Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label rentiers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rentiers. Show all posts

Thursday, January 04, 2018

The Big Score


MapLight:

U.S.-based multinational corporations that stand to benefit from a system that gives preferential treatment to foreign income have spent more than $82 million on lobbying in Washington since the beginning of the year.

The arithmetic:

Each YES vote in Congress cost these guys an average of $295,000. 
And the really big ones could realize a tax windfall in the billions of dollars over the next 10 years.

It's not a bad idea to look like a single-issue voter - telling every candidate you're most likely to vote for the ones who want to push back hard against Citizens United.

These people have to spend hours on the phone every day begging for money - and most of them say they hate it.

So at least put it at or near the top of your list of issues, and mention it every time you say anything about politics.

Citizen's United
Gerrymandering
Voter ID

Take your country back from the Rent-Seekers and their Coin-Operated Politicians.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Today's GIF

FCC spokes-critter answers the public outcry:

The Web


Ajit Pai is a lyin' sack of shit.  Net Neutrality is the deregulated internet. This jackass wants to deliver it into the hands of privateers and rent-seekers.


First - fuck you, Mr Pai. The web is absolutely vital to people who are just trying to get on in their everyday lives. (eg) It's nearly impossible now to apply for a job without internet access. Killing Net Neutrality translates into people having to pay for the privilege of looking for a job. Obviously, there's a cost to it now, but your "deregulation" opens it up to massive potential for abuse.

How do we know this "Plan To Restore Internet Freedom" is bogus? The name. When these assholes are selling something that's aimed at fucking us with our pants on, they give it a name that's exactly the opposite of what happens if they put it into practice.

The Clear Skies Act: allowed for massive increases in air pollutants.

The Clean Water Act: raised the allowable amounts of things like arsenic in drinking water. 

The Healthy Forests Initiative: opened protected Public Lands to logging - including clear-cutting in certain cases.

When we deregulated banking the 1st time in the 80s, we got the Savings & Loan crisis.

Deregulating the airlines - are there more air carriers now? Do they offer better service at a lower price?

How 'bout electric utilities? I seem to recall something called Enron.

Deregulating banks again in the 90s gave us a near-total collapse of the world economy, and a "recession" that we're still stuck in.

When 45* fucked up Bears Ears recently, his closing pitch was "protecting our precious resources".

We don't protect our resources by handing them over to private mining interests.

It's the game of opposites.

And by the way:

  • Uranium deposits in Utah (Bears Ears)
  • Pimping the Uranium One scandal
  • Hillary Clinton gave away 20% of our precious uranium supply!?!
  • We must do something to compensate
  • I know - we'll sell off some of the National Monuments for peanuts and let a few rich guys get a lot richer at tax-payer expense
  • Yeah - that's the ticket
As stoopid and incompetent as Cult45 is, there's a whole school of very adept sharks and flocks of talented vultures cashing in.