Today's Tweet

Please take a moment to feel a little compassion for the people whose biggest problem is that gay people want to pay them to do their jobs.

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) April 11, 2016

Cuz when you're a clear-eyed pragmatic business super-genius (as are all "conservatives"), you have an innate understanding that the way you grow your enterprise into a thriving overarching success is to make sure your Prospective Customer Base is as narrow and shallow as possible - just like your dumb-as-a-fucking-stump attitudes.

Today's Cold Shot

Today's Toon

A rather simple and elegant lesson about the Law of Unintended Consequences:

That Was Then And This Is Then Again

  

There Are No Nations

It's worth seeing just about anything Paddy Chayevsky wrote because of the speeches and/or soliloquies.

The clip is from Network (1976), and it's been a favorite for me for a very long time.

"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies.  The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business - the world is a business, Mr Beale.  It has been since man crawled out of the slime..."



I like to say I'm a Capitalist because god is a Capitalist, and that I believe strongly in Regulation because god believes strongly in Regulation.

I think Capitalism is the closest analogy to the way the biosphere has evolved to operate.  

As an organism, I have to take in enough calories to build up something of a surplus, so I'll have the energy necessary to make the effort it'll take to go out and get my next meal - income vs outflow; profit and loss etc.

But I also have onboard mechanisms that're there to regulate the functioning of my system.   Blood sugar (eg) is a good thing, but my pancreas is there to regulate it so I get the benefits without it reaching levels that're harmful to me. Bunches of other mechanisms of regulation are built into my system as well.  I have a hypothalamus to help regulate my body temperature; my brain stem does all kinds of nifty things like regulate my heart rate and my breathing and my eye-blinks etc etc etc.  Regulation is what works to keep me in healthy balance with myself and the world around me.

So, to be a little clearer, I don't have a problem with Capitalism.  I only have a problem with Capitalism when it's allowed to go crashing thru people's lives as it speeds toward the Logical Extreme (aka Unfettered Free-Market Capitalism) - which is where we get Feudalism and Slavery and Conquest and Authoritarian Rule and all of the really shitty ways of running things that America's supposed to be the exception to.

Always always always remember - a business is not a democracy.

Drug It Up

By now we all know it, but it's good to keep it in mind - It's not really a war on drugs.  It's more of a war on the drugs that aren't controlled by Bayer and Glaxo and Pfizer - or any of the other big houses.

It's also good to remember that Coin-Operated Politicians have been put in place by the Big Bux Donors to ensure the flow of money out of our pockets, into theirs.

Mr Oliver, If You Please

"For-Profit Education" is easily the best way for anybody totally devoid of honor to funnel public dollars into private coffers.



Wanna know what kills Capitalism?  Capitalists who are unworthy of the name, masquerading as honest entrepreneurs; demonstrating by their example that it's all but impossible to think anybody could earn a living doing anything but stealing.

Here's the letter Oliver mentions:

To Whom It May Concern:

I am [NAME HERE], a human being with [DESCRIBE AT LEAST SOME LEVEL OF SENSE] who is sick of your [SYNONYM FOR BULLSHIT]

Whatever the benefits of for-profit-schools, your trade group is protecting some of the worst actors, and [ADDITIONAL INSULTS].  [IDEAS FOR PLACES TO CRAM THIS LETTER ONCE ROLLED UP].  [PROPOSALS FOR HUMAN WASTE PRODUCTS TO BE EATEN].

Thank you for your time,

[NAME HERE AGAIN]

Send it to:  APSCU@apscu.org

The Invisible Hand

..is invisible because it's another mystical fabrication of "capitalists" who aren't interested in doing any more work than it takes to sell us the illusion of a useful product instead of creating something of real value.

There's no such thing as Alternative Medicine.  Anything that's been studied and tested and peer-reviewed and proven beyond the 95% Certainty Threshold is called Medicine - because that's what it is.  Everything else comes under the general heading of Quackery. However, there are new things that come along all the time, and some of them could lead to (or actually be) the next great discovery.  So the point is - as always - to be skeptical and to demand evidence.

