For America, it's 'Make Stuff or Die'

I'm not really a fan of Apple, but I do understand why their products are manufactured and assembled in China. We, as a nation, have allowed religion to trump science in our nation's schools. God has become more important than advancing the human condition. As long as we allow that to continue, we will always ride backseat to China. 

Going back to the mid-80s, I've watched the US become a services-based economy. Services feed the need for domestic consumers, but largely aren't exportable - diners from Beijing, Tokyo, and Munich aren't coming to Wichita or Macon or Sioux Falls to eat dinner. They're not coming from Sao Paolo to get a tan in Ithaca. We don't export enough services to bring in foreign dollars.

Maybe the problem is that we're too busy entertaining ourselves, or perhaps distracting ourselves, to focus even momentarily on the issues that are tanking our nation. Even if we manage to pull out of the current economic morass, our economy will remain fragile until we begin to build and export. A nation's economy depends not on domestic consumption of goods and services but rather on how much money it can earn from other nations.

Take this analogy:  Suppose you have 4 teams of 3 people each. Each person has $10, so each team has $30 available to it. Let's say that Team A's people, Members 1, 2, and 3, each have to eat, but Team A doesn't produce food, it provides services, but only to one another, not to other teams. So they have to go to Team B, which produces food, and buy their groceries. Assume that those groceries cost 1/3 of Team A's funds, so it ran them $10. Now Team A only has $20 while Team B now has $40. Now imagine that Team A is the United States and Team B is China. See where this is headed? 

Pretty soon, the Team (nation) that has the most PRODUCTS that other Teams (nations) need has the most money. (Yes, you can export some services, but it's much easier for another nation to step in and underbid you, taking your clients). Remember who we've been borrowing money from? China. Which makes things. We provides services, they provide THINGS. 

We need to rebuild our heavy manufacturing base; ships, planes, heavy mining and earth moving equipment, trucks, cars...THINGS! Some economists have been warning us since the early-80s that what has happened would happen. Obviously they were right. And we're still not doing anything about it. In fact, we're digging a deeper hole by propping up the house of cards that collapsed, the financial sector, causing the Great Recession. 

Our great hope just might be green technology, but if we're going to export better, more efficient, cheaper products than other nations, we MUST get the ball rolling. We MUST focus on manufacturing exportable, durable goods. We MUST!

Failing that, the future doesn't look so bright.

Make employers pay their own way or tax the shit out of them if they move overseas

Maybe it's time that employers ponied up and spent some money on training the people they need rather than profiteering on taxpayers. Corporations pick and choose locations based on how little it will cost them to operate there. Politicians give them the store - tax breaks, donated land or buildings or both, immunity from prosecution for violating environmental laws - and the moment they find themselves needing something, in this case trained workers, they get ready to close shop and move on to the next highest bidder.

Fuck 'em! Let them pay to train the people they need. If we got tough with corporations rather than caving to their whims, we would tell them, "Move your operations offshore and we will tax your imports to the US equal to the value of your products". See how they like having the world's largest economy essentially off limits to their products by virtue of not being able to compete. See how long it takes 'em to get the message. (Hint: Until the first stockbrokers meeting where they see how much money they've lost)

Stock markets = economic leeches

The world's economy has been trashed because people who contribute NOTHING shift money from buyer to seller, raising the cost of virtually everything that those who DO AND MAKE THINGS must buy in order to live.

The stock market is a pariah, a leech, a vampire. It sucks the blood and life out of our lives. Life's necessities especially - food, shelter, clothing - should NEVER be subject to speculation. The leeches have ruined our economy and then rewarded themselves and their cronies for a job poorly done...to the tune of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

When are we going to stop this? Why AREN'T we stopping this? Occupy was a step in the right direction, but what we really need is ACTION, not talk. A day will come when we are forced to evict the leeches and that day will be the Second American Revolution. Like the first one, this one will necessarily involve force, and it will be led by men and women blooded by 2 unnecessary wars. Men and women who went and fought so that the stockbrokers could sit back and laugh that they had it so easy while someone else's kid went to give his life or lose her limbs. This will not be allowed to continue.

I Finally Understand Capitalism, Wall Street, Government, and Their Relationships

Let's see if I understand this correctly.

A) Wall Street is the bastion of capitalism.
B) Government is evil.
C) Public companies whose stock trades on Wall Street, ergo capitalists, believe that the private sector does a better job at virtually everything than the 'inept' evil government does.
D) Wall Street's actual ineptitude and real felonious behaviors led to the stock market crash which tanked our national economy and threatens other economies worldwide.
E) The 'inept' government or as we prefer to call it, We The People, rode to the rescue of the private sector and Wall Street, but for only those who made enough money to actually afford to play the market, leaving our nation with a debt which will take over a decade to pay off.
F) Publicly traded companies whose stock is traded on Wall Street reward actually inept and truly felonious CEOs with, in some cases, money that belongs to We The People,  while simultaneously decrying the ineptitude of the evil government.
G) Wall Street is still considered the bastion of capitalism.

