Copyright Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved. Powered by Blogger.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

July News Factoids

The irrational & false accusations by the Republican dis-information machine against Barack Obama has led to a new official website www.fightthesmears.com

Nearly three years after Hurrican Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans is still missing 90% of its former residents.
== The Nation Magazine, July 2008

The folks at Californians for High-Speed Trains Coalition are promoting a line from Sacramento to Tehachapi-Lancaster to Los Angeles to Riverside to San Diego, with a branch from San Francisco to Gilroy meeting up just below Merced.

ECONOMIC CRISIS

Annual U.S. consumer spending is $9 trillion for 300 million people, while China's 1 billion people spend only one trillion dollars.
== Barbara Ehrenreich, in The Progressive Magazine

"This is the worst bout of selling since 9/11. Global equities, as measured by the MSCI World Index, have now declined more than 20% from their October 2007 all-time highs. Just since late May, more than six trillion dollars' worth of equity values has been erased worldwide."
== Eric Roseman, Soveriegn Society ezine

"Consumer prices surged in June at the fastest rate in 26 years"
== headline 15 July 2008

"Inflation is rising at a faster rate today than at any time in the last 25 years."
== Jack Cafferty, CNN newsman

HOUSING/MORTGAGE CRISIS

"[In Jan 2008,] the number of homes facing foreclosure [was] up 57% compared to the same month of the previous year."
== Mother Jones Magazine

"[In the first quarter of 2008,] foreclosure activity [was] reported up 112% from the first quarter of 2007."
== Mother Jones Magazine

U.S. home prices dropped a record 15.8% in May, according to Standard & Poors in July.

"New home sales down 0.6 percent in June"
== headline July 2008

ENERGY CRISIS

The local utility company here in New Mexico reported to customers in the June billing brochure that their cost of natural gas increased 43 percent over last year. The base billing price for electricity went up 19.5% for the summer and 12.2% for other months, with higher increases for larger users.

HEALTHCARE

In 2005, Taiwan's successful and efficient single-payer health care system cost 6.2% of G.D.P. compared with 16.2% for the U.S. In 2003, Taiwan spent less than $800 per person for health care, compared with a U.S. level of approximately $5500 (By 2005, U.S. health care spending had increased 6.9% to $6697 per person.)
== per Ian Williams, in The Washington Spectator

JOBS CRISIS

The unemployment rate for men is 13%, the rate for women is 27% unemployment
== talk show host Randi Rhodes, 12 June 2008

* *          * *          * *          * *

The National Jobs For All Coalition lists June 2008 figures of an official jobless rate of 5.5% with 8.5 million Americans unemployed (an increase of 19.6% over last year). They also list Hidden Unemployment of 10.3 million, for a total of 18.8 million, or 11.8% of the workforce. Meanwhile, the latest figures (2006) show 16.4% of full-time workers are earning below the official poverty line.

In addition, the N.J.F.A.C. site cites Bureau of labor Statistics statistics for May 2008 of only 3.6 million job openings, which computes out to roughly five job-seekers for each job opening.

Copyright 2008 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Essay #78: The Robber Barons

Karl Rove is just the football. He’s not used to that, as he aspires to being an evil genius. But he is essentially a very weak person, and when finally cornered, he will sing like the spineless lackey that he has always been underneath.

There are knots of power that are able and determined to manipulate Congress and Bush and both Clintons and the media, all in a day’s work. It is the calling of these Robber Barons to subjugate the masses more and more so that the only seeming option is to do as bidden, to work in lockstep with the other sheeple, and to keep one’s head down for fear of losing one’s livelihood – and maybe even one’s life – in a trice.

The Robber Barons don’t need a reason to cause hardship (except their own profit), so the sheeple don’t dare make it easy by provid¬ing the slightest potential reason, since the Robber Barons will jump at the chance, and you know who’s gonna get screwed.

The Robber Barons are like sharks, circling and circling, then attacking in a frenzy when a victim appears within reach. They are piranha that will strip a carcass to the bone in minutes flat. They are locusts that consume anything and everything in their path.

* *          * *          * *          * *
We The People are required by the U.S. Constitution to retake the helm (of the Ship of State) when these pirates take control and steer the Ship hell-bent toward the rocks – again!

Death and fear and hate are their only actual weapons, which continue to work on the mindless sheeple of the world. The Robber Barons seek to steal Power from the People in order to fill the emptiness of their souls – which, being bottomless holes, never get filled up, so they steal more ...