By the 1920s, a huge fad had grown up around Radium (eg), which was being touted as a miracle substance - "liquid sunshine" is how some companies described it.  They sold people on drinking water that had been infused with radon gas, and never mind that a good buncha these suckers died of various cancers and leukemia - Marie Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation - and her original lab notes are still too radioactive to be handled safely.

Science finds something interesting, and almost immediately, the sharpsters gather to figure out how to use this new stuff to separate the marks from their paychecks.

Commerce must be regulated.  We have to be careful not to let regulation be used as a political weapon to gain an unfair advantage just to beat down competition, but every time we've allowed "the free market" to run wild, we've paid a heavy price.  A little of that good ol' American Common Sense is in order here.

Yay, Free Enterprise

The whole banana by Col Bateman guest-posting on Charlie Pierce's blog:

Last week I mentioned the harassment that the women of Mothers Demand Action Against Gun Violence received in the past few months since the group was initiated on Facebook. The hatred is real, violent, and should not be ignored. What I did not appreciate at the time is the reason why the rabid gun advocates were so angry with these women. Now I know.

"Open Carry Texas" (which I think of as "Wimps With Mommy Issues"), conducted an open carry, en masse, at a Chipotle Restaurant — then the moms shared the word. They posted pictures of these morons carrying rifles in a family restaurant. Then they asked that the chain bar weapons on their private property. As Founder Shannon Watts put it: "The Chipotle petition received more than 10,000 signatures within just a few hours." The corporation realized where their business interests lie and that guns are wrong in their establishments across the entire nation.

In a statement Chipotle released Monday, the company said, "the display of firearms in our restaurants has now created an environment that is potentially intimidating or uncomfortable for many of our customers."

These women are doing what nobody else had managed to do before now. They are actually affecting change. Not through legislation, but through the free choice they have to patronize, or to NOT patronize, private companies that allow guns to be carried in their stores, restaurants, malls, and more.

Watts has become a target, and a heroine. She is the sort of woman that I want my daughters to grow up to be, facing a threat to our nation and taking it head on. Is she afraid? Of course. Anyone would be in her situation. Gun advocates (most who identify themselves as such are also NRA members) have threatened her life, they have threatened to rape her, they have threatened her family, and they have demonstrated their earnestness by showing up at her house. But she has not stopped, she has not quit, and she has not backed down.

This is moral courage, and indeed physical courage, of the highest order.

Today's Irony

No particular reason I chose this one, it just kinda popped into my head.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa];[7] June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.[8]

As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed.[9] His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement inGuatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Árbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology.[9]  Later, in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.[10] Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.[11]

So the guy spends his entire adult life working to combat the darker impulses of Capitalism, only to have his image (and practically his whole persona) posthumously hijacked in service to at least some of what the CIA killed him for fighting against.

An Outrageously Blatant Act Of Journalism

And the name of the rat bastard pinko librul media type who insisted on at least trying to hold this valiantly entrepreneurial job creator accountable for something completely out of his control?  Kallie Cart, WCHS Channel 8 Eyewitness News

I have no idea if Ms Cart has done anything else of note in her career, but when a Press Poodle does anything even close to a decent job of imitating a real reporter, I think it's important to pile on some laurels.

Now, maybe if she took a hard look at the failures of the Regulatory Regime, we'd have something even more worthy of my much-sought-after kudos.  Go get 'em, Kallie.  Keep doin' good.

hat tip = Addicting Info

Happy Black Friday, Everybody

Because only in USAmerica Incorporated is it considered a time-honored and almost sacred tradition to trample each other trying to get into Wal-Mart less than 24 hours after we gave thanks for what we had the day before.

You go, America - all the world looks to you for your inspiring leadership.

Today's Entrepreneurial Inspiration

Cuz we need to wake up and recognize that with a little hard work and American know-how (and a coupla billion tax dollars), an elementary school can be just as safe as any other combat zone.



They piss on our heads; they tell us it's raining; and then they sell us umbrellas.

