The Brick Wall
By David Glenn Cox

“Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

So, are you awake yet? Has the gentle coat of slumber slipped from your shoulders? Are you awake to this reality — as it really is and what it really is? Have you done your Christmas shopping yet, a time for celebrating saviors and by god, ours is long overdue. Have you hugged your kids today?

The august and esteemed members of our elected government have created a financial incident, for the purpose of debasing you, as a person, as a mother or as a father, as an individual and as a human being.

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only? Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead, but if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!” — Charles Dickens

Screw the numbers they talk about, they mean nothing. Screw the political parties they mean nothing. If you are a member of a major political party quit today, start new ones. If you would belong to a political party which would not only allow but oversee not only your own deconstruction and debasement, but that of your parents while snatching the future from your children all in one fell swoop, excuse me, but I have to ask, what is wrong with you?

Continued at: The Leftist Review

http://www.leftistreview.com/2012/12/17/the-brick-wall/davidcox/

By David Glenn Cox

Does the Third Reich live on in American foreign policy?

As Russian artillery shells were raining down on Berlin, even after the German Fuehrer had committed suicide, the security state continued on. Through the ruins of the Berlin streets, roving bands of S.S. officers roamed, hunting down and executing on the spot anyone suspected of desertion or cowardess. The third Reich had less than forty eight hours to live; yet, the security state was alive and well and lives on with us today.

Many people fail to understand that though the third Reich was pounded into dust long ago, many of its tenets of government live on. As the Red army rolled into Poland, the Polish underground began to rise up against the German invaders in Warsaw. It was at that moment that Joseph Stalin called a halt to the Russian push towards Warsaw. It was in Stalin we see the afterbirth of modern politics and of the security state. Flash forward to Libya and Syria; American policy has a light touch. Let the combatants bloody and eliminate the strongest and most popular and who do you suppose will be waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces?

It is much safer to be feared than loved when, of the two, one must be dispensed with. Because … love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails. – Niccolo Machiavelli

No man of prestige is without ambition. It is quaint to think of George Washington as a backwoodsman surveyor, but Washington was a blindly ambitious man. He married one of the wealthiest widows in Virginia and through those marriage vows became a wealthy man himself. Yes, it is entertaining to think of the founding fathers by their popular historical images. The French and Indian War cleared Colonial America’s borders of potential adversaries. Ambitious men asked, “What do we need a British crown for, when we might have our own?”

Read more on the Leftist Review.

By David Glenn Cox

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

Today is Thanksgiving, a day to celebrate and to be thankful for all that we have been given; but it is not a memory wipe. It is a year which finds me living in my fourth state in a year but I am in a good place, I now have a home.

We are a good people, badly led and badly misled. We live in a beautiful and bounteous land in which millions upon millions of our own citizens can no longer earn enough to survive in it and yet, that is not considered a national crisis.

It has been 365 days which have seen no improvement in employment or in wages only a continued manipulation of the numbers. A year which has seen Barack Obama re-selected for a second term of office, but only because the alternative was so heinous as to be unthinkable. This is America’s twelfth thanksgiving at war, tens of thousands of our service people will spend this holiday overseas protecting Europe from a Soviet Union which no longer exists. Protecting corporate interests in Colombia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates and dozens of other countries, protecting America from the blow back we ourselves cause.

The United States of America has decided to build 183 F- 22 Raptor fighter planes at a projected cost of $66.7 billion. Originally, the plan was to build 750 of these state of the art aircraft which was scaled back to 381 copies in 2006 and now down to 183 aircraft. The Air Force warned that cutting back the number of aircraft produced increased the per unit cost. I suppose that is so, only, there aren’t any potential adversaries which would demand its capabilities, nor can the plane be exported like the B-2 bomber, it is a 21st century dreadnaught.

Meanwhile, funding continues of the F35 Joint Strike fighter which is expected to be the workhorse of the fighter command. Despite a down economy, despite twenty millions of Americans out of work Congress continued to allocate nearly half a billion dollars until 2010 for a second source engine program for this aircraft. How many times have you been down at the old used car lot and asked the salesman, “She’s a nice Ford pick up truck alright, but what if I need a new engine and Ford can’t supply one? Is there another engine available, from another manufacturer, off the shelf?”