We The People produce every last smidgen of real Power. The Constitution says so (and the Declaration of Independence). Except that the Power gets given away, by blindness & ignorance, or by stealth, or by coercion. The stupid sheeple live their petty, consumerist lives, desperately looking over their shoulders and fearing the future because all the input from the media makes them afraid. The Robber Barons make money creating disasters, then make money from ‘repairs’ that make things worse, then ask for tax breaks and no-bid contracts, because if the People hand over still more money to them then, of course, they will really get down to business this time and manage all problems away, just give them another four years without those pesky Democrats on their backs, and then you’ll see an economic renaissance like you’ve not seen since – well, like nothing you’ve ever seen or heard before.

And the sheeple buy it, because they are, after all, sheeple. And the world turns, and the Robber Barons of the Oligarchy own 90% of everything in America and around the world, and the price of everything steadily goes up and up, and the sheeple are forever in debt (to the modern version of the ‘company store’), But dammit, somebody’s got to fight the bastids, and there are never enough of us on the barricades to win many battles in a row, and the Class War is perpetual – say ‘Amen!’.

But the reason that the Robber Barons need to make We The People afraid is that they are afraid of us. They work real hard to divide the masses, to make us afraid of each other, when the fear-mongers are the ones rooted in fear. They are afraid of us, but they don’t know that we know that. (Actually, the sheeple haven’t a clue on this.)

It is time to let the Robber Baron elite of the Oligarchy know that we know.

* *          * *          * *          * *
Be sure to pass along to everyone that you know that We The People are independently creating a General Strike, a National Strike like they do in Europe, on September 11th in 2008 (the seventh anniversary of George W. Bush’s biggest screw-up).

Stay home, buy nothing, no phones or internet or other gadgets. No school, no work, no travel. Introduce yourself to the neglected strangers living in your house or neighborhood, the folks that you’ve ignored because there is never enough time to hang out with the people that you love and admire, we all are too busy ‘making ends meet’.

Well, the ends are gonna meet when you and I and all freedom-loving and patriotic Americans show our solidarity on September 11, a unity that will strike abject fear into the heartless Robber Barons, and the unresponsive leaders of both major parties, and every business with an empty parking lot.

The coordinating website is www.votestrike.org.

Copyright 2008 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Monday, July 21, 2008

July Quotations

"To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful."
~~ Edward R. Murrow [1908-65]

"Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
~~ Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 25:40)

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
~~ Samuel Johnson {favorite quote of Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005]}

"Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?"
~~ William Saroyan [1908-81]

"The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy – the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops."
~~ William Saroyan [1908-81] in "The William Saroyan Reader" 1958

"Trashy books are as hard to write as good ones."
~~ Lev Grossman

"If the dream of self-invention is profoundly democratic, it is also an open invitation to fraud."
~~ David Samuels

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
~~ President Abraham Lincoln [1809-65] in a letter written to Col. William Elkins on 21 November 1864

"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat."
~~ former U.S. Navy Secretary John Lehman

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
~~ Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005]

"[President Bush]'s subversion of the Constitution outdoes anything that has gone before, and ... has created large social constituencies ready to support the flag-waving ideals of an incremental fascism."
~~ E.L. Doctorow

"Somehow, plutocracy has furtively triumphed over democracy."
~~ Steve Fraser

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
~~ Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005]

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
~~ Isaac Asimov

"If Job #1 for the next American president is getting us out of Iraq, Job #2 is leading the world's response to global climate change."
~~ Dave Contarino, manager of Bill Richardson's presidential campaign

"Inkstands and teacups are never so full as when one upsets them."
~~ Edith Wharton [1862-1937]

"Every novelist is a failed poet."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]

"It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world."
~~ William Cobbett

"By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with."
~~ Duke Ellington [1899-1974]

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
~~ Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005]

"[Creationists] who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution as not being adequately supported by facts seem to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all."
~~ Herbert Spencer [1820-1903] in an 1852 essay

"Persistence. That's the secret of a good detective."
~~ Earl Derr Biggers [1884-1933], creator of detective Charlie Chan

"The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation more than its wealth."
~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

A FEW FROM Cesar E. Chavez [1927-93]

"You are never strong enough that you don't need help."

"It is not enough to teach our young people to be successful ... so they can realize their ambitions, so they can earn good livings, so they can accumulate the material things that this society bestows. Those are worthwhile goals. But it is not enough to progress as individuals while our friends and neighbors are left behind."

"The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating."

"Being of service is not enough. You must become a servant of the people. When you do, you can demand their commitment in return."

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