Huh! Well I'll be damned, I figured it out. And by 'figured it out', I mean, 'understand that capitalism is the real evil'.

Got it.

Response to fascinating Addicting Info article

Overthrowing Carter @ Addicting Info




For 30+ years, I've been telling people that Ronnie RayGun was NOT the President they thought he was. The proof is everywhere, but it's been painted over to make him seem godlike. I was at the free world's anti-aircraft school, the US Army Air Defense Artillery Officer's Basic Course at Ft Bliss, Texas, in the Fall of 1979. We were being instructed in, an training on, the new Patriot missile system. Ronald Reagan wasn't elected President until 1980, took office in January 1981. So how is it that he got credit for the Patriot? By the simple expedient of his followers lying, that's how.

Jimmy Carter got more done in 4 years than Ronnie RayGun got done in 8, and that's a easily-proven fact; you need look no more than the Congressional Record which will PROVE it. No bias, no party affiliation, just the truth...ma'am. 

Jimmy Carter was elected to bring openness and common sense to Washington, DC, attempting to air out the stench left behind by Richard Nixon and, to a lesser degree, Gerald Ford. He warned us 36 years ago about the problems of relying so heavily on imported oil. He put solar panels on the White House. He tried to bring transparency to the Federal government just as he had done in Georgia when he was Governor, although subsequent administrations in Georgia have succeeded in closeting any information they felt was too sensitive for the public's eyes. Jimmy Carter told us we had to tighten our belts for just a little while, and then we'd be OK, but no, we wouldn't have that. Jimmy Carter left office with a TINY deficit, but Ronald Reagan would balloon it 100 times larger. Carter, a Democrat, told us we had to cut waste in government and especially in the military, and he should know - he was a US Navy nuclear officer. Ronald Reagan was an actor. Reagan, the man whom Grover Norquist would have us believe was an anti-tax hero, actually raised taxes 11 times in his 8 years in office. He presided over 2 recessions beyond the one he inherited, which itself was a result of failed residual Conservative policies. Every real increase in GDP and the economy which resulted in real growth, not that growth resulting from inflation upon borrowing, that Ronald Reagan took credit for, even in his second term, was a result of policies that Jimmy Carter enacted into law.

Reagan's administration was a sham and was the genesis of the current economic destabilization. Jimmy Carter is a national treasure, and if you still have trouble believing that he was the far better leader than Reagan, then you need to study them side-by-side in order to see the truth. I have. 

Conservative policy failures and the failure of the two-party system

It has been the agenda of the GOP since Ronald Reagan's administration to broaden the gap between the rich and poor. This serves the purpose of preventing more people from achieving ultra-wealthy status and separates the Haves from the untouchables, the Have Nots. Be objective. Look for yourself. Read everything whether you agree with it or not, and do so with an open mind. I come from a long line of fiscal conservatives, many of whom have since left the Republican party, as I have. Members of our family were in Henry Hudson's expeditionary party, fought in every war from the Revolutionary war on. We have always been conservatives, but for the last 30 years, and even then it has been a slow exodus from the GOP. But you can't call yourself a fiscal conservative and simultaneously believe that the policies of Reagan, Bush 41, & Bush 43, as well as those of the Do Nothing 112th Congress are conservative. They're not. They have created a welfare state, but not one which helps those in need. They've created a welfare state which has served the ultra-wealthy. Trickle-down economics is a myth, such as it's portrayed. Twenty years worth of conservative administrations hasn't created the jobs they boast. It's all been a lie. As for the Democrats, they're not significantly better, either. It's time to abolish the two-party system and urge other parties into the mix. We also need to enact legislation which will force candidates to accept public campaign funding to remove money from the equation, and we need to ban lobbying completely. When wealthy concerns alone have the ears of lawmakers, individual rights get trampled.

Response to post on Military.com

There are 2 problems that could be meshed in order to mitigate each. The first is veteran homelessness. The second is the glut of empty homes, indeed empty neighborhoods. With all the money spent on outreach to homeless vets, it seems that it might be cheaper in some cases to purchase those homes, especially where an entire neighborhood could be purchased so that the vets would be around people with whom they share life-altering experiences. I can envision now-empty neighborhoods filled with veterans and their families (in some areas), with certain homes converted for group living. Veterans are already accustomed to living in barracks, hooches, homeless shelters (in the worst cases), so the transition could be relatively painless. In each neighborhood a central veterans' outreach office could be established in one of the homes with services offered on-site, like transportation to the nearest VA Medical Center, group therapy sessions, transition to permanent living, and so forth. In some cases, this might be permanent housing.