Initial cost estimates of the F-35 Joint Strike fighter began at $89 million per copy in 2006 escalating to $207.6 million per copy in 2011. When the R&D is included the cost rise to $304.15 million for the 32 aircraft delivered. The Air Force estimates over the programs lifetime to cost the American tax payer to be over one trillion dollars. The old expression goes, “a camel is a horse designed by a committee” and the F-35 is an aircraft designed by a Pentagon committee. It does everything, for everybody and costs be damned, this is Buck Rogers stuff:

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True Definitions
By David Glenn Cox

I’ve been reading Conservative websites for the last day or so, curious as to how the Republicans viewed the outcome of the Presidential election. Probably the funniest or the most curious statements were made by Donald Trump. “This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!” quickly followed by “More votes equals a loss…revolution!” To me at least, it is a clear sign that America needs to be more careful about to whom it gives a reality television series.

Many of Trump’s minions quickly aped their leader bringing up the whole birther scenario and even Obama’s college transcript gate. Of course, the usual racist remarks were woven into the subtext along with claims of Obama being a Socialist. I guess, that is what I find most appalling in this maelstrom, the inability of millions of otherwise sane and normal individuals to discern one political philosophy from another.

Cap•i•tal•ism, from Dictionary.com
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

So•cial•ism, from Dictionary.com
1. A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

2. Procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

These are general descriptions, but good enough for our purposes. Under these guidelines, is Barack Obama a Socialist? Obama care is called Socialist, but Obama care mandates were backed up by the Supreme Court of the United States. The decided legitimacy of a mandate on the general public declaring they must purchase a product from a private corporation under penalty of law. It doesn’t sound very Socialist to me, millions of government tax dollars being filtered from public coffers to private hands?

What’s more, Obama care places insurance corporations in full control. Provided the insurance companies stay inside the law, there is no appeal. Under Medicare, the US government is charge and private insurance companies must conform to Medicare in order to participate. So Obama care then becomes the antithesis of Socialism; maybe it was Obama’s bailout of GM and Chrysler which convinced the multitudes of Republican voters that this President was a Socialist.

During the GM bankruptcy, General Motors was allowed to pick and choose which assets to keep and which to discard. Among the discarded assets was an aluminum casting plant along the banks of the Hudson River. The State of New York and the Environmental Protection Agency had listed the plant as a superfund clean up site and estimated the minimum cost of cleaning the site was between $900 million to a billion dollars.

When the auto executives came to Capital hill hat in hand, they were excoriated by our representatives for flying to Washington on board a private jet. They received a very severe tongue lashing, then they given everything which they had asked for. Not one word was uttered during the process, about General Motors being the second largest auto manufacturer in China. Nor were GM’s profits in China exceeding $3 billion annually considered. Over ten thousand white collar employees were let go at Chrysler and GM, their pensions and benefits vanished like a mirage at the hands of these… Socialists?

Thousands of pensioners woke to find their pensions had disappeared as well, GM’s pension obligations were largely eliminated, pushing seniors over to the public trough of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation = (You & I). There were no strings attached to this agreement, GM was free to take the money and if they so chose, to lock the door on every domestic manufacturing plant and laugh about it all the way home. Clearly, if this is Socialism, Obama is not very good at it, but likewise, this isn’t really Capitalism either.

“GM now has about a $2,000-per-car manufacturing advantage over its Japanese and European rivals, a swing from a similar-sized disadvantage before the restructuring,” said David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research. I guess that’s why GM has reduced prices to reflect their more competitive stance in the market place … not! An August 2012 report to Congress from the White House stated if the US government were to sell its remaining stake in GM, it would result in a loss to tax payers of $25.1 billion dollars. This was a government beat down of workers, young, old and retired.

In Obama’s $787 billion dollar stimulus, one third of that total went in the form of tax cuts to private corporations. With approximately 30,000 firms in the US that works out to an average benefit of 8,743,000 per firm. You and I, well, let’s see, we received an estimated benefit each from the stimulus of $1,668. No one is arguing over the need for a stimulus, what I’m saying is that this was neither Socialism nor Capitalism. The original idea was to stimulate the economy, but a disproportionate amount of the money went to the top of the economy instead of where people were hurting at the bottom, kind of like fighting a forest fire by hosing down the tops of trees.

