The Lights of Perverted Science
By David Glenn Cox

During the darkest days of World War II, Winston Churchill said something which was quite radical for the time and largely went unnoticed, but in our modern 21st Century existence, perhaps it needs to be reconsidered.

“If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

By “perverted science”, Churchill meant radar and proximity fuses. This was before the buzz bombs or the V-2. It is such an explicit and exquisite term, perverted science, encapsulating and distilling knowledge without benefit, counterproductive, Mary-Shelly-Frankenstein knowledge. Nightmare technologies like nuclear weapons which once begun can never be ended. Our country is awash in genetically modified foods, fracking, drones, armed guards and RFI chips, yet, when we look at these things in a rear view mirror to see a reversed image, we see something far more frightening, as the seeds perverted science can only prosper in the soils of perverted government. Other governments around the world have dismissed out of hand proposals for GMO crops, GMO foods, fracking and drone surveillance.

This is made possible by corporate control of the American media creating a false sense of reality and of normality. The media in the United States of America is nearly as censored and editorially controlled as was the German press under Joseph Goebbels during the Nazi era. It was way back in February, almost an eon ago to modern media outlets when Chris Dorner, a fired Los Angeles Policeman killed two fellow officers and wounded three others. Dorner left behind a manifesto on his Facebook page claiming to have been victimized by the authorities because he had reported a fellow officer for abusing a mentally ill suspect. Read the rest of this entry →

That’s why they call it a Police State
By David Glenn Cox

Understand this… the politics you knew as a child or even the politics you knew before the 2000 election, no longer exist. There is only one political party in this country, the money Party. All politicians must appease the money Party. Your Congressman or Senator might come across back home as an arch Conservative or a Liberal environmentalist, but in the halls of power there isn’t a dimes worth of difference between them.

As a population we live with an overload of inputs, 9-11, the wars, the shootings and the endless carnage brought about by the political philosophies of those in our government, who are neither Republicans nor Democrats.

Politically I am a Socialist, I used to be a Democrat and I never left the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me (Us). This New Great Depression has afflicted our economy for four years now. It has put tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans into economic distress and Barack Obama’s answer to all of this has been the same answer as that derived by Herbert Hoover.

“Economic depression can not be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement” ~ Herbert Hoover

Partisan rhetoric about the effects of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal aside, in 8 years the American workers had recovered their prosperity. These workers had the right to join a labor union and they had a Social Security income to depend upon, to build a decent retirement.

Obama has followed the Hoover method; he’s cut taxes for business again and again. Obama’s has even proposed a plan for government to subsidize labor costs for corporations. That isn’t liberal or conservative politics, its Fascism. It represents the co-mingling of industry and government. To live in a country where industry sets the safety standards, a country where the government sides with GM against the UAW and then profits directly from the workers loss.

A country where a Democratic President loves gun control and there’s only one problem with gun control, besides being a fanciful and unworkable penalty against the law abiding, and that problem is the cops.

The other day in Rancho Cordoba California, three policemen shot and killed a suspect. The police had been called to a domestic dispute and when the officers tried to remove the man from the bedroom he resisted arrest. Police say, he nearly overpowered the three officers, so the three officers shot and killed him. Doesn’t that seem a bit of a harsh sentence for resisting arrest? Couldn’t they have called the station house for help, he was after all unarmed. Either, this was a baddest man ever to step out of the mountains or the Rancho Cordoba police force needs tougher physical standards. Three on one, armed with night sticks, pepper spray and tasers and the cop’s first answer was to shoot him?

They used to call these things isolated incidents, but not anymore. In Cleveland, a police officer heard a loud noise, which he presumed came from a car leaving the court-house parking lot. The officer put on his thinking cap and deduced he was under fire from terrorists in a car leaving the parking lot at a normal speed. So cleaver were the two suspected terrorists, both middle-aged, that no one else in the area even suspected that there had been a shooting, isn’t that amazing?