As a veteran, I see my fellow vets on the streets, using, abusing, and basically thrown away once the general public is done with their services. The police rarely know how to respond to veterans and the result is usually jail. That could be prevented with a neighborhood police department that's trained specially to deal with veterans, especially those with conditions like PTSD. It might even be a situation where MP (Military Police) veterans, those who are already accustomed to dealing with their fellow vets, could make the best cops to handle any situations that might occur and prevent troubled vets from from going to jail, incurring a criminal record, and having their problems ignored or left un(der)treated.

I see so much possibility here. Yes, the program would cost a bit to get started, and yes, there would be a cost to run it, but in some situations that might be offset by having the veterans who inhabit the community pay subsidized rent from their veterans compensation or from their wages from private sector jobs. The program could be fine-tuned as it evolves providing that the charter was flexible enough to allow it to progress smartly.

Imagine: An entire neighborhood of veterans surrounded by those they feel comfortable with, by those who don't look down on them, who share the same nightmares. For many veterans, no amount of rehabilitation to reintegration into the general public will suffice to drive away the demons. Let's be proactive, recognize it, and move forward while housing can be purchased at the lowest possible cost.

On Operation Wall Street

These protests have been a long time coming. The abuses by the financial and banking sectors, opaque government, secret wars, police intimidation, and political cronyism have all taken their toll on the middle and working classes. Remember the old Bruce Hornsby and the Range line from their 1986 #1 hit, 'The Way It Is'? "The man in the silk suit hurries by, As he catches the poor old lady's eyes, Just for fun he says 'Get a job'". They were onto the crude undercurrent of classism a quarter-century ago.

The real problem is not that the 1% don't see the chasm that exists between their luxuried lives and that of the street poor. The real problem is not that they don't care. The real problem is that they ENJOY the difference. They enjoy knowing that tonight while the two veterans, one from the Vietnam war and one from Iraq or Afghanistan, sleep under a bridge, they'll be home, warm, fed, dry, and secure. It's that delectation that derives from the suffering of others that is the core of the problem. All else is symptom; this is the disease.

Welcome to the Occupation

I keep hearing and reading people say that the problem with the Occupation is that no one can give them a single reason why they're doing it. But that's the problem right there; there isn't a single reason - there are hundreds of reasons. And yes, it might seem confusing and disorganized at the moment, but as people put their heads together things will get sorted out. The thing about Thinkers, as opposed to the Believers whom Occupation is protesting, is that it's a Big Tent. Far bigger than the Democratic Party. Far bigger than "The Left". We are the 99%, the middle, the left, and even the right. We are us, them, you, I, we, he, she...and even it. So while we communicate with one another and sort ourselves to address all these issues, give us time. Because this isn't just for us, it's for ALL of us. (R.E.M. - 'Welcome To The Occupation' )

Response and agreement with a friend's Facebook post

You're right. Arch-conservatives have long had the goal of privatizing every part of government they could so that they could profit from it. They duped social conservatives like evangelical, fundamentalist, and extremist christians into voting for them with the God-Gays-Guns scheme and it worked. It was a propaganda program that Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of, and it's still working for them today. You have to hand it to them, they did their demographic and psychological research. You can pretty easily divide humanity into 2 groups, when thought about in this way, Thinkers and Believers. Believers are the type who want to...believe...in things rather than do the skeptical work of research, no matter how simple that might be. Thinkers are skeptics, not accepting everything at face value until they've had a chance to research it. So, the arch-conservatives went after the Believers - christians. They made it SEEM like they were pro-god, pro-gun, and anti-gay. In reality, they couldn't have given two shits about god, guns or gays, they just wanted a voting bloc who could elect their proxies to office in order to establish the conservative agenda. Again, you've gotta hand it to them, it worked...beyond their imaginings, at that. Now they can sit back, throw a handful of money at this or that campaign and have their work done for them by people who actually believe that they're better off with a privatized government. But when ALL roads become toll roads, when ALL schools are for-profit, when ALL medicine is pay-upon-receipt-of-services, when credit is denied to everyone (the wealthy don't need credit), and EVERYTHING you do requires payment at the time you need it...it will be too late to do anything about it because the police will be on the side of the wealthy...for that matter, they already are. Just take a look at what's happening with Occupy Wall Street at this very moment. Arch-conservatives want no middle class. They want but 2 classes: Theirs, and the workers who do their bidding.