This was the same path begun by Herbert Hoover when he initiated a program with $2 billion to refinance the debts of banks and railroads. Was Hoover also a Socialist or is Obama a Republican? Cash for Clunkers was a program designed to help the big three automakers facing 30,000 leased vehicles being returned per month. With a crumbling economy this spelled disaster for all automakers, foreign and domestic. Disproportionately, the domestic lots saw returning Denali’s and Escalades, Explorers and Ram Trucks with Hemi’s, yeah cool; Hemi’s with $4.00 a gallon gasoline. The same program had been tried by Henry Ford back in the last Great Depression.

Ford’s program, bought back Model T’s and crushed them when the customer bough a new Model A. Only, there were already so many Model T’s out there and only a few people who could afford a new Model that the program was a failure. This time around, the program worked by stabilizing the price of new cars by eliminating the supply of used cars. Arguably, government intervention in an industry could be considered a sort of left handed Socialism. Except that, in Socialism the government moves to create the greatest good for the greatest number, while with this program, it did the opposite, giving tax breaks to those able to afford a new car, while punishing those who could not afford a new car by raising the price of used cars, a sort of Socialism in reverse.

Was Obama acting as a Socialist? Was Henry Ford acting as a Socialist?

Many on the political left were also greatly disenchanted by the performance of Barack Obama in his first term. To me, I fall back on the takes one to know one rule. The attacks on Obama from the left were as loud as the attacks from the right; it was Rahm Emanuel who said “Fuck the UAW” he did not say, “Fuck the UAW, comrade.” Asked in anger by Obama’s press secretary if we, (the professional Left) wanted a Canadian style health care the left answered resoundingly “Yes!” the right answered, “Oh heavens, no!”

There is a disconnection here, a jumble of political philosophies and of political rhetoric. The political right seems obsessed with chasing non-issues or serving up tired political bromides of Socialist, Communist or foreign born alien. On Election Day, I even saw NRA ads claiming Barack Obama was going to take your guns away, despite the fact that Obama couldn’t be lured into a gun debate even in the wake of the Batman massacre. The political right has attempted to paint Barack Obama’s first term as a failure and speaking as a Socialist, I have to agree. It was a failure, so much so, that Michael Moore posted an election day plea to forgive and forget Obama’s Right wing transgressions or else the sky would fall.

The left was pleading to the faithful to forgive Obama’s Right wing policies, while the Right was pleading to elect Romney. To return America to the traditional Republican values of smaller government except, Obama cut the size of government more than any president in recent history. It doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? Obama isn’t a Socialist but he isn’t a Capitalist either, he is something else entirely. A Right wing Democrat, corporate plutocrat with a license to kill in his finger tips.

We’ve see a continuation of the Bush war policies and a continuation of Bush Tax policies. We see our rights extinguished as the Supreme Court becomes openly politicized and criminalized as well. Two major political parties which agree on most matters of war and of rescue, of free trade and of monetary policy, as an insane black curtain of world turned upside down madness descends upon us. It is now a one party state, where disputes are settled along the margins.

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power…. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.” – Henry A. Wallace

So, what does it all mean? It means Donald Trump is correct, but for all of the wrong reasons. This country does need a revolution; there is no other means of rectification. Your taxes will continue to increase; if you have wages, they won’t keep up with inflation. The public school systems will continue to deteriorate and your children will fight endless wars of aggrandizement until the eventual collapse comes, which by the way, will be blamed upon you.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html

The Song Remains the Same
By David Glenn Cox

Soon we shall hold the non-election, to decide between the two major non-candidates based on their positions on the non-issues. Lots and lots of amorphous talk, little about reality and none about sequestration. Hard talk is for after the election, looking at Greece and what austerity has done to her people; one can only hold our heads and weep for the future.

Another thirty days has passed and the BLS this morning released its monthly jobs report. It’s almost lost its thrill, settling into a monthly rehash of filtered numbers, take for instance, Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 171,000 this month, while the numbers of workers entering the workforce increased by 578,000 so from the get go, we’re down 400,000 jobs. In a calendar year the number of Americans employed, rose by just over three million while at the same time the number of Americans entering the workforce seeking a job increased by 3,714,000.

Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its jobs report and you can’t blame them, really, for trying to put the best face on it. Each month, the report lists the number of new jobs created without supplying context. The unemployment rate ticked up 0.1 this month which is referred to as;

“Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 171,000 in October, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 7.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in professional and business services, health care, and retail trade.”