The officer returned fire on the car and then, somehow in the police thought processes, couldn’t understand why the car wouldn’t want to stop. Gee, you’re driving along when suddenly bullets are whizzing around your head for no apparent reason. Would you stop and try to explain the mistake to the nice officers? Eventually, after a high-speed chase, police officers fired 137 rounds and killed two unarmed citizens, guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In Marin County Florida, an officer shot a fleeing suspect in the back and a Grand Jury failed to indict the officer. A You Tube video from the dash cam clearly shows the altercation between the suspect and the two officers. When the suspect takes off and begins running away, without reflection, the officer fires automatically and kills the suspect. Here’s what’s important, activists protest and picket over President Obama’s claim to executive authority over targeted killings, but a Grand Jury refused to indict a cop who clearly executed a fleeing suspect.

Do police now hold the power of life and death over us all?

On July 10, 2011 Kelly Thomas was beaten and suffocated by five Fullerton Police Officers. Kelly Thomas was a homeless man and a diagnosed schizophrenic. Police had stopped Thomas for a suspected auto burglary, but Thomas had nothing on him indicating he was involved. Over the next 15 minutes the officers taunt Thomas, threatening to arrest him for imaginary crimes, until finally, Officer Ramos says, “Now, you see my fists, they’re about to fuck you up.”

Thomas was tasered six times, until the taser guns ran dry and then, he was beaten and finally, suffocated by five officers piling on top of his lifeless body. Thomas’s body then lay on the sidewalk, in a puddle of his own leaking body fluids, while paramedics attended to the cop’s bloody knuckles.

Kelly Thomas was beaten to death by police on the streets of Fullerton California, but what was Kelly Thomas charged with? The officers knew Kelly Thomas, he was a fixture, and they’d talked to him before. They knew he was homeless, but rather than say homeless, let’s say instead, that they knew he was powerless to stop the officer’s.

Kelly Thomas had no cell phone or high-powered attorney. His economic status made him an easy victim. So let’s beat up that homeless guy, just for fun. Oop’s we’ve killed him.

You are closer to Kelly Thomas than you could ever imagine.

In February of last year, Officer Daniel Harmon-Wright killed 54-year-old Patricia Cook in the parking lot of Epiphany Catholic School in Culpeper, Virginia, for the crime of driving away when he was trying to question her.

The jury recommended a three-year sentence, after the officer had fired his pistol five times into the body of an unarmed Sunday school teacher. He faced a possible 25 year prison sentence, but soon, will be back out on the streets with us again.

When your greatest fear of gun violence comes from the police force themselves, gun control is a bad idea. Because once the police know the average citizen is powerless against them, we’re all Kelly Thomas. And when you consider the volume and the rise of “shoot first, make excuses later,” police work. Given American police forces penchant for gun violence, they would quickly make the Gestapo look like grade school crossing guards.

An all-powerful imperial police force, with the power of life or death over the average citizen in a free country is an absurdity. That’s why they call it a police state.

Where Do They Go?
By David Glenn Cox

All along the watchtower princes kept the view of strange days and of self-same nights.

This month’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report expresses the symptoms of a lingering stagnation that smells. Actual new job hires were 17,000 in a labor population of nearly 157 million; two million more working compared to last year, with another two million more “no longer in the labor force.” Either way, split the difference as the number of officially unemployed grew for a third consecutive month to 12,332,000.

Wages rose at the ridiculously paltry rate of 0.5 percent, seasonally adjusted for three months and for the year; compensation rose only 1.9%. A desert sheik should run such a frugal household. At 1.9% wage growth, any plans for an economic recovery should be placed well off into the far distant future. It’s true you know, you can’t stand still. You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse. The numbers all meander around so, up one month and down the next, but never improving outside of a narrow range.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics report says: “Employer costs for health benefits increased 2.8 percent over the year. In December 2011 the increase was 3.5 percent.” Who paid that increase? So the averages for Americans of all stations are falling backwards. Take heart ye of the class struggle, wages for the higher-ups are doing only proportionally better. Retail workers’ wages increased an average of ten dollars a week, while their boss made twenty. But either way it’s only McDonald’s money.

