world with their fever, gave us the crash in 1929, which gave us Nazi Germany and World War II.  Today, we can see governments falling all over the world.  Years of Wall Street causing economic turbulence, capped now by hungry children and jobs lost due to Wall Street inflating prices for commodities, are setting the stage for World War III.  The root cause of that war will be the immeasurable and insatiable greed of those “The Economist” calls the “new meritocracy.”

Meritocracy?  What they merit is a seat on the same cart used for Louis and Marie.  What they deserve is the temporary use of a basket for the display of their heads.

Here is a little law, noted by me for them (and you):  Whenever the gap between the poor and the rich grows to the extreme, you will find political manipulation at the core.  Not skill, not merit, but corruption, bribery and influence.

Value given for value received is the basis for all viable economies.  Those at “The Economist” should know this best of all, unless of course, their name is simply cover.  Certainly the role the magazine serves with this article is less obvious.  Parasites always work to prolong their feeding.  The aristocrats of Europe employed skilled artists and architects to portray themselves as godly and surround themselves with trappings beyond those due mortal men.  This was artful public relations designed to impress the public, to keep the peasants cowed, to keep up the lie that the aristocrats deserved what they stole.  At “The Economist,” with this article, they serve the same role.  They prostitute themselves to the parasites, working to portray the useless in the most flattering light.

Sadly for all of us, “The Economist” may help the parasites succeed long enough for this cycle of history to end in another disaster.

In time, the magazine’s true part in this fiasco will be remembered–nor will they escape.  The parasites who flee will not remember the magazine’s editors or writers, and the parasites will not make room on their lifeboats for mere hangers-on.  As the edge of disaster sweeps forward, those at “The Economist” will stand on the shore with the rest of us, will stand there with all of our children, while those the magazine fawned over and lied for sail away.

And that is all the justice there will be.  Unless . . .

Unless we take our government back.  The politicians and the criminals on Wall Street still fear us.  If they didn’t, we wouldn’t still have elections.  That would be the first inconvenience they cast aside.

They should fear us.  Regardless of the type of political structure–republic, democracy, monarchy, empire, whatever–the government forever and always depends upon the consent of the governed.  As governments go insane, they gain that consent through more and more destructive methods on down through lies, coercion and brutality.  But even then, to rule requires the consent of the governed.

Don’t think so?  Just summon up the ghosts of Louis and Marie Antoinette.  Don’t have that skill?  No problem.  Spend just a few minutes with the history of the French Revolution.

Those who pervert our government have read those books, and they still fear us.

As they should.

Conservative and Liberal–The terms don’t mean what you think.

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It is critical to understand that what the pundits mean when they say conservative or liberal. Conservative and liberal are the states of mind, the attitudes, of being somewhat cautious of change and new ideas or of being more open, less restrained in recognizing valuable change. Both are very supportive of individual freedom and individual responsibility. Just as both insist upon restrained government, they both insist upon limiting the absolute rule of the few over the many.

A true liberal and a true conservative do not differ so much in goal as in the speed that change is accepted for that goal. Neither would fail to weigh the worth of what we have against whatever burden of its flaws.

This is not what our pundits–the paid-for-yapping noisemakers of every variety–mean when they use the terms. In fact, our yappers have no idea that such simple and clear definitions exist.

What they confuse with liberal is better defined as left-wing, assuming one has a clear definition of left-wing.

What the yappers refer to as conservative is actually right-wing.

Those terms, left-wing and right-wing, only seem themselves vague until one backs up a few yards and looks at what it is that the lefties and righties are trying to accomplish.

The left-wingers are out to cast aside everything in our society and replace it with anything that comes along. They have determined that the ethics, morals, conventions, standards, and practices with which our civilization is built all must go. They are actually communistic. The left-winger knows where you should work, knows how your money should be spent–in fact, knows everything about how to run your life better than you do.

The right-winger is very little better. They know that you should obey orders always, do what you are told, believe what you are told to believe, and never, ever question the motives, ethics, or decisions of the government. They believe that power and money equate to good, and that the most powerful and rich are the best. Though money and power can be achieved in ethical and unethical ways–to a right-winger, their only question is legality. As long as no law is broken, the filth, misery, and blood spattered on each dollar gained is immaterial. In terms of government, the right-winger is fascistic.