But unemployment was changed, it went up 0.1 percent, if the number had gone down 0.1 percent the administration would jolly well be shouting it from the rooftops, as proof positive, their economic policies were working. Most of this months job gains came as follows,

Professional and business service – 51,000
Health Care – 31,000
Services to buildings and dwellings – 13,000 (what a strange category)
Computers systems design – 7000
Retail trade – 36,000
Construction – 17,000

From the BLS report – “Mining lost 9,000 jobs in October, with most of the decline occurring in support activities for mining. Since May of this year, employment in mining has decreased by 17,000.

Employment in other major industries, including wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, information, financial activities, and government, showed little change over the month.”

“Little change,” four years of little change, but there is some change.

Self employed workers, unincorporated – October 2011, 873,000 and this October, 758,000

Part time for economic reasons – October 2011, 8,258,000 and this October, 8,344,000.

Could only find Part time work – October 2011, 2,488,000 and this October, 2,614,000.

The U-6 unemployment rate dropped from 16% last October to 14.6% this October.

Officially, the shiny official polished number of unemployed stands at 12,258,000 this month, officially this month, a population larger than every man, women and child in Los Angeles, Miami and Dallas / Fort Worth combined, are seeking a job in the United States, but that is not all, it couldn’t be? You see there is another sub set (read that, untermunchin) another population not counted as unemployed.
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Playing with Numbers
By David Glenn Cox

I only watched the first of the three Presidential debates and after the media declared Willard (Mitt) Romney the winner of the first debate, I didn’t see much point in watching any further. I had mistakenly thought this was an audience participation event, when it was merely a spectacle to be observed by us weed benders. The thundering media herd declares for us the winner and we are expected to sit there, over awed and clap when the applause sign lights up.

I don’t have a dog in this fight; I could easily do fifteen hundred words on the deficiencies of either candidate. In the words of George Wallace, “There ain’t a dimes worth of difference between them. “Two candidates, both, unknown quantities, Barack Obama has been in the public spotlight through two Presidential campaigns plus, four years as President and yet all we know of him is a public image.

We know that when push comes to shove Obama will side with Republicans over his own party. We know Obama will never, ever, ever side with the American people over Corporate America. We know American foreign policy under Barack Obama is no different than it was under Bush / Cheney. The American Imperialist Juggernaut continues unimpeded and will continue unimpeded regardless of who wins this stage show election.

The only thing we really know with any certainty about Willard (Mitt) Romney is that he is insanely rich. He was born insanely rich, attended all the best schools and he took his top drawer education and proceeded to use it to milk the American economy, like a cow. He is a leveraged buy out specialist, he buys up companies to loot them of their assets and once the process is complete, throws the husk and the workers away.

Personally, I thought Obama won the first debate, though Romney certainly looked Presidential enough with his professionally frosted side burns. But when put on the defensive Romney’s voice pitch began to rise, it was a clear sign of rising tension and a failure of debate 101. Despite this, the media claimed Romney won the first debate and then the media declares Obama won the second debate and then the third.

The media claimed Romney earned a huge bump in popularity because of his debate performance, really? While 67 million people watched the first debate, how many of them were undecided voters? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, 10% were undecided voters or 6.7 million voters. So let’s say, that every last one of those undecided viewers decided right then and there, “You know what Margaret, I think that Mitt Romney is on to something, I’m kicking Barack Obama to the curb and voting for Mitt Romney.” There are 236 million people of voting age in this country and almost half of them vote, so if half of those undecided voters turn up at the polls and vote for Willard (Mitt) Romney were looking at 3.4 million votes. Not bad, but certainly not a game changer in an election of 91 million votes.

Ten days ago, every national poll listed Barack Obama as way out in front in the contest. Even Fox News had Obama out in front and now… the contest is deadlocked despite Barack Obama being declared the winner of the last two debates. How can that be? How can a sitting President with adequate approval numbers lose his dominating lead in ten days to a candidate who basically calls 47 percent of the electorate unnecessary untermunchin.

It is a game called swing state, Ohio is the swing states of all swing states and is leaning toward Obama with a 6 percent undecided. How much is 6 % of the Ohio electorate, 83,000 votes.

Time – Obama 49-44 with 3% undecided
Rasmussen – Tied 48 – 48 with 6% undecided
Quinnipiac / CBS – Obama 50 -48 with 3% undecided
Fox – Obama 46 – 43 with 10% undecided

Total Number of registered voters in Ohio, 7,722,180
Combined number of voters polled in the four national polls above; 4,171

Four national polls ask less than one than one tenth of the voters in Erie county Ohio their preference and then proclaim this number as a valid indicator.