Weekly hours worked are down in every employment category year after year, save for business services and healthcare. It’s not just a slowdown in this industry or in that, it is a widespread malaise. In its January report the BLS is careful to mention in the footnotes: “Note: Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of the January data.”

Median unemployment duration in weeks:

October – 19.6

November – 18.9

December – 18.00

January – 16.00

I never would have guessed that they adjusted the population controls, would you? Such adjustments make it difficult to assess changes over time through data comparisons and what they’re saying numerically doesn’t truly express the meaning existentially. It means if you were to lose your job today, on average, in a best case scenario, you won’t find a new job until June.

Now take a look at the average length of stay on unemployment.

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/02/17/where-do-they-go/davidcox/

Praising Money Tonight in the House of the Lord
By David Glenn Cox

It was a red carpet and searchlight extravaganza playing to a full house. Millionaires, multi-millionaires and even mega-multi-millionaires filled every seat. Then the star of show burst through the doors and worked the crowd no differently than a diamond studded televangelist. Smiles and glad hands for all, we’re praising money tonight in the house of the lord.

Stalinist applause filled the room, two minutes, then four minutes, then finally, the extra had his walk-on moment, banging the over-sized novelty gavel and the crowd grew quiet. John Boehner announced the President to the room and the pandemonium returned. Screams and shouts of joy completely unfettered and unencumbered, it was as if the Beatles had reunited and were suddenly appearing unannounced.

With that many rich folks all together in one room and all so orgasmic-ally delighted by the appearance of the President one must ask as a poor man, what’s this mean to me? I mean, we’re talking rich and poor here. Not just my poverty but that of all of us, if you took the combined net income of the Capital house band and Obama and his Posse, seated in the Capitol building for the State of the Union speech, it would probably exceed the net income of a mid-sized country.

Hell, if they wanted to they could start their own army and take over the country. They could, if they wanted to and were clumsy about it. Consider this; the Party room says the unemployment rate stands at 7.9% (U-3) while the more exact number is 15.4% (U-6). To the studio audience that 7.9% is gospel, it is the Lord’s truth, when even the 15.4% number is horse apples. A completely dual reality, the wealthiest one percent of the one percent are having a party at their club house tonight and they’re happy as f*ck about it.

The President – “Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report. After a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home. (Applause.) After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over six million new jobs. We buy more American cars than we have in five years, and less foreign oil than we have in 20. (Applause.) Our housing market is healing, our stock market is rebounding, and consumers, patients, and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever before.” (Applause.)

A grit and determination which could also be described as American’s suffering unnecessarily. After a decade of unnecessary war, some of our troops are coming home and some more will come home next year. These troops aren’t being demobilized, but will return home to prepare for the next conflict. After years of grueling recession we have only years of grueling recession to show for it. Corporations and oil companies are more profitable than ever. The Wall Street S&P is back over 14,000 again and that’s why this crowd in the honeycomb hide out are all so f*cking happy tonight.

Outside the Capitol where over 300 million Americans are playing along at home, over 24 million of those Americans are out of work. The unemployment numbers haven’t really changed much at all this year and little from the year before, just the categories these Americans are counted in change.
Read the rest of this entry →

Lady in Flames
By David Glenn Cox

Sometimes we really have to stop and ask ourselves who we are, divided by class, by race and by gender; subdivided as we are, into straight, gay, leftist, rightist, or even urban or rural demographics. This muffled ragged claim of rugged individuality ties to that Americanism which we see darkly as a noble trait. Only, it is a trait which can untie us from the dock of common humanity and allow us to drift aimlessly and as long as we personally miss the rocks, it’s good enough.

We can get all excited and all worked up by world events or by local media drama. We seek viral videos, titillations, news candy, dark chocolate news, news which appeals to our sweet tooth. But what of true horror, fine for the movies, you say? What about out and out depravity? It seems like it was only a couple of years ago an NFL quarterback went to prison for killing dogs. Killing dogs is a horrible crime and shouldn’t be under appraised, however, during the same time period, our government was responsible for killing innocent civilians and children and no one went to jail.

