Roman Street to Bordighera. ~Claude Monet.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Friday, September 13, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
There's another important anniversary at this time of year. Five years ago this week the Banksters crashed our economy, basically by lying and stealing. Their "punishment" cost trillions. Out of our pockets, not theirs.
In summary, the financial industry collectively decided that you could fund economic growth despite stagnant wages through piling on mountains of debt. But when it all went bad, the solution wasn’t to rebalance the economy, to get money into the hands of ordinary workers and preference wages over assets. The solution was to point a fire hose of money at the people who caused the problem, and inflate their assets to preserve the status quo. The Federal Reserve’s emergency lending and then quantitative easing rescued bank balance sheets. The five biggest U.S. banks are now 30 percent bigger than they were at the height of the crisis, nursed back to health by the government. [...]Which brings us once again to the largest income gap between since the Roaring 1920s when the previous record was set.
Worst of all, despite a crisis built on fraud, nobody who perpetrated that fraud saw the inside of a jail cell, removing any meaningful deterrent for financial crimes. Most of those criminals walked away with enough money to fund their lavish lifestyles forever.
The top 1 percent of U.S. earners collected 19.3 percent of all household income in 2012, their largest stake in Internal Revenue Service figures in at least a century. The previous peak of 18.7 percent came back in 1927, according to an analysis of IRS figures dating to 1913 by economists at the University of California, Berkley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.And do spare me the wailing about how the 1 percenters suffered more during the crash:
[S]ince the recession officially ended in June 2009, the top 1 percent have enjoyed the benefits of rising corporate profits and stock prices: 95 percent of the income gains reported since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent.There oughta be a law. Oh wait. There was a law. They got it abolished and they'll be damned if they're going to allow it to be reinstated.
Last year alone, the incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans rose 19.6 percent, compared with a 1 percent increase for the remaining 99 percent.
By Capt. Fogg
The people who like to manipulate us by creating and preserving anger, like to give us slogans. Remember the Maine, Remember the Alamo, Remember Pearl Harbor, Remember the Raisin! Never Forget!!
All these things are inevitably forgotten despite the slogan advertising campaigns and sooner or later we'll get tired of remembering 9/11. Sloganeers will get tired of milking the faded fear and self-pity and choreographed mourning. The people who were born too late to remember it will eventually need to be told to remember something else that some party needs to cultivate anger about, so as to pass some kind of horror like the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 or the Patriot Act. 9/11 will be forgotten by most everyone but historians and those who remember will remember it in context of the things we did and the laws we passed and the freedom we gave up while we were whipped into a passion.
Think calls to 'always remember' are genuine and untainted by politics? Wonder why we shouted Remember Hoover! in 1936 but nobody remembers to Remember Bush? Remember Katrina and at least 1800 fatalities? Why not? We spent billions and billions on a the Largest government agency in history and abridged the Bill of Rights in 2001, but we didn't do a damned thing to improve reactions to natural disasters which you can be sure will occur more often than a repeat of 9/11.
I suspect that calls to remember are calls to preserve a mental state in which we can be manipulated, tricked and sold some unsavory product. Stay angry, stay afraid and obey.
The people who like to manipulate us by creating and preserving anger, like to give us slogans. Remember the Maine, Remember the Alamo, Remember Pearl Harbor, Remember the Raisin! Never Forget!!
All these things are inevitably forgotten despite the slogan advertising campaigns and sooner or later we'll get tired of remembering 9/11. Sloganeers will get tired of milking the faded fear and self-pity and choreographed mourning. The people who were born too late to remember it will eventually need to be told to remember something else that some party needs to cultivate anger about, so as to pass some kind of horror like the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 or the Patriot Act. 9/11 will be forgotten by most everyone but historians and those who remember will remember it in context of the things we did and the laws we passed and the freedom we gave up while we were whipped into a passion.
Think calls to 'always remember' are genuine and untainted by politics? Wonder why we shouted Remember Hoover! in 1936 but nobody remembers to Remember Bush? Remember Katrina and at least 1800 fatalities? Why not? We spent billions and billions on a the Largest government agency in history and abridged the Bill of Rights in 2001, but we didn't do a damned thing to improve reactions to natural disasters which you can be sure will occur more often than a repeat of 9/11.
I suspect that calls to remember are calls to preserve a mental state in which we can be manipulated, tricked and sold some unsavory product. Stay angry, stay afraid and obey.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Long day offline. My internets tell me we aren't bombing Syria this week. I'm good with that. George Zimmerman is still a raging maniac who's allowed to wander the streets waving around loaded guns. Not so good with that but unsurprised. And apparently somebody killed the Redskins which launched an epic breakdown on my twitters.
In the words of Scarlett O'Hara: "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow."
In the words of Scarlett O'Hara: "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow."
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