The next toss up state, is Florida, hmmm, Florida. What do we know about Florida, orange juice, beaches, Mickey Mouse and senior citizens, lots and lots of senior citizens. So, hypothetically, if a campaign were to talk about privatizing Social Security in Florida it would be suicidal, right?

Rasmussen – Romney 51- 46 with 2% undecided
Fox – Romney 48- 45 with 6% undecided
CNN – Romney 49- 48 with 2% undecided
Survey USA – Obama 47- 46 with 5% undecided

Total number of registered voters in Florida, 11,778,140
Number of voters identifying themselves as Democrats, 4,715,684
Number of voters identifying themselves as Republicans, 4,214,241
No party affiliation, 2,516,757
Combined number of Florida voters polled in the four national polls above, 3,246

So hypothetically, Obama should have a 500,000 vote party advantage. If we split the “no affiliation” category between the two candidates Obama still leads. There are 4.2 million seniors in Florida over 60 years of age. It comprises the states largest voting block, in a state which technically, at least, leans Democratic and the national polls have Romney in the lead over a sitting President by asking one third of one percent of likely Florida voters.

Out West, Colorado is also listed as a “swing state” most of the national polls show Romney with a slight lead. Some of the national polls used a few as 500 likely voters to determine that outcome, the outcome they (the media) wanted.
Colorado has just a few variables which don’t show up in telephone polls of 500 likely voters. First, since 2000, the state’s population has increased by 15% mainly in the urban areas of Denver and Boulder. Secondly, these numbers are younger and better educated, both poor indicators for Republican candidates.

Colorado’s Hispanic population surged by 41 percent since 2000 and Hispanics represent 21 % of the population in Colorado. This combined with the fact that Obama carried a vast majority of Hispanic voters in 2008 carrying the state by nine percentage points over John McCain. What swing state, is Willard (Mitt) Romney really that good of a candidate?

Iowa where the campaign began so long ago and yet is still to decide on a candidate. The state has 607,936 registered Republicans versus 595,423 registered Democrats. In 2008, Barack Obama carried the state with 54% of the vote, what could have changed? Iowa’s economy has fared better than most places in the United States, so why the change?

Rasmussen, Tied, 48- 48 with 2% undecided.
PPP – Romney, 48-49 with 4% undecided
NBC/WSJ/Marist – Obama, 51- 43 with 4% undecided
We Ask America – Obama, 49 – 46 with 4% undecided

Registered Iowa voters – 2,090,309
Total number of Iowa voters polled above- 4,005

Now it all gets very interesting when we look at these amazing number shifts which have closed a once lop sided race and turned it into a nail biter. Did the rescue helicopters crash in Iran; was Obama filmed while driving a tank? Was Willard (Mitt) Romney’s debate performance so magnificently strong, that overnight, millions upon millions of Americans just up and changed their minds?

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” – Mark Twain

Polling data from thirty days ago;

NBC/ WSJ, Obama 49 – 46 with 3.4% undecided
NPR, Obama 51 – 44 with 4% undecided
ABC/ Wash Post, Obama 49 – 47 with 4% undecided
Quinnipiac, Obama 49 – 45 with 6% undecided
Wash Times, Obama 50 – 41 with 7% undecided
Politico, Obama 49 – 47 with 5% undecided
FOX, Obama 48 – 43 with 4% undecided
Bloomberg, Obama 49 – 43 with 4% undecided
National Journal, Obama 50 – 43 with 3% undecided

Either a sitting President with no major gaffs in his campaign has suddenly become unpopular for no particular reason, what so ever as to prompt tens of millions of voters to change their minds about him in a scant thirty days. These millions are suddenly willing to do a complete 180 degree about face in their political preferences, swayed by the person, persona and politics of Willard (Mitt) Romney. Either it is so, or the numbers are jimmied. It is an impossibility outside of the domain of heaven.

“A statistician is a person who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.” – Unknown

“In earlier times, they had no statistics, and so they had to fall back on lies.” – Stephan Leacock

Socialism
By David Glenn Cox

It is an easy enough exercise to point and laugh at the deficiencies of capitalism, but still, always remembering that it is impolite to make fun of cripples and the lame. Socialism has gotten really terrible publicity; most likely from hanging around in some bad neighborhoods. The American idea of socialism is of some dogmatic commissar standing over us as we inventory our underwear, making sure we don’t have too many pairs of drawers. Or, that Socialism is some subversive foreign plot, hatched by enemy agents designed to break down the moral fiber of America, to weaken us, for conquest through either rock and roll or through comic books, video games or both.