Left wing and right wing, they are both dim shades of the real thing. They are harsh, distorted echoes, unwelcome and distasteful harmonics of the states of mind, liberal and conservative, which they claim to be.

***

To be clear, the term “pundit” originally meant a wise person. In our society, it means mouthpiece, paid to sound wise no matter how insincere, stupid, or imbecilic. They are not paid to inform but to excite emotion for and against. Except in their own minds, they are not journalists. I doubt we have even one who would stand up to Joseph McCarthy or spill the beans on Joseph Stalin, especially not if their incomes, much less their lives, were on the line.

Destroying our economy is not a crime

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(Written in 2010, two years after that recession.  Nonetheless, as I review, still true today.)

So, the latest word is that, after two years, only two people are being prosecuted for destroying our economy.  It seems the loss of trillions of dollars and millions of jobs isn’t actually a crime.

Of course, this is not surprising.  Too many in Congress and too many in business are dirty.  Too many would go down if any real investigations took place.

Case in point: Barney Frank.  You may have seen him on TV, chairing a committee in Congress, boiling with outrage at Wall Street and financial big shots.  The real story is that he had as much to do with the sub-prime fiasco as anyone.  He even got paid for it.  Many tens of thousands of dollars.  Moreover, his boyfriend at the time worked at Fannie Mae. (Do your own google on Frank and Fannie Mae.)  Regardless of the consequences for the rest of us, these criminals were only interested in their immediate profit and pleasure.  This is typical of criminal society–massive irresponsibility for the results of their actions.  Which leads to an interesting question:  What is homosexuality but irresponsibility toward the fate of the race?  I spent some time on the streets when I was young, and avoiding the homosexual traps was just part of the life.  Not everyone made it, but those are stories for another time.

The worse truth is that this behavior is typical of all criminal groups, including Congress.  Each criminal offers the deal of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”  Frank is hardly alone.  Millions of dollars from banking and insurance firms, who were selling thin air, went to politicians still in office, including now President Obama.  Democrats and Republicans alike are neck deep in the mire.

Sadly, being criminals, these individuals and groups support other criminals.  This is a fact often missed.  The idea that a person or company can be a criminal in one area and a responsible citizen in another is a fantasy.  The heart of criminality is irresponsibility.  Any criminal will tell you, in whatever creative words they can find, that their crimes were forced on them, didn’t hurt anyone, were caused by the victim, and so on.

This sort of thing does not have a boundary in a person’s life.  It spills over and spreads.  There is no choice.  If it’s okay to beat the wife, it must be okay for someone else to beat the wife–or the kids.  It must be okay to drink the grocery money up since that is the way to stay away from the wife.  Therefore it must be okay to be drunk on the job or lose the job.  Just extend this in any way you like.  Crime bosses are not great fathers except in the movies.

Companies are the same.  Just look at the groups that Fannie Mae supported–and perhaps still does.  Once the corruption reaches the top, companies will find a way to support other crimes and criminals.  On the flip side, very often the companies that preach the most about responsibility are doing the most irresponsible things.  Irresponsibility is something they know well, and the only way they can avoid the pain of self-inspection is to point the finger elsewhere.

Of course, this also applies to politicians.  If you think about it, for what other reason has our system of legalized bribery, otherwise known as campaign contributions, continued to exist in our so-called free elections?  Companies with criminal activities, by which I definitely include areas of irresponsibility, support politicians who will look the other way.

Almost any politician, to be elected, is under terrific pressure to take part in this crime.  The cost is self-respect.  The result is irresponsibility.  The need for the money does not go away.  There is always that next election.  Some company or person with filth to hide or legalize will have a “contribution” to make.  All that’s required is that the politician be just a bit more irresponsible.

Thus crime spreads through all of society.

There is a great deal to be said on how loss of self-respect leads to irresponsibility and crime.  Many areas of our society are bubbling pools of irresponsibility–and the irresponsible encourage more of it.  They preach behaviors that lead to loss of self-respect, knowing full well this leads to criminality.  It is, after all, the path they have walked.

Most of these areas don’t get labeled as criminal.

