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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

November News Factoids

Air America Radio Network outlets in Phoenix, Arizona (shut-down) & Madison, Wisconsin (threatened) were rescued this year by listeners & local business people.

Back in October 2006, radio station K.X.E.B. 910-AM in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas market was bought by Catholic Global Radio Network, who replaced the Air America format. In August 2006, the Air America outlet in Sacramento, California was suddenly 'flipped' to ESPN Sports format. In October 2007, Clear Channel's Air America outlet K.O.K.E. 1600-AM in Austin, Texas was suddenly 'flipped' to sports talk "to avoid a San Diego situation". Despite weeks of massive protests in San Diego, Clear Channel's lucrative K.L.S.D. 1360-AM Air America outlet was 'flipped' to sports talk in November.

As-of November 2007, there are NO progressive/Air America outlets in all of Texas, no outlets in Georgia, Montana & Utah, Ohio & Indiana & Iowa, and in Hawaii despite the fact that Air America programming beats right-wing propoganda programming in every market where they compete – or maybe their success is the reason for getting shut down.

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WORLD POPULATION: It took from pre-history to 1800 for the planetary population to reach 1 billion; the planetary population reached 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, and 6 billion in 1999. Projections suggest that Earth's population will reach 7 billion around 2012.

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There have been just under 300 Taser deaths in the last six years.

"Corporate America contributes 7 percent of the nation's total tax burden, compared with 50 percent after World War II."
Mother Jones Magazine, Nov-Dec 2007

"Bob Novak is a compulsive liar."
— former Ambassador Joe Wilson (November 2007)

"Al Gore and Michael Moore are engaged."
— West Texas right-wing radio idiot (22 November 2007)

In 1998, a Federal Reserve study found that the richest 20% in America owned 96% of all stocks.

Before Bush 43 (October 2000) one U.S. dollar equaled 1.21 euros; today, one U.S. dollar equals 0.67 euros – a loss of 45 percent.

The Outdoor Advertising Cartel

U.S. outdoor advertising gross revenue for 2006 {per OAAA} was $6.81 billion

The top three companies control 54.2 percent of the U.S. market.

FIRST PLACE: Clear Channel Communications of Phoenix, Arizona
$1.341 billion in revenue for 2006 = 19.7% of the U.S. market (also #1 worldwide)

SECOND: C.B.S. Outdoor of Phoenix, Arizona
$1.23 billion in revenue for 2006 = 18% of the U.S. market

THIRD: Lamar Advertising Company of Baton Rouge, Louisiana
$1.120 billion in revenue for 2006 = 16.5% of the U.S. market

FOURTH: Van Wagner Communications of New York City [re-formed 1997]

FIFTH: JCDecaux Group [est. 1964] of Paris, France
also second place worldwide (after Clear Channel)

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Essay #73: Unemployment In America

Most statistics released by the U.S. government of late are bald-faced lies. The unemployment statistics released each month and at the end of each year are lies at bottom, worsened by fakery by official of the current administration.

Fascism is when corporations and the government and the military collude to prevent the government services and freedoms desired by The People.

The Bush administration works very hard to replace legitimate government operations with privatized entities, operated inefficiently and at high profitability – less or no results for as much as two and three times the cost of civil service workers.

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Go to the Labor Department website and you will not find statistics on ‘workers’; what they report on is ‘consumers’, i.e. if you are not employed and spending your paycheck, then you do not count.

The employment numbers for each recent month have no basis in reality. For years now, how these numbers are created is that folks at the Labor Dept. make a thousand phone calls during the month and ask questions like “Are you employed?” and “Are you getting unemployment payments?” and “Are you looking for work?”

The fakery is this: The callers simply do not call Detroit or Louisiana and other hard-hit areas. If the numbers still look bad, then Labor Dept. management simply revises the numbers before release to the public.

That way they have some data to support the bogus reports, just in case. Recent national figures are being reported around 4.5%, while the real national unemployment number is 10%, and the number is as high as 12% in many areas.

