Election Scam USA

Are you a true American, who can vote without trouble? The electoral process in the USA has become horribly corrupted. Democracy as taught in schools is a mirage. Too many people will be turned away from voting. Too many others will never bother to stand in line, to choose the lesser bit of shit as leader. The system could be repaired easily, the outrages of past national elections are widely known. But the distortions don't trouble our tinpot political bosses. The 99% must stand up for democracy, or continue to be shat upon.

Rant Against Arrogance

Too many arrogant bossy Republicans seek to rebrand themselves. They're too often robber barons who've built positions through insider deals & corrupt buyoffs.

They now self-style themselves "job creators" but again the arrogance: take all limelight & grab all profits. Cool communities create & sustain jobs. Entrepreneurs and business owners are vital key contributors, but when they selfishly claim full credit for all & everything it's time to drop any contact with them. These pricks will claim they make the sun shine. Scum.

H-2B Hurts Americans

American businesses devised the H-2B visa to enslave labor. Difficult or dirty less desirable jobs would reasonably pay more, but...

Employers can hire temporary H-2B foreign workers when they "can't find" sufficient local employees. But local people or other Americans will work if paid more. The employer strategy is to pay below what Americans require, and hire in more-vulnerable foreigners.

Much of the payroll then leaks away overseas.

Support Local. American workers should resist such scabby techniques, and H-2B foreign workers must understand their presence depresses wages.

Give - or Pay More

As we use & rely upon electronic media, it becomes important to reflect upon benefits & threats. Scummy businesses & slimy politicians take advantage of the gullible & careless.

They'd sell us as fertilizer.

Readers of this blog are urged to support the EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation     http://www.eff.org

Tools we use for networking, information & everyday life are under constant attack. Together we can create a better future.

Dismantling Democracy by Disinformation

Democracy is under grave threat in the USA. Where the Occupy movement is successful and people develop more sense of community & empowerment, the 1% who've occupied our government, banks & power centers feel their primacy threatened.

Expect more trouble from the security services and horror stories from corporate media as they try pushing us back to dumb servitude.

Pain Pusher Businessmen

Business suffers when corruption is tolerated among businessmen. Our communities are robbed by big industry pushing their costs onto the public, and sucking away undue profits.

Collusion and corruption have allowed this to happen. Not every businessperson is a pain pusher -- shaving "externalities" from their balance sheets through dark agreements with political lackeys & media bigshots.

Recent huge cases include the windfall success & fall of Enron, the "inside job" of banker-led real estate investment trust speculation & the bank bailout (while borrowers lost their homes), and the radiation pollution TEPCO has scattered in the fields, seas & people around their Fukushima nuclear plant. In the latter case, huge pain was unleashed, but there's been no clawback of past dividends. The owners dodged accountability. Horrible. This Pain Pushing must be stopped.

Defense & security spending must seem wasted funds to America's 700,000+ homeless in horribly insecure conditions. Expensive protection for the rich is pain pushed on the rest of us.

Edward Haskell, Banker

Edward Haskell presides over a big desk at the regional bank. Eddie's a fixture at the country club bar.

Community funds built the bank employing Eddie, but he gets far more salary & bonus money than other workers round town.

Bankers (and lawyers) assist cost-pusher efforts by industry (such as nuclear and big oil), where costs are pushed onto the public, but dividends sucked away by a chosen few. Eddie and other hirelings make it happen. Some might call it corruption. To Eddie it's a good business, though he sometimes worries his children are threatened by a deteriorating community.

Eddie was considered a weasel, "an operator" -- or more bluntly, an asshole. But now it's "Good evening Mr. Haskell!" as Eddie drives his corporate town car to the welcoming gates of Hell.

Incentive taxes

When a businessman receives $150 million in annual salary, another million or two provides little marginal incentive.

The same million can mobilize the poor to do so many things...

Youth born to great wealth need do nothing -- a dirty secret if Junior talks to worker proles. Where's the incentive to excel?

Taxes can help provide incentives.

Rich Man Hate Teacher

Teachers under fire for "failing" to stuff student brains with basic skills? The true roots of this debate: teachers threaten wage-slave society. Teachers help develop people who think. Wealthy bosses want cheap interchangeable labor units that never complain -- slightly intelligent donkeys, scared & defenseless.

Teachers are thus subversive.

Teachers also have long vacations, giving them more leisure to look around & to understand their community's financing is threatened by arrogant parasites.

Boiled Frogs

We're in the midst of the boiled frog phenomenon, and we're the insensate frogs.

Systems collapse all around us, and pompous pricks tell us all's well (or would be better if they were in power). Bullshit.

Don't settle for a short grim life. Wake up!

(more to come)

Pay Attention -- Or Pay

They've taken our money. Key battles are already lost. As we slide to disaster, national bankruptcy & homelessness, you're trying to switch the channel.

Apathy Ain't Cool

Sadly, apathy is costly. Politicians & their billionaire friends promote wasteful wars throughout the world and butt-fuck our communities. Pee-ons pretend it ain't happening. Your children will live grimly as wage slaves, or maybe as homeless scum. Apathy ain't cool.

Too many Americans are fat & apathetic.
I'm fat too, but not apathetic.

Count the Empties

How many homes are empty on your street, in your community, or across the country?

The USA has nearly 15 million empty homes (link) --
these blank gaps are 11.4% of all housing. Headlines in the UK declare (link) a million empty homes. Vacant homes are often "owned by the bank" though the bank's money was taken from the public. Citizens also pay police to evict the homeless.

We should pay more attention to the wider tragic picture of financial crisis and hollowed-out communities. Many homes are emptied by foreclosures or a midnight escape by the grossly indebted. How many? Count the empty homes near you, and better understand housing ripoffs.

Vacant or abandoned properties harm neighborhoods. They're a safety & fire hazard. Someone needs to pay for:

• Trash removal & cleaning
• Yard maintenance
• Utilities
• Boarding/securing the building
• Repair, hazard, emergency repairs, demolition
• Inspection, vacant property registration
• Taxes, etc.

We're living a major political disaster. Maybe spray-painting a big number on the street or building corner (as with other disasters) might mitigate our distress.

Corrupted politicians helped the banks & the rich, who control jobs & housing, and who now squeeze the rest of us, as we shiver in merciless cold.

Joe Metric

U.S. manufacturing is often world-leading, but the primacy of the USA as a market and as a source of products is declining. The rise of China, with four times the people, and other vast swathes of a developing world seem undeniable and almost inevitable. And this is not necessarily a problem.

But the American media is cultivating anti-scientific prejudices. Engineering and the worldwide metric system are denounced as elitist, or foreign, and a threat to Mom & apple pie. Units used in America can confuse - twelve inches to a foot, three feet to a yard. A pound weighs sixteen ounces; eight liquid ounces to the cup. If we switch, the world won't fit... but it don't fit so good now. Pity the nuclear-armed Yankee imperialist & his overweight cannon fodder shock troops... ?

Occupy Our Parks

Hey Bully:       Shut Down     Occupy Afghanistan !