If you would want to demonize something in the United States of America, simply tie it together with socialism and before long, you too could raise an angry torch-carrying mob or small army of ministers on phone-trees calling up the faithful to fight back the Red Menace.

Do you want to know what socialism is about? I mean, do you really want to know what socialism is about Charlie Brown? Socialism is a traffic light; it says the traffic stops for three minutes going this way and for three minutes going the other way. It doesn’t care what kind of car you drive or where you live. It divides the usage of the intersection fairly without standing or class. It is really a very simple solution to some very complex problems. Of course to conservatives, I suppose it does carve into that blessed freedom of theirs, which they are always so concerned about.

I imagine to a libertarian traffic lights must appear to be an abomination. Do they lay awake at night wondering, why can’t entrepreneurs and job creators like me, just run those pesky traffic lights? They have places to be and important work to do; while you, you’re just running to the grocery store for milk and Cheetos. Why can’t the rich purchase a sticker from the state which allows them to run traffic signals and stop signs? Think of the revenue a state might earn from a program like that! What, you don’t think that is a good idea? Or do you mean some things are more import than money? Like public safety. Are you coming around to our way of thinking, comrade?

By David Glenn Cox

Good news? Image: Doug Geisler / Flickr

Oh, heavens be praised! It’s a miracle right out of scripture! The gods of political rhetoric and book keeping have favored us to look upon its countenance. I’ve been reading the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report, every month, for over two and a half years and I’ve never seen anything even remotely similar to this one.

From the BLS –

The unemployment rate declined by 0.3 percentage point to 7.8 percent in September. For the first 8 months of the year, the rate held within a narrow range of 8.1 and 8.3 percent. The number of unemployed persons, at 12.1 million, decreased by
456,000 in September.

Why that’s the most amazing thing since, well… ever! Just five weeks before a Presidential election, the economy suddenly takes off like a Shelby Cobra, as the number of unemployed drops by almost a half a million workers in just 30 days! No telling how many jobs were created to make the unemployment rate drop 0.3 percent, it must have been in the hundreds of thousands of new jobs!

From the BLS:

The unemployment rate decreased to 7.8 percent in September, and total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 114,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in health care and in transportation and warehousing but changed little in most other major industries.

114,000??? But, but, but, the economic created 206,000 new jobs last month, at least, according to the revisions made in last months figures. It can only be explained as the hand of the deity, as the number employed miraculously explodes.

Number employed in July – 142,220,000
Number employed in August – 142,101,000
Number employed in Sept. – 142,974,000

Number unemployed in July – 12,794,000
Number unemployed in August – 12,544,000
Number unemployed in Sept. – 12,088,000

It must be the wondrous action of the deity, like that loaves and fishes thing, all over again. How else could 114,000 new jobs account for 456,000 less unemployed? Obama has employed the multitude, with his basket filled with a few new jobs and fishes.

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If the Price Is Right
By David Glenn Cox

The United States of America was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that everything is for sale — if the price is right. It is illusionary and fraudulent, it is a con job, and so, it becomes abundantly clear that wealth equals freedom and poverty equals slavery. It makes both political parties transparent when Willard “Mitt” Romney says he doesn’t want government to limit his freedom. Well, there you have it.

I went to a job interview the other day; a second interview no less, and for a good job. I don’t think I will get the job because there are too many hurdles to surmount, but the sales manager said to me: “If we call you back for a third interview we will put an offer on the table for you to consider.” He meant a contract, which specified all aspects of my behavior both on and off the job. It sounded more like a real estate closing or buying a car, but that is exactly the point I’m getting at.

Supposedly, we live in this land with mythical unicorn freedom in a garden of earthly delights. But this contract, which offers a monetary figure I’d be ashamed to publicly admit wasn’t just for my services, was for my soul. I do hereby purchase one human worker for the sum of $xxx annually. He or she agrees to live as we prescribe under penalty of instant and grinding poverty. Well, it’s nice to be invited to the prom even if you can’t dance.