But they should.

Ways to steal from the kids

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There are lots of ways to steal from the children.

Speaking with a friend of mine, we got on the subject of social security, welfare, unbridled handouts and so on.

He was angry.

I didn’t disagree with him.  I still don’t.  People want and politicians want–they make deals to satisfy each other by taking a loan out in their children’s name.

Sleazy, dirty, dishonest, corrupt, foul–all are good adjectives.  And accurate.

But then he went on to say that we ought to be drilling oil wherever we can find it.  The North Slope.  Wilderness areas.  The Gulf.  Wherever.

“Do you think,” I asked him, “that maybe our children, our grandchildren and their children might want to have some oil?  Do you think they might find that handy?  Do you think they might possibly need a few gallons to ensure their own survival?’

He blinked, blinked just as if I’d tapped him between the eyes with a hammer.

And he didn’t answer.  For good reason.

He had no answer.  So far as I know, he still doesn’t.

Everyone likes to think that their variety of handout is the good kind.

It isn’t just the socialists who are stealing from the kids.

It is the handiest way for a politician to win some votes–and it doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum that the politician is on.  The average politician reaches out into the future and takes a finger or a lung–or a job, or the oil, or the air to breathe–or their educations and the right to their own minds, from the children.

Next time you shake hands with a politician, remember to wash.

And if he gives you something, at least say a prayer for those who will pay.

Offshored and outsourced — lies our corporations tell us

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What would you think if a manufacturing plant, one somewhere along our coast, parked a ship full of illegal immigrants twelve miles offshore and then ran a bundle of rods, cables and levers from that ship to their plant so that the foreigners could operate the machinery?

It would be obvious that the plant owner was breaking immigration laws.  Even if a loophole was found for the owner to slither through, the stink would be so great that the practice wouldn’t be practiced for long.

But with a little trickery, some smoke, mirrors and curtains, this operation is being run.  And the stink is kept so far offshore that you don’t catch the smell. You are most likely to notice when it is your job that is gone.

Last year, one “American company” unloaded the better part of 24,000 U.S. workers by exactly this means. That company was far from alone. Mind you, the work is not gone. The work is here, in this country, just as it always has been.  Though the foreigners are not sitting just offshore, the rods, cables and levers do run from plants and offices inside our border into the ocean but reach all the way to places like India, China and Egypt. The work still appears here and the products are directly used here, but the worker sits at an electronic console, and the rods, cables and levers run though wires on the internet and do it so smoothly that no one notices the remote control.

It is a clever scheme. The companies successfully avoid U.S. laws on immigration. They use our country’s resources, our infrastructure, and the wealth and order that our social systems have produced, but they manage to avoid most of the contribution we expect from companies that depend upon and use our society.  They avoid the local, state and federal taxes, the employee taxes, the social security taxes and the medicare taxes.  More than that, they avoid the contribution made by the payroll, and with that they cut off all the secondary jobs that a payroll would have supported.  There is no money for the local grocery, restaurant or gas stations.  No money for haircuts, none for lawn mowers, none for books nor for schools, and not any for new clothes or even old.

These corporations need Americans to buy their products but the fewer Americans they can employ, the happier they are. They need American money but not American expense. They take but do their best to not give back.

They want the use of our society, but they do not want to support our society.

A sane person calls this one-sided operation stealing. The companies call it outsourcing or offshoring, claiming that the work is done overseas. That argument is, at best, debatable, and in many ways, simply a lie.  Just consider for a moment: Where does the work result occur?  Here.  The computers being monitored are?  Here.  The systems being changed are?  Here.  The products appear?  Here.

Only the body of the worker sits offshore. If that internet goes down–the work will not be done. It cannot be done–because the work product is here. The production occurs here. The end result happens here.

Just the same as if the machine sat at the end of rods and levers.

What do you think the People’s Republic of China would say if multinational corporations proposed moving offshore millions of the best jobs in China?  Keep in mind that the machines and computers and end results would stay in China, but all the payrolls, all the taxes, all the knowledge and all the skills would be moved overseas.

Do you think the People’s Republic would approve?

Would any country concerned with its own destiny allow this?

Do you need any time to come up with that answer?