How strange it is that our society can erupt with volcanic outrage at one crime while ignoring another more outrageous crime. Fox News and many of the mainstream media outlets are obsessed with dead-white-girl syndrome. Any young white woman who disappears or is murdered, is always great news copy. A young woman of any other ethnicity, lost or murdered is, well… not so much. That is the power of media, the gatekeepers of real news, and the directors of the public’s consciousness, ringing the dinner bell for us as Pavlov’s public.

I came across this news story and was struck by the casualness of its tone. Violet Ellen Phillips was 67 years old and she’s homeless. She lived a quiet life on the streets of Van Nuys California. Remembered by Wade Trimmer of the San Fernando Rescue Mission, “She said little about her personal life, but was always grateful,” he said. “She always said ‘thank you’ and ‘God bless you for doing this.’”

We have a picture of a nice, quiet little old lady, living on the very margins of our society, existing on very little. It kind of makes you wonder why someone would douse this little old lady, who wasn’t bothering anybody, with rubbing alcohol and set her on fire as she slept at a bus stop. It is a horrific crime, shocking to anyone with even a modicum of humanity. How can these outrages happen again and again, and yet, nothing is done. Unless you were in Los Angeles, you probably didn’t even hear about the crime. An Indian woman raped in Singapore is news around the world, but a 67 year old woman dosing at a bus stop and being set on fire is only a local affair.

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/01/31/lady-in-flames/davidcox/

Hobo’s Lullaby
By David Glenn Cox

“Go to sleep you weary hobo
Let the towns drift slowly by
Can’t you hear the steel rails hummin’
That’s the hobo’s lullaby”

The red sled has been put away; the wrapping paper has gone into the trash along with the experts and their post -Thanksgiving forecasts of vibrant Christmas sales. Warm candle lit predictions of three to four percent in sales increases have been extinguished by the cold wind of a mere 0.7% sales increase. Now, factor in three percent annual inflation and you have the worst Christmas sales since, well, last year. Actually, it has been the worst Christmas sales season since 2008, when the New Great Depression first began.

The wizards and chambermaids of prognostication have already stripped the bedding and the bed clothes to autopsy the fetid corpse of Christmas past on. Well, the reason is obvious, isn’t it? Come on; think about it, what could be the cause of such sluggish sales? Why, what else, the prognosticators tell us it was Hurricane Sandy and the budget negotiations in Washington. Shoppers in Alabama, Michigan and Montana must have said to themselves, “Well, little Jimmy wants an official NFL football and little Cindy Lou wants a new bike. But you know what? I ain’t a gonna do it, no sir, not until them lazy good for nothing politicians do something in them budget negotiations.”

Or maybe, collectively, the American public has decided that out of respect for a global climate change inspired hurricanes, they should forgo annual gift giving ritual. Of course, I’m being absurd but if; if only, I could become even more absurd, if I could perfect the craft of cultural absurdity, then maybe, I could possibly write for the main stream media. The actual reason for the slow seasonal sales is a clear as spinach between the front teeth of a runway model. It isn’t just that they lie about Christmas sales to affect a bandwagon approach, hoping the mobs of the great unwashed will go out and shop unreservedly, before all the good stuff is gone which they do. It is that, after lie is piled upon lie for so long, the absurdities either make sense or they’re simply not plausible and you sometimes get the feeling they aren’t even trying that hard anymore.

Last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that jobs and wage losses from Hurricane Sandy were negligible and therefore would not be included in job or wage loss statistics. See, if the building you worked in was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, your job loss doesn’t count. It can, however, be included as a legitimate reason for slow Christmas sales. So as the hurricane victims sat in the darkened wreckage of their homes they thought to themselves, “I’d go Christmas shopping but for those bastards in Washington.”

The truth just ain’t in them, Harry Truman once said about Richard Nixon; “Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.”

Absolutely and in totality, we are buried in the massive corporate defecation’s, recommendations, free associations, declarations, coupons, group ons, code words, buzz word bullshit. So what could be the real reason for lackluster (war on Xmas) holiday sales, could it be the demise of the traditional family? Or maybe we just don’t love our families that much, the way we once did. But you already know the truth, don’t you? You’re probably saying to yourself right now, get to it man! We all know the economy sucks!”