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The reported number of illegal workers is highly variable, but usually given as 12 million. Note that they have probably displaced legal workers from 6 million jobs, or roughly 4% of the workforce. Enforce existing laws against the illegal employers, and the economically-enslaved illegal workers will have to return home, and the real unemployment rate will drop that 4% – or pretty much the official, tolerable employment rate.

Nothing is done about illegal entry thru our porous borders because the fascist corporatocracy likes it that way. Enforce existing labor law and the workplace flips from a corporatist market to a worker-shortage, labor-has-power situation.

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The long-term, official employment statistics are skewed because they count only JOBS (still avoiding the existence of workers, per se). There is no consideration of the many, many households with two and three jobs. Why are multiple jobs so popular? Because downsized pay scales force workers to seek and manage multiple jobs, very often part-time, in order to keep their heads above water. (And, of course, with the 6-fold increase in the price of oil, treading water is more and more difficult.)

Employers refuse to hire people full-time – no benefits under 32 hours per week in most states – and each such job is counted as one by the officials.

True figures can be constructed in several ways, such as counting the taxpayers (not jobs) and then subtracting that number from able-bodied members of the workforce (those seeking work), and computing UN-employment from there.
Different number, real different.

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The Middle Class is disappearing in America, and similar changes are following this pattern around the world.

The euro has grown to US$1.50 now, and the British pound is worth US$2.06, but the six-fold increase of the barrel-price of oil in seven years cancels much of that seeming benefit.

Combine the shrinking job market and the shrinking of the dollar, and any American worker who is paid the exact same pay now as in 2000 is receiving HALF that 2000 salary. Same for pensioners, such as people on Social Security.

And the millions who have gotten pay cuts and-or lost their jobs and careers, towns with closed factories, entire industries moved offshore – all getting screwed. Their chances of a decent livelihood are torn to shreds, and their children have a dire future.

Meanwhile, salaries of corporate officers have increased hundreds-fold, and they pay less tax than you do. Complain and you are out on the street, blackballed, and any ailments become ‘prior conditions’ to the healthcare cartel.

When I was growing up, a job was real, you kept it if you showed up on time and did the work. Now, a job is merely an opportunity to compete for survival, in the faint hope that the next downsizing or closure or off-shoring won’t eliminate your livelihood.

And freshly-minted college graduates leave the podium with their hard-won paper degree and $100,000 in debt, and soon find that they qualify only for 60-hour work weeks in some corporate hive or part-time work with no future.

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The Economic Class War has begun. We are in a fight for our country against ‘enemies foreign & domestic’. The situation can and will get worse.

The Oligarchy tells the Bush administration what they want done, and Congress obeys the corporatists who pay for their campaigns (even the Democrats).

The energy industry is a cartel, transportation is a cartel, the media is a cartel, agriculture is a monopoly. The infrastructure is crumbling, U.S. healthcare is a joke, education in America is a disgrace.

The United States is a Third World country, a fomenter of state terrorism, and a bankrupt nation.

America died when George W. Bush was sworn into office, and there is no chance for recovery until and unless Dubya and his gang are all impeached and imprisoned.

If Americans do not have the moral character, the political will, the responsibility for keeping Freedom alive in the world, then The Great American Experiment will end. Forever.

The U.S. Constitution begins with the phrase ‘We the People’, and the future of this country depends precisely on that same concept – We the People are and have always been the source of everything good about this country.

We the People need to do our job, which is to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”.

The choice is between Freedom and slavery. Again, and perhaps always.
Copyright 2007 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Sunday, November 25, 2007

WMail ezine #72 "Farewell Issue"

WMail: The Working Minds Philosophy eZine
newsletter #72 [November 2007]
>+< G.E. Nordell, editor >+<

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==> HOLIDAY GIFTING TIPS: Do not set foot inside Wal-Mart. Do not purchase anything on credit. Do not purchase toys from China. Coal is still a proper gift. Shop Amazon and B&N thru the Working Minds Stores Page.