Why we fail to understand conservatives

I think the reason that so many of us have trouble understanding the actions of Republicans, Tea Partiers, and other sundry conservative politicians is that they treat political office like a business, whereas we see it as a post from which one might contribute to the general weal. They see it as a profit center. We see it as a public service. They see it as a sinecure. We see it as a temporary position.

These are fundamental differences that can't be easily rectified. Republican politicians often come from the private sector with the intent of bending the power of their political office to their own will, and for personal profit. Few of us on the left have been able to sort through the warp and weft of their political fabric to unravel what was really right on the surface all along: The truth that they came to politics because they view government as inefficient and even immoral and then set about operating government as inefficiently and immorally as possible in order to bring those ends about, making them self-fulfilling prophecies.

It seems to me that when people put on blinders which limit their sight lines to only those ideas which they wish to see, it becomes not merely impossible, but sincerely impossible (pardon the WoO pun) to get them to see anything else, regardless how imposing, how credible, or how popular it might be.

I will support the President so long as he follows this simple concept: Do that which you set about to do, that which we elected you to do, not bending to the political will of your opponents, and never, EVER losing sight of the fact that we elected YOU to make CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

Military discharge of gays prior to DADT

People forget that prior to DADT, it was simply illegal to be gay or lesbian and serve in the US military. When I served, our battalion commander initiated a witch hunt to eliminate gays, lesbians and atheists (while it isn't/wasn't illegal to be an atheist and serve, he looked for any excuse, discharging one linguist for being 2 pounds over the weight limit). Since I fall into 2 of those 3 categories, I was high on his list to discharge. Luckily, I was at the end of my term of service, so I left voluntarily, although he tried to retain me so that he could have a court martial. That would have resulted in incarceration at the Federal holding barracks in Mannheim, Germany. He made very clear what he wished to do, which worked in my favor. I was able to enlist the aid of the then-Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn, D-GA (who intervened only from a cost standpoint since my term of service was over), in order to get out without being jailed. The commander had gone to great lengths to carry out his witch hunt, using two junior enlisted men to seduce soldiers of rank in order to prosecute and discharge them. The plan was to claim use of force and fraternization although force was never used and the younger soldiers weren't in my, or any of the other affected soldiers' chain-of-command. It was a witch hunt, plain and simple.

Just after I left the unit and the Army, Congress sent a delegation to Augsburg to find out why this battalion had the lowest re-enlistment rate...not just in Europe...not just in the Army...but in the entire US military. Since we were an Intelligence battalion, US taxpayers had spent MILLIONS of dollars training each one of us, sending us to language school for a year or more, lengthy and entailed technical training, not to mention the year-long investigations into the soldiers and their families going back 3 generations for the required security clearances. He lost his command, but in an upside-down turn of events, went on to get his full bird (the rank of colonel). It was at that time (the late 80s, early 90s) that Fundamentalist Christians were infiltrating the military...all branches...in order to create what they thought of as God's Army. And that always made me wonder...if their god is so powerful...why does he need an army?

Income parity and class war

Patriot Day 2011 - I've been sitting here this morning watching the coverage of the sad reminder of the first attack by an alien force on the sovereign territory of the United States since Pearl Harbor. I spent 13 years in the military, in service to my homeland. I had an odd journey through the military, beginning as an enlisted infantryman in my state's National Guard, going on to Officer Candidate School (OCS) and a commission in the Infantry. After 5 years, I had the opportunity to move to the Army Reserve in a teaching position, then after my full 6 years were up, into the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). But I wasn't done, I wanted a tour in the Regular Army, so I again enlisted rather than seeking to have my commission reinstated because I wanted to choose where I went and what I did. Young officers usually have no choice in the matter, but because of enlistment guarantees, and a generous bonus, I was allowed to choose my first duty station as an enlistee. Throughout my career, I raised my right hand and swore to protect the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic, a total of 5 times, and I still hold myself to that sacred oath. 


And that's what I was thinking about this morning as I watched the sun rise over Manhattan. We're faced with threats from without and threats from within. At least the external threats are known: Al Qaeda, the Taliban, others who wish harm on our citizens. The internal threats are far harder to sound because they come from us, from the body America. 


But we can, if we remove the blinders from our eyes which prevent us from seeing the immediate and familiar, suss out the cancer which gnaws us root and bone. It can be a challenge, an agony, because the enemy, we're told, should be our paradigm. Our internal national enemy is the disparity between the super rich and the rest of us. 