If today’s unemployment statistics were complied by the same formula which was used in the last Great Depression, our current unemployment rate would be at 22% the same unemployment rate as in the worst year of the last Great Depression.

NBC News.com – New Home sales jump to two-year high

“New single-family home sales surged in September to the highest level in nearly 2-1/2 years, further evidence the housing market recovery is gaining steam.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that new home sales increased 5.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted 389,000-unit annual rate — the fastest pace since April 2010, when sales were boosted by a tax credit for first-time homebuyers.”

The story is factually the truth, but actually a lie. A new home sale number of 389,000 is one of the worst in fifty years, but remember; the last time they sold those low numbers was in 1967 when there were only two hundred million Americans. This story is repeated ad nausea all over the media as are all stories of positive economic numbers.

Auto Sales Are Highest in 4 Years

New York Times, DETROIT — “Unemployment is still high and the so-called fiscal cliff is looming, but those worries didn’t slow down the nation’s car and truck buyers in September.

Autos flew off the lot at the highest sales rate in four years, adjusted for seasonal variations, according to the research firm Autodata.”

Highest sales rate in four years, otherwise known as the year the New Great Depression began. Rosy forecasts of 14.9 million new cars, Hazzah! Except, that annually, the US crushes 14 million cars, factor in the past three years with sales of 10 million new cars or 12 million new cars sold and you see a society less mobile. The shortage in the sales of new cars also drives up the price of used cars.

But because they lie about everything they sometimes find themselves tied up in their own ribbons. Why was General Patraeus fired again? It was because he had an affair, right? For myself, I doubted that. It’s almost traditional for generals to have a mistress, hell, Eisenhower had one and he didn’t get fired. I thought to myself, it sure was mighty lucky for President Obama that a story like that didn’t break before the election, convenient huh? Then I read the Bob Woodward story about Rupert Murdoch sending Roger Ailes to Afghanistan trying to encourage the good General to run for the Presidency in a Fox News funded and stage managed campaign. The reasons for the Patraeus firing become obvious, with only the details still shrouded in mystery.

The truth is cold dead, stone dead, it is a condition which cannot be altered, but still they try. Poor people don’t buy much for Christmas, some cannot even afford the day off from their pay. This is the ugly baby in the manger which none come to see, what millions of American families got for Christmas this year was poverty, same as last year.

You cannot “good news” the poor into thinking they aren’t poor. No amount of talk radio can ever argue with the daily fear and precariousness with which they daily live their lives. The sad truth is the government / media are one and the same, they can no longer hide the truth and so they must bury it. Burying ain’t a craft skill, it is a volume business and so, they’re working overtime with extra flights of misdirection.

“Now don’t you worry ’bout tomorrow
Let tomorrow come and go
Tonight you’re in a nice warm boxcar
Safe from all that wind and snow

I know the police cause you trouble
They cause trouble everywhere
But when you die and go to Heaven
You’ll find no policemen there

So go to sleep you weary hobo
Let the towns drift slowly by
Listen to the steel rails hummin’
That’s a hobo’s lullaby”
~ Goebel Reeves

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

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

Playing Along?
By David Glenn Cox

Finally, today is the day, when billions upon billions of dollars culminate in drawing millions upon millions of American’s to stand in line and vote for the candidate of their choice. Only, they aren’t the candidates of our choice. We didn’t choose these candidates; they have no earthly connection to us.

They never really did have any connection to us, but now, in this new life; it is even more obviously so. In retrospect, the rise of Barack Obama looks trumped up and foisted upon us. The rise of an articulate political unknown young black man, versus a crotchety old white man after eight years of George W. Bush. It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled…

George W. Bush was never lawfully elected President of the United States. In 2000, the Supreme Court stopped the vote count, no differently than Manuel Noriega or Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. The Constitution sets the operation of elections as the prerogative of the states, which means the intervention of the Federal court in a state election laws was not just wrong or misguided, but criminal. These well educated individuals pretending not to know the difference between legality and criminality.