==> FREE HOLIDAY GIFT: Download & print copies of the "Working Minds Source Document" .doc file (58 pages) and wrap’em up & give one to everybody on your list, for Xmas, Channakuh or Kwanzaah:
http://www.working-minds.com/ebooks/index.htm

==> LAST INVITATION: Check out the new online Introduction To The Landmark Forum [click here] and-or the main Landmark Education website.

==> Naomi Wolf’s book "The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot" is very scary, because her points are very true. Read the write-up on my blog and then buy & read the book.

==> What will I do next? Looks like it is time to get the “Working Minds” book manuscript box and re-key it onto the hard-drive – Don’t ask! – and then publish it, probably via iUniverse, like I did with the “Backlot Requiem” detective novel. I will save this email address book and let everyone hereon know when the new book is available.

==> JOIN THE BOYCOTT: No taxation without representation!! Since Dubya’s administration does the bidding of the corporations (the definition of fascism), there is no legitimate reason to deliver taxes to his government. Visit the www.BoycottW9.org website for instructions on witholding tax monies until Bush & Cheney are impeached & imprisoned.

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F a r e w e l l    I s s u e
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The WMail ezine (philosophy and activism newsletter) is shutting down, as-of this issue. The mission of the Working Minds Philosophy of Empowerment website will continue, by moving to other venues.

The seventy-two issues produced over the last eight years are archived on the WM website in three forms:

• The essays are posted as individual pages and are listed in numerical order at http://www.working-minds.com/WMessays.htm and also listed by topic at http://www.working-minds.com/WMtopics.htm

• The full issues – essay, quotes & news factoids – are posted by year and also listed in reverse order at http://www.working-minds.com/WMailindex.htm

• The quotations are posted alphabetically by author at
http://www.working-minds.com/WMquotes.htm

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Further essays that I decide to communicate to the world will be posted to my blog – http://www.DatelineChamesa.com [est. November 2005] – and-or to mass-distribution sites such as OpEdNews.

The quotations were an extremely popular feature of the ezine. I will be posting occasional handfuls of quotations on the blog, and then adding them to the WMquotes pages.

You can set up a free subscription to OpEdNews [click here] for a wide range of non-mainstream news and commentary.

You can also subscribe to notices of all updates to my blog by keying your email address in the form/box provided there by FeedBlitz. (What will happen is subscribers receive an email within roughly 24 hours after I post new content.)

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The long hiatus since WMail Issue #71 came about due to several technical problems that may or may not be resolved. My website host in New York and my I.S.P. in Vermont each took no responsibility for the problem; eventually I figured out that the email server in Virginia was involved, the owners of which referred me back to the host & ISP! Then I had to clear up records in Australia and France – round and round we went.

The other key factor in ending publication of the WMail ezine, as such, is that when I asked in the February & March issues for tales of actions taken by readers based on content of the ezine (for a planned Eighth Anniversary Issue) NOT ONE READER RESPONDED.

The hours that it took to send out 1500 or so emails per ezine issue was not producing (any known) results, so the move to other forms of mass distribution has the potential of reaching many more individuals (and with less effort).

The plan is to post updates on my blog over each month, with the essay and a handful of quotations and more-timely bunches of news factoids posted on different days, in whatever order they occur to me.

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I am quite proud of the content of WMail, and am glad for the many interactions with friend and foe alike. I have had readers of many, many stripes, and from too many countries to count, including Nepal; there were also readers with U.S. military and State Department and Halliburton email addresses.

I am pleased that my readership increased over time. In fact, during the research on Joe Hill and the I.W.W. labor history page at Spirit of America, I found that the hundred-year-old I.W.W. union has only 1250 members world wide: the WMail readership was larger than the famous ‘Wobblies’ labor union!

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So. The end of the ezine is a good time to re-specify the many Serious Issues of Our Time, which have become bigger and scarier over the last eight years.

• The fascist takeover of the U.S. government. (I expect that Presidential Directive 51 and the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and the existence of Blackwater Worldwide are preparation for suspension of Con¬stitutional government here and replacement with martial law and a totalitarian dictatorship.)