Greed in any form is bad. Amazingly though, we've been told that it's good to be greedy. It's a noble purpose to seek wealth. Increasingly we're told that charity is bad. During the GOP Presidential debate, last week, several candidates came right out and said that we need to cut off assistance to those who need it, that charity causes poverty. Jesus said that, right? One would imagine that he did, or at least these characters think so, since each and every one claims to be a staunch Christian, to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, and to accept him as their personal savior. Or were they lying for the sake of political expediency? 


I was reared as a Jehovah's Witness. Trust me, it's a cult, regardless that they protest to the contrary. But one thing that you can't take away from them - they study the bible. Evangelicals and other Christian Fundamentalists claim that Witnesses don't use the right bible, but the fact is that the Jehovah's Witness' 'New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures', the bible that they had translated using the newly-found Rosetta Stone as a translation guide, something that all other bible translators are now doing, is a much more accurate translation than the problematic King James Version. 


Growing up in that religion, I read the bible. Actually read it twice from cover to cover, and probably a third and fourth time by chapter and verse. Jehovah's Witnesses read their bible regularly, they read it to understand it and not just be able to quote by rote. They have certainly misinterpreted it, but it is a modern translation in modern English and any reader should be able to understand it clearly, unlike the poorly translated KJV. 


Having read it and studied it, even though today I am an atheist, I have a pretty good grasp of what it was that Jesus was trying to teach his disciples. Recurring themes were love, forgiveness, and charity. Nowhere I read of his teachings did it mention greed, wealth, or revenge, but you wouldn't know it from his modern followers. In fact, greed, wealth, and revenge seem to be their bywords, their mantra, their New Ideal.  I can't purport to know why his followers have missed the message, but I have some ideas. 


First and foremost is ignorance. Agreed, I'm rusty on the bible's specifics today, even though I still get the general gist. But so many who claim Jesus as their savior haven't really bothered to read his teachings. Instead, they keep a bible by their bed and they read a few passages late at night after they're already drowsy, they take them out of context because they don't bother to read entire stories or chapters and they soon forget the morals of the stories if indeed they even understood them anyway. It's alarming how many think that popular sayings like 'A penny saved is a penny earned' come from the bible rather than from popular folklore. So I suppose it should be no surprise that these people sit in a building at least once a week and listen to their religious leaders tell them what to think. It's the very definition of propaganda. Tell a story (or lie), keep telling it, keep swearing to its truth, and if anyone should question you about it, scream it...because SCREAMING ALWAYS PROVES YOUR VERACITY...RIGHT?


Of course not. But it's a tool they use. And that's part of my second point - propaganda. Adolf Hitler and his henchman Joseph Goebbels, his Reich Minister of Propaganda, were masters of the Big Lie. They believed that for a lie to be believable, it needs to be a big lie, it needs to be repeated, and it needs to grossly distort the truth. 

Reply to comment on ApplePaul's FB page about government being "in charge of stuff"

Both government and business are subject to the laws of human nature. Government can run efficiently, but it takes oversight to keep people focused on their jobs, just like in business. Business needs oversight to prevent issues like the debacle with sub-prime lending, using toxic chemicals in our children's toys, and keeping their effluent out of our waterways. The right course is somewhere in the middle, not on one of the extremes in either direction; in other words, right where most things work best. Government, when run by concerned individuals, not like the current Nay Sayers we have in Congress, has given us a national system of freeways, free education, airports that all can access, and a host of other things that every successful person in this country has taken advantage of on the way to success. It's folly to think that government, properly run, isn't a boon to individual prosperity. The Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Rural Electrification Administration and other projects of the New Deal program helped the United States pull itself out of the morass of the Great Depression...which was caused by the crash of the Stock Market, a PRIVATE endeavor. In our grandparents' or great grandparents' lifetimes, government was trusted to ensure the common weal, because it was the lifeline which saved the nation from economic apocalypse. It seems very short-memoried to claim that government shouldn't be "in charge of so much stuff...", making me wonder, what is it that people are doing that they don't want government to know about?

Reply to a comment on Rachel Maddow's blog

You're right. I've been watching fairly closely and I think this is how the process goes: First, somewhere in a room filled with the Faithful (faithfully defending their stacks of money, that is), talking points are created. Then, they're handed off to Fox News for initiation in the early day's news cycle. Next, other Fox talking heads cite the FIRST Fox report using the same talking points, and that continues and escalates throughout the day. Simultaneously, emails convey those talking points to GOP members who are likely to have media exposure during that news cycle, reinforcing their fictions. And so it goes. A new day brings a new talking point, and the GOP cycle-of-life continues because the Believers don't do their own research. Only Thinkers do that.