Me neither.

Yet in our country, our politicians, apparently for the sake of campaign contributions, have allowed the shipment of millions of our best jobs overseas and continue to allow the sending away of tens and hundreds of thousands of jobs each year.  And with them go hundreds of thousands and millions of secondary jobs that wither away when those primary payrolls no longer flow through the rest of our economy.

Corporations want this debate to center only on the issue of where the operator’s body sits.  Where the work product materializes is an issue they dismiss.  The multinational corporation’s concern is only in what allows them the most profit.

Yet societies that wish to survive must deal with the broader definition of profit–the definition that has to do with the health of their society.

Since these corporations and their businesses ultimately depend upon our society, and our society must determine and act for its own survival, it is our society’s right to decide how to deal with these offshoring operations.  This is not an abstract point.  It is our citizens, these are our jobs, it is our economy, and it is our future that are at stake.

Truly, it seems there is only question:  Why do such operations continue?

* * *

Too many companies too clearly envision a world with what they call a level playing field. But what they mean by that is a world where all the workers live in huts made of tin and scraps, where all the employees are terrified of the shop boss, where all the workers are less than slaves, just bodies to be used and discarded. Apparently, for them, there should be two classes of people:  the very, very rich and the very, very poor.  To them, the average American’s quality of life is an insult, speaking only of money wasted on pay to workers when that money should properly be in the coffers of the elite.

The effects of those who take but do not pay are apparent, and the quality of life for the average American has fallen.

Of course, this behavior could not exist had we not allowed it.  I am as guilty as any.  I once advocated free trade, back when I believed the lie that the goal was to improve the lives of our Mexican neighbors, to relieve the need for them to illegally cross our borders to find work.

Now I wonder how I could have been that stupid. It seems clear that the goal always was, and remains, the degradation and return to slavery of the working man, the average citizen, all of us who do not sit on the Board or speculate with billions on Wall Street.

This is the critical fact that almost everyone has missed: Every job that involves a computer is on the list to be setup for remote control from overseas. Whether you are an accountant, take orders in a store, or punch into a console on the manufacturing line. Look around a bit harder and you will find it happening. So far as the multinational corporations are concerned, your job belongs where it can be done cheapest and to hell with you, your loved ones, your community and your country.

These multinational corporations are, in fact, scavengers, and we, our society and our country, are the body upon which they feed.

As our economy limps through this recession, we need to remember that the last time the geniuses on Wall Street totally bunged up the works, there was at least the hope that the jobs would be revived. Today companies are setting up remote-control operations and sending work overseas as quickly as they can, quite clearly precipitating, accelerating, and maintaining the current decline. Tens of thousands have been laid off and are being laid off every month, even every week, not because there is no work, but because there is no work for Americans in America. There is only work for foreigners doing American work.

Indeed, Wall Street demands that the jobs be sent offshore. After all, how can American businesses thrive if Americans are working?

What?  Can Wall Street be that stupid?  If no American works, there is no American pay, no money, no products purchased, and all the companies die!  How can the imbecility of that logic not ping off a person’s head like a bowling ball from the fourth floor?

And why is it that our legislators do not feel that thud?  Are they cushioned by all those lovely, thick mounds of campaign dollars?

The people on Wall Street are not financial geniuses.  If the last few years are not proof enough, we have centuries of evidence.  Too many, apparently the majority, are either imbeciles or criminals.  Their financial and stock operations need to be viewed in that context.

These identical masterminds, those who gave us Black Tuesday, the dot-com crash and the sub-prime fiasco, are now engineering their greatest escapade ever–the reduction of the American worker to french-fry cooks, gatherers of lost shopping carts, and of course, to the unemployed. How far will the economy fall, and will there ever be a recovery, since the skilled and manufacturing jobs are going, gone, and promised to never, ever be here again?

I predict that the fall will be pretty damn far.

Here is a litmus test for your Federal representatives–your Senators, your Congressmen and your President: Do they support immediate action to  create laws and restrictions on work done remotely? If they don’t, then you know at once that they do not believe that they work for you. They believe that they work for their multinational, corporate paymasters.

You should ask the question of your representatives.

I’d like to know what you find out.

Wouldn’t you?