• The pending unprovoked attack on Iran.

• Actual elections in 2008 (unless canceled).

• The U.S. National Debt (the United States is bankrupt) and the imminent economic meltdown desired by the Bush-P.N.A.C. crime family.

• Global warming, which is escalating beyond even Al Gore’s prognosis in “An Inconvenient Truth”.

• The absence of open political dialogue in America. (Monopo¬lies own most of the television and radio and newspaper indus¬tries; Air America Radio has been shut down in San Diego, Sacramento, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, and Indiana.)

• Your children are unsafe on the streets, in the schools and in their homes. Their education is ludicrous. They are bombarded with propaganda and injunctions to consume. And they cannot expect or imagine a better life than their parents.

• The country is flooded with illegal immigrants, who work as slaves for illegal employers, the corporatist rulers of America who worship the Bottom Line and are exempt from the Rule of Law.

• N.A.F.T.A. & C.A.F.T.A. and the end of U.S. sovereignty.

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The only action that might possibly prevent the intentions of the P.N.A.C.-Federalist-fascist conspiracy and the globalized war-profiteer slave-labor cartel is removal by impeachment of their puppets in the White House – as required in the Constitution, as designed by the Founding Fathers. The scared-rabbit Democratic Party jumps when our war-monger President says to, and the American People are tired and disgusted and desperate. Every member in Congress is subject to replacement in November 2008 – IF elections do indeed take place.

We are all in this together, including the closed-minded and the oblivious sheeple and the wise and the ‘off-grid’ pioneers. The Greens and the Commies and the Quakers, and the gung-ho military serving their various countries. The lame and the halt and the blind. The active and the passive and the connected and the loners and the lonesome.

No one will escape Dubya’s apocalyptic intentions.

“Reason is the only frontier left.” — G.E. Nordell

[copyright 2007 by Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved]

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Saturday, November 24, 2007

Thanks, George!

A few things that we can thank President Bush for providing America:

A barrel of crude oil was $15 in 1998 (Clinton administration), rose to $60 per barrel in 2005 (due to IraqNam), and at the end of 2007 is just under $100 per barrel.

The Canadian dollar reached a 47-year high against the falling U.S. dollar in October.

Yesterday, the dollar reached the lowest rate ever against the British pound ($2.061) and the euro ($1.4750).

The U.S. National Debt is now $9.130 trillion – plus expenses for IraqNam not yet booked.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Barry Bonds Didn't Kill Anybody

Baseball home-run star Barry Bonds was indicted yesterday in San Francisco by the U.S. Attorney & a federal grand jury for lying in sworn testimony to Congress, and if convicted, he could get 30 years in prison.

No opinion on that sports & legal matter, but note that IF Barry Bonds took steroids, nobody got killed.

So that leaves us wondering why the U.S. Attorney & a federal grand jury in Washington, DC have NOT indicted the following for their perjured testimony, which mostly involved the deaths of large numbers of people in America and elsewhere.
  • George W. Bush
  • Dick Cheney
  • Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
  • former Secretary of State Colin Powell
  • Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff
  • Michael D. Brown, disgraced former head of F.E.M.A.
  • new Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey
  • Alberto Gonzales, disgraced former Attorney General
  • Karl Rove
  • Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater Worldwide
  • Gen. David Petraeus

    ... and so-o-o many others in the Bush administration
  • Thursday, November 15, 2007

    November Quotations

    "Sir, he who would earn his bread writing books must have the assurance of a duke, the wit of a courtier, and the guts of a burglar."
    ~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]

    "The situation is fluid."
    ~~ radio talk show host Stacy Taylor

    "Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood; think big.”
    ~~ Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham [1846-1912]

    "What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others."
    ~~ Analects of Confucius

    "Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well."
    ~~ Epictetus [55?–135? C.E.]