In 2004, the vote in Ohio was tainted, manipulated and down right stolen. A criminal conspiracy run from the office of Ohio Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell. In every case of over vote and under vote the Republican candidate George W. Bush was the beneficiary. Statistically, that is impossible. Statistically, exit polls had always been accurate. So then came 2008, the United States of America had suffered two tainted elections in series, and there was every reason to believe that the election process had become nothing more than a show.

The country needed a clear winner, we needed flag waving and large cheering crowds to make the public go to sleep and forget about a series of stolen elections. Barack Obama is elected to the cheers of the throng, promising hope and change only, there is no change. Barack Obama has ruled as a right wing Republican. He has passed more tax cuts than Ronald Reagan. He allowed GM to write their own bankruptcy. He has launched more drone missile attacks than George W. Bush ever did and at more places.

Four years of hope and change finds no improvement in the foreclosure crisis, little improvement in the economic crisis and finds the too big to fail banks operating just as they have always operated in the past. The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness meets in the White House and the members of the council are appointed by the President. There is no Congressional approval needed, so the President can choose those individuals he feels will most assist him in moving the economy forward. Barack Obama chose Jeffery Immelt the CEO of G.E. and G.E. Capital to head the council.

Ursula Burns – Chairman and CEO Xerox

Steve Case – Co-founder CEO America on Line

Kenneth I. Chenault – Chairman and CEO American Express Corporation

John Doer – Partner Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Investment and hedge fund.

Roger W. Ferguson – President and CEO of TIAA-CREF a Fortune 100 financial services Company

Mark Gallogy – Cofounder and managing principal, Centerbridge Partners, investment banking

Joseph T. Hansen – International President UFCW one of two labor representative on the council

Lewis Hay – Chairman CEO Next era Energy, He is also a director and past chairman of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, which encompasses all U.S. commercial nuclear operating organizations, and he is a director of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Gary Kelly – President & CEO of Southwest Airlines

Ellen Kullman – Chair & CEO of DuPont Corporation

Eric Lander – Director, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Eric Lander is the President and Founding Director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a new kind of biomedical research institution focused on genomic medicine. Dr. Lander is also Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Dr. Lander was a principal leader of the international Human Genome Project (HGP), which completed mapping the human blueprint in 2003. A geneticist, molecular biologist and mathematician, Dr. Lander’s biomedical research also has ranged over mammalian genomics; human population genetics; medical genetics – including cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases and many other genetic conditions; evolution; and computational biology.

Monica Lozano – CEO ImpreMedia the largest Hispanic newspaper in the country and Ms. Lozano is also serves on the boards of the Bank of America, the Walt Disney Company and the University of Southern California..

Jim McNerney – Chairman, President and CEO, The Boeing Corporation

Darlene Miller – President & CEO Permac Industries, from the Permac website, “A success story in an industry that has increasingly been affected by offshore manufacturing migration, Permac has achieved broad favor with customers by serving as a knowledgeable partner, by managing the entire parts lifecycle including inventory and shipping, and by helping set up offshore production for customers when it makes good business sense.”

Paul Otellini – President & CEO, Intel

Richard D. Parsons – Chairman, Citigroup, Inc. Prior to serving in that role, he was the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Time Warner, Inc., the world’s largest media entertainment company, from 2002 to 2008. In its January 2005 report on America’s Best CEOs, Institutional Investor magazine named Mr. Parsons the top CEO in the entertainment industry.

Penny Pritzker – President & CEO Pritzker Realty Group, she’s also Chairman of the board of TransUnion, Chairman/CEO of Pritzker Realty Group, and Chairman and co-founder of Vi (formerly Classic Residence by Hyatt), The Parking Spot and Artemis Real Estate Partners.