My income would be directly dependant on the amount of product I sold. If I didn’t sell enough product, I would be fired. My goal would be to sell as much product in any earthly way possible. On the surface I would be a guy in slacks, a dress shirt and shiny shoes doing the capitalist thing, selling product, baby. Actually, I would be no different than a prostitute getting into a car at a bus stop. I would be selling myself for my livelihood, or more correctly, I would be selling myself for my employer’s livelihood.

This is how Capitalism operates — surreptitiously and insidiously. Capitalism is the carrot on the stick to encourage the little burro to pull the wagon. Capitalism is a juicy promise which never quite meets the expectation; a meal which smells good but does not satisfy. It declares we make one more sales call, unload one more truck or drive one more mile to make someone else more money. The most important principle of Capitalism is the silent directive, which is neither written down nor chiseled in stone: the people must never know the truth; they must be misled and propagandized. Seal team six killed Osama Bin Laden, but who was Osama Bin Laden? What was the real reason Richard Nixon was removed from office? The only thing we ever know for sure is that much of what we are told consists of lies.

http://www.leftistreview.com/2012/10/03/if-the-price-is-right/davidcox/

More Than Skin Deep
By David Glenn Cox

I watched Patrick and Sherri Brandon moving out from the home they’d purchased in 2000, for $96,500. They couldn’t pay the Mortgage and the bank foreclosed. The bank took their bad mortgage to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and thanks to Tim Geithner, was made whole. The Federal Home Lone Mortgage Corporation will take this property and bundle it with other distressed properties and then auction them off to(drum roll here)… the banks.

The banks will re- purchase these properties for .22 on the dollar and offer them again for sale at $78,000. See how this works? The Brandon’s were foreclosed on for $45,000 and the FMLMC repaid the bank in full; the government insurance policy recovers the .22 cents on the dollar or $12, 3700. The only ones out here are Patrick & Brandy and their children. Patrick and Brandy ran Spirit & Truth Design ware LLC. They are also Ministers in a local church, but that doesn’t matter much, does it? As common as sands on a beach, blown away by the corporate storm, a sale item on the discount rack of the Corporate – Government great super market of give away days.

If the bank sells the house and turns a profit, it kicks some money back to Uncle Money Bags. If, in three years the bank hasn’t turned a profit Uncle Money Bags will cut the bank a rebate check, sound fair enough for you? The bank forecloses on a family and throws them out into the street and your government goes into a partnership deal and guarantees a profit to the bank. It’s kind of the reverse mirror image of Mitt’s Romney’s forty seven percent, where the one percent are force fed, goodies and freebies and you and I pay their freight.

How do you love a country that won’t love you back? Robert Moses is ninety two years old, he’s a WW2 veteran with a heart condition and he too, is facing foreclosure. Who would have thunk it, a WW2 veteran trying to game the system by taking advantage of those poor unsuspecting bankers. Or maybe, Robert Moses is the worst house flipper in American history after having lived in his home for over four decades.

“Seniors have been set upon by these banks in a very, very vicious manner,” asserted Archbishop Franzo King of the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, who said he was himself a senior and lost his home to foreclosure recently. “We have to shake off that cloak of shame and put on our war clothes and fight these gangsters.”

I ride these streets of Cleveland and it is like a scene out of a post apocalyptic movie. Empty factories, empty buildings, just a mile from where I sit, there is a three story office building as long as a football field and as empty as a government promise, with its front door just swinging wide open. I joke that when I get rich, I’m gonna buy it and live there and it would be funny except, this isn’t an accident. This was a well orchestrated plan, to set us up, just to knock us back down.

It is a treason of the highest order regardless of the political party, but what can you expect, but to be sold out like a discount Jesus marked down to nineteen ninety five, silver on the barrel head. Yes indeed, Soylent Green is made of people. They would make food out of us if they could get away with it and put it together with the right marketing plan. Soylent Green! Now in Jalapeño Cheese Flavor!

This is a little convoluted, but I want you to understand how this all works in the Corporate Playhouse we call Washington, Patrick and Sherri Brandon and Robert Moses…out, because the government is leveraged against them. Mortgage rates are at 3.3 percent on a thirty year loan. The loan originator earns 1% of that amount and then the bank has to borrow the money from the Federal Reserve at 0.25% so the bank makes 2% less their paperwork and overhead. Take Patrick & Brandy’s house at $78,000 the bank would make less than 2% or around $1,560 on a thirty year mortgage. True, if the bank were making hundreds of these loans, I suppose they could make it up on the volume, but then they would have to hire more employees.
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