    "Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear."
    ~~ Upanishads

    "America's mainstream media have died. They were infected and killed by corporatism."
    ~~ Rob Kall, founder of OpEdNews

    "The real leader has no need to lead, he is content to point the way."
    ~~ Henry Miller [1891-1980]

    "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
    ~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

    "The dark night of fascism is descending upon America."
    ~~ Tom Wolfe (2007)

    "Growing old is mandatory / Growing up is optional"
    ~~ t-shirt

    "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."
    ~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]

    "Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."
    ~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-82]

    "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
    ~~ John Muir [1838-1914]

    "Voluntary simplicity is a high value."
    ~~ radio talk show host Thom Hartmann

    "Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."
    ~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

    "In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility."
    ~~ Norman Cousins

    "Those believing [that] they have not voted are mistaken, for their indifference affects all our futures."
    ~~ M.A. Denck

    "Freedom is when the people speak. Democracy is when the govern- ment listens."
    ~~ Alistair Farrugia

    "The only title in our democracy that is superior to that of President is that of citizen."
    ~~ Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis [1856-1941]

    "An intellectual is someone who can find something more interesting
    than sex."
    ~~ Anonymous

    "Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government."
    ~~ Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black [1886-1971]

    "The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."
    ~~ Frederick Douglass [1818-95]

    "Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely."
    ~~ Sen. Robert M. 'Fighting Bob' La Follette [1855-1925]

    "Man does not live on enchiladas alone."
    ~~ New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya (in "Zia Summer")

    "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it."
    ~~ Edward R. Murrow [1908-65]

    "The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."
    ~~ Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]

    "I can't name a writer who's had a more perfect life. My books are all in print, I'm in all the school libraries, and when I go places I get the applause at the start of my speech."
    ~~ Ray Bradbury

    "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I'm the dictator. Heh, heh, heh."
    ~~ George W. Bush (speech on 18 December 2000)

    "All's fair in love and business."
    ~~ Archie Goodwin character, written by Rex Stout [1886-85]

    "A newspaper that is true to its purpose concerns itself not only with the way things are but with the way [that] they ought to be."
    ~~ Joseph Pulitzer [1847-1911]

    "There are times when you just have to p*ss off everybody in order to get something constructive done."
    ~~ Alj Mary of Phoenix, AZ

    {many other such quotations are posted
    on the Working Minds website}

    Monday, November 05, 2007

    Naomi Wolf's book "The End of America"

    Journalist Naomi Wolf began research on totalitarian regimes of the XXth Century, and distinguished a pattern of Ten Steps that each of them used to gain power. The countries & regimes included Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Soviet Russia, and various 'banana republics' in South America and elsewhere. The actions of the Bush Administration have brought about conditions both similar and dissimilar to the cited totalrian regimes of the past.

    She reports the historical events, present problems, and speaks urgently on the need to prevent Bush from the final act of decalring himself 'unitary executive' {i.e. dictator).

    Her book on the matter "The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot" was published by Chelsea Green in September, and is already a New York Times bestseller.

    The Ten Steps of the Fascist Shift are:

    1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (worldwide terrorism).

    2. Create a gulag (such as the Guantanamo prison & Halliburton's U.S. concentration camps).

    3. Develop a thug caste (Blackwater, et al).

    4. Set up an internal surveillance system (N.S.A. wiretaps without F.I.S.A. warrants since February 2001, for starters).

    5. Harass citizens' groups (protesters such as Code Pink, animal rights groups).

    6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release (the 'no-fly' list).

    7. Target key individuals (scientists, academics, journalists).

    8. Control the press (Rupert Murdoch, Clear Channel).

    9. Dissent equals treason (Limp Rushbaugh & Tom Tancredo & other idiots all day long, plus the Military Commissions Act of 2006).

    10. Suspend the rule of law (a thousand presidential signing statements, elimination of habeas corpus, legalization of posse commitatus).
    End of America / Warning To A Young Patriot  "The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot" [2007]
    by Naomi Wolf

    Chelsea Green 8¼x5¼ pb [9/2007] for $11.16
    publisher's bookpage

    American Freedom Campaign website