Brain Roberts – Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation

Matthew Rose – Chairman and CEO, BNSF Railroad, he is a member of the Board of Directors of AMR Corporation (American Airlines), AT&T Inc., the Association of American Railroads, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Sheryl Sandberg – Chief Operating Officer, Facebook

Richard L. Trumka – President AFL – CIO, “Trumka led the creation of the AFL-CIO Capital Stewardship Program in 1997 to promote the retirement security of America’s working families. AFL-CIO member unions sponsor pension and benefit plans with more than $400 billion in assets and are a major force in the global capital markets.”

Laura D’Andrea Tyson – S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, “Dr. Tyson serves as a member of the Boards of Directors of Eastman Kodak Company, Morgan Stanley, AT&T, Silver Spring Networks, CB Richard Ellis, the Peter G. Peterson Institute of International Economics, and New America Foundation.”

Robert Wolf – Founder & CEO 32 Advisors, “Robert Wolf is Founder and CEO of 32 Advisors, a boutique consulting and advisory firm serving public and private companies, hedge funds, private equity firms, money managers, governments and other institutions. Wolf previously served as Chairman for UBS Americas and President for UBS Investment Bank. While at UBS, Robert held several senior positions including Group Regional CEO, COO of UBS Investment Bank, Global Head of Fixed Income and Chair of the firm’s Diversity and Community Affairs Committee. He joined UBS in 1994 after spending approximately 10 years at Salomon Brothers.”

Christopher Che – President and CEO of Hooven – Dayton Corporation, “Che is the president/CEO of the Che International Group, LLC (CIG), a multinational holding company that he founded in 2005 with the objective of creating subsidiary companies in diverse industries through strategic acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances. Under his visionary leadership, in 2007 the Che International Group successfully acquired Hooven-Dayton Corporation (HDC) as its first wholly owned subsidiary, which he is also leading as President/CEO.” He is an investment banker just like Willard (Mitt) Romney.

These are the people whom Barack Obama has chosen to ally himself with. These are the people who make the recommendations on upcoming legislation crossing the President’s desk, what would this august group think of the public option in health care? What would this august group of intelligentsia educated in America’s finest universities think about off shoring jobs?

Do you notice anyone missing in this council? Do you notice anyone strangely missing? There are no workers opinions here, no just plain Joe’s or Josephine’s only the massively rich and it is quite intentional, your opinions don’t matter here.

When Barack Obama campaigned four years ago, he promised to close the concentration camp at Guatonomo. As a candidate, he might have actually wanted to close the camp, but as President of the United States he was told no. The Commander and Chief over all armed forces can’t close a concentration camp. Instead, there will be close to a hundred million dollars spent to expand and modernize the camp facilities.

What does that mean, when the commander in chief has so little control over what is going on? Why does the US military seem to march to the beat of its own drummer regardless of who sits in the oval office? If Barack Obama is actually in charge of the Pentagon, ask yourself this, in the light of the operations he has approved, what sort operations could he have possibly said no? We are the most aggressive war-like country on the planet, our economy is quite literally coming apart at the seams and yet there is no talk in the administration of bringing peace.

In January, no matter who is selected as President, the Congress and the administration face automatic budget cuts of $600 billion dollars the first year. Thirty years of tax cuts for the rich are off the table, but mortgage interest deduction is on the table, especially now, since we have so many fewer home owners these days.

Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” He should know, he quite literally wrote the book on Fascism, where he said, “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” These members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, are they lions or sheep? Whose interests do they serve? When the President orders a Navy Seal Team to go into another sovereign country and murder a suspect, is that really Americanism?

This is not the United States of America, this is a corporate Fascist regime which has been at war with the world for nearly twelve years. Your rights have been eviscerated and they aren’t coming back. Your jobs and your wealth have been shipped away as your standard of living has been stripped away. It is a nation which operates concentration camps and detains individuals for years at a time without ever bringing charges against them.

The candidates are merely corporate spokes models; they work for corporations and the wealthy elite, the proverbial two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for supper. Vote if you must, vote if you like, but come tomorrow, no matter who you vote for the same people will still be in charge. When you understand that and when you understand who these people are and what it is that they propose to do to you and your children, you can either play along or push back.

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” – Mario Savio

“If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable.” – Benito Mussolini