No soul and no honor.

hat tip = Addicting Info

Teach Your Children Well

If It's Tuesday

...it must be time for me to say, "Fuck you, NSA" - and also we should prob'ly figure out how to co-opt something.

So here it is:

That's a t-shirt you can buy at a joint called Red Bubble

I ♥ Capitalism.

It's A Wonderment

From a bit in Forbes, by the leftie-ish Rick Ungar:

With Medicaid eligibility about to be expanded in some 30 states, as a result of the Affordable Care Act, Wal-Mart has responded by cutting employee hours—and thereby wages—even further in order to push more of their workers into state Medicaid programs and increase Wal-Mart profits. Good news for Wal-Mart shareholders and senior management earning the big bucks—not so good for the taxpayers who will now be expected to contribute even larger amounts of money to subsidize Wal-Mart’s burgeoning profits.

But, at long last and in a move gaining popularity around the nation, the State of California is attempting to say ‘enough’ to Wal-Mart and the other large retailers who are looking to the taxpayers to take on the responsibility for the company’s employees—a responsibility Wal-Mart has long refused to accept.

It’s about time.

--and--

Of course, the California Retailers Association, where Wal-Mart Stores WMT +1.14%, Inc. is listed as a board member company, is not quite so pleased with the legislation. According to Bill Dombrowski, chief executive of the Association, ”It’s one of the worst job-killer bills I’ve seen in my 20 years in Sacramento, and that says a lot. The unions are fixated on Wal-Mart, but that’s not the issue here. It’s a monster project to implement the Affordable Care Act, and having this thrown on top is not helpful.”

One wonders if we will ever see the day when Americans will stop falling for the hostage-taking narrative consistently put forward by those whose job it is to defend the indefensible. At the first suggestion of finally putting a chink in Wal-Mart’s policy of profiting at the taxpayers’ expense—a practice that should have every American thinking about what passes for free-enterprise in the United States today—the response is to always threaten to take away jobs if we dare to challenge their business practices, even if those practices cost us billions.

I'm not a regular visitor to their site, so I don't know how often they do this kinda thing, but seeing this under the flagship Forbes brand seems odd to me.  It feels encouraging tho', especially considering that Ungar is staking out what has traditionally been the conservative position when we approach the issue of government involvement in private business.

When Wal-Mart practically owns local and state politicians; when they dominate the retail sector of any portion of any economy; and as a result they get to use the power of government to enforce their business plan - isn't that almost exactly the kind of overly-powerful relationship we're all supposed to be against?

Be sure to browse the comments too - Ungar goes toe-to-toe with some of the more rabid knee-jerkers. 

Connections

At the confluence of Free Market and Privatized Government:

Mark Ciavarella Jr, a 61-year old former judge in Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for literally selling young juveniles for cash. He was convicted of accepting money in exchange for incarcerating thousands of adults and children into a prison facility owned by a developer who was paying him under the table. The kickbacks amounted to more than $1 million.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned some 4,000 convictions issued by him between 2003 and 2008, claiming he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles – including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea. Some of the juveniles he sentenced were as young as 10-years old.

Ciavarella was convicted of 12 counts, including racketeering, money laundering, mail fraud and tax evasion. He was also ordered to repay $1.2 million in restitution.

His "kids for cash" program has revealed that corruption is indeed within the prison system, mostly driven by the growth in private prisons seeking profits by any means necessary.

Expand your thought patterns a bit, and think about the hundreds of "terrorists" being held in Gitmo because they had neighbors in Kabul who maybe held a grudge and figured it was OK to sell them out to the CIA for the reward.

And then maybe we could throw this one in for good measure, now that we're being all expansive and all:

Now go ahead and tell me how different it is here in #1 USA; let's hear all about American Exceptionalism, and how much better we are than everybody else in the world.  Yay us.  C'mon - let's hear it.

But y'know what?  We are better than this shit.  Maybe we could start acting like it again.

Connections

I don't know what's up here, but it smells really bad and I just wanna get something posted that maybe starts me stroking in the right direction.

From Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone:

The great mystery story in American politics these days is why, over the course of two presidential administrations (one from each party), there’s been no serious federal criminal investigation of Wall Street during a period of what appears to be epic corruption. People on the outside have speculated and come up with dozens of possible reasons, some plausible, some tending toward the conspiratorial – but there have been very few who've come at the issue from the inside.

We get one of those rare inside accounts in The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins, a new book by Jeff Connaughton, the former aide to Senators Ted Kaufman and Joe Biden. Jeff is well known to reporters like me; during a period when most government officials double-talked or downplayed the Wall Street corruption problem, Jeff was one of the few voices on the Hill who always talked about the subject with appropriate alarm. He shared this quality with his boss Kaufman, the Delaware Senator who took over Biden's seat and instantly became an irritating (to Wall Street) political force by announcing he wasn’t going to run for re-election. "I later learned from reporters that Wall Street was frustrated that they couldn’t find a way to harness Ted or pull in his reins," Jeff writes. "There was no obvious way to pressure Ted because he wasn’t running for re-election."

And from Reuters (via The Agonist):

With less than two months to go before the U.S. presidential election, a new survey found 61 percent of Americans say a candidate's commitment to rooting out corporate wrongdoing will be key in deciding who gets their vote.

Along with keen interest in knowing each candidate's plans to fix the struggling economy, voters want government to do more to fight corporate misconduct - which they say helped cause the financial crisis.

"In these difficult economic times, Americans are mad as hell about corporate wrongdoing and are going to do something about it in the November elections and beyond," said Jordan Thomas, a partner at law firm Labaton Sucharow, which commissioned the survey and which represents corporate whistleblowers.

This is the first I've heard of a continuing disgruntlement over Corruption Inc - it seemed to me that it had been pushed way down the list of priorities.  But when I stop and put some thought into it, I start to see it making some real sense.  How do you fix the problem of Too Much Big Money In Politics if you don't fix the problem of Private Up-Side and Public Down-Side?

Oh yeah - no more thing.  When your clear-eyed and sensible Repub friends start yammerin' about how we need lots more deregulation to "unleash the mighty power of unfettered American free-market know-how", see if this rings a bell for 'em (from an AP story cited in the comments at The Agonist referenced above - and got practically no mention anywhere):

A Texas company that profited for decades by supplying mentally disabled workers to an Iowa turkey plant at wages of 41 cents per hour must pay the men $1.37 million in back wages, a federal judge ruled late Tuesday.

The judgment against Henry's Turkey Service in Goldthwaite is the third of more than $1 million against the company after state authorities in 2009 shut down a dilapidated bunkhouse in rural Iowa where the men had lived since the 1970s.

The Illusion Of Choice

The freedom and justice of the Marketplace is more and more just empty sloganeering.

(click to make it bigger)

The Right To Free Speech

You have the right to speak freely.  You have no right to demand a paycheck for it.

Speak your mind at the bar or at church or on the street corner, and you have a reasonable expectation to be left alone to say whatever you wanna say (within certain limits).

When you're being paid to speak, you have an obligation to stay within guidelines that your employer gets to draw.  Stick to your script - get paid.  Go off on your own, and you're on your own.  And we wish you the very best of luck in all your future endeavors.

I'm not crazy about boycotts because they tend to hurt local business people (ie: neighbors) while leaving the big dogs more or less untouched.  That said, I still think it's a really good idea for consumers to vote with their feet if they feel the need, and with their emails whenever they get a chance.  Smart companies know they have to listen to their customers.  They spend many millions every year trying to convince us they're in line with the trends they spend other millions trying to get us to tell them about.  When we take a few minutes to sign a petition or send an email thru their websites or leave critical comments on their facebook pages, they notice.

So when Rush Limbaugh gets slapped around (finally) for being - for having been for a very long time - a complete punk-ass rent-a-con, what we may be seeing is a kind of self-correction; the immune system of the body politic at work.

I dunno, of course, but it looks a lot like cause and effect to me.  Pay a guy to do something and that's what he does.  Stop payin' him to do it and he's likely to stop doin' it.

(hat tip and inspiration = driftglass)