get rich, someday

I've never been much of a materialistic person, perhaps that is why I've always been a relatively poor person, at least in terms of monetary wealth. Perhaps it's a character defect, I don't know. What I do know is that lack of money can be hazardous to one's health.


Here are ten traits of the filthy rich that I might want to develop. Perhaps you might want to work on them too. Heck, we might want to work together. There may be some virtues of mob psychology, positive mob psychology. You can find the original article here.

priorities

While congress works out deals to ensure that the rich get richer and everyone else gets screwed other pressing matters remain unaddressed.
It should be clear to everyone by now that we live on one planet which is one giant interconnected environment that is becoming dangerously degraded by one species (people) with a seemingly insatiable demand for consumption through a flawed system we call free market.
Rather than address important issues, the congress will distract itself and the public with don't ask don't tell trivialities. It's a waste of time and energy, two things we're running out of. Besides having the guts ripped out of the US manufacturing sector, we have helped to create two hungry giants that now compete for dwindling energy sources. Perhaps you'd care to read about China and India's Growing Energy Rivalry....you probably should because the better educated we are, the better we may fair. China is the world's most populous country and therefore has a significant impact on the rest of the world. Yikes, look at what development has done for them.

Equality

It's been said that money is the root of all evil. We know that's not true and evil has been around longer than money. Unfortunately we now have a global capitalistic system that makes money seem to be the measure of all things.
There are practical remedies, but they appear to be harder and harder to implement here in the USA. Someday perhaps we shall see that we are one humanity living on one planet with one economy....Gordon Brown seems to understand, you can hear and watch him here.

fountain of youth

It looks like researchers are on a good trail in the quest to understand longevity. Telomeres, the end tips of chromosomes, appear to play a critical role. You can read more about that here.

the wizard of ounces

I never knew or realized the true allegorical nature of The Wizard of Oz. It's an allegory for the banking system and the non-federal Federal Reserve System. I find it amazing that for so many people there are so many things that remain unexamined.

Here is a fun cartoon that illustrates the point.

You might want to check out the Money Masters too.

Breathe in the bad.....

It's a common mistake among new-agers and novice spiritual practitioners to attempt to breathe in the good stuff and breathe out the bad. Tonglen meditation has been around for a thousand years and has demonstrated its effectiveness.

Breathing in all the good stuff is exploitative
Breathing out all the good stuff is generous

What would you do?

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog. I'd like as many people as possible to read this because it just might help to correct what seems like an injustice.
I had a part in my truck malfunction, the "smart junction box" that controls the windshield-wipers, the radio and the power windows. How stupid is that? For two months now I haven't been able resolve this problem. That's where you can help, just by reading this story. I'll start at the beginning.

About a year ago I decided to trade-in my car for a slightly used pick-up truck. I'd been a Toyota man for about twenty years and I was always pleased and somewhat impressed with the service from Jim Barkley, but Toyota was having computer problems that actually killed people. Nevertheless, I was ready to purchase a Tacoma.

I decided to check one more place, the dreaded dealer with exceptionally high pressure tactics. Well, there was this Ford Ranger Edge that seemed like more car at a better value and I felt just a little bit sorry for the American Auto Industry with GM going bankrupt in times of economic meltdown. Besides, Ford had been the most reliable and responsible of the big three and buying American seemed like a responsible patriotic duty in light of Chinese malfeasance.

I was pleased for a while, but one early September afternoon, that changed. My stereo made no sound, I couldn't raise or lower my windows and worst of all, the wipers wouldn't function. Now I'm grumpy every time it rains. It took me and some others a week or so to figure out the problem, a Smart Junction Box, which seems like the dumbest idea I've heard in quite some time..usually preceded by, "hold my beer".

So after having good experiences with a dealership for more than a decade, I took my truck to Asheville Ford. They confirmed the earlier diagnosis and told me that the part would take three or four days to get in. They also told me that the vehicle needed some other things and gave me a $500 estimate for suggested other services. They lied, the transmition fluid was new and clean, the air filter was still fine and I forget what else didn't really need to be done, but I learned that later. I just paid them four hundred and something dollars to get my vehicle back without any repairs. They wanted the money for the part up front.

A week went by without a phone call informing me my part had arrived. I called them and got the run around for a few more days. When I finally was able to speak with the appropriate person, I was informed that the part in question had to be manufactured and was an estimated thirty more days until shipping, but don't feel bad, there are presently about 50 other people with the same problem. At least my windows were up.

middle class

Trying to get the facts straight on the middle class is daunting. Go ahead, try to make sense of the wiki entry. Compare middle class wages to gold prices.
Check out this from sustainable middle class.

But this is the winner with the best list.

I shouldn't forget this.

There's inequality.org

from the NY Times...

09/30/2010	13,561,623,030,891.79
09/30/2009	11,909,829,003,511.75
09/30/2008	10,024,724,896,912.49
09/30/2007	9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006	8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005	7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004	7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003	6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002	6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001	5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000	5,674,178,209,886.86 Yeah, I know, that didn't paste well. I found that chart here. I like the links provided by this site, handy.

core

Exercise you core, your core needs.....look here.

Saint vs, psycho a checklist

What's the difference between a saint and a psychopath? It sounds like the start of a joke, but it's no joke. There are too many psychos and too few saints.
Here is a nice checklist so we can all judge for ourselves.

smell the flowers and listen to the music

A friend of mine just shared this with me and I'd like to share it as well.

Click HERE to get the full story of a grand and subtle experiment.

Here's a good link for some interesting viewing....have you been to BlantantWorld ?

conservative fools

According to the the U.S. census US capital investment in foreign countries has gone from $1.3 trillion in 2000 to $3.2 trillion in 2008 while at the same time the Bush tax cuts which overwhelmingly went to the wealthy cost 1.3 trillion per politifact. So the wealthy essentially took their tax cuts, intended per the Republicans to spur U.S. jobs, and invested them and more in foreign countries, not the U.S..

Okay, I just stole that one from here.

It drives me crazy to hear people talk about taxes as if they really knew what they were talking about. Go to Tax.com and consider supporting the Tax Literacy Project

Ya'll know what happened in the 2010 elections, big gains for the conservatives who insist on tax cuts for the richest people while threatening to limit unemployment benefits. They are relentless promoters of the trickle-down myth, a Trojan horse which is a lie promoted by the rich. One of the richest guys admitted that.

The latest figures from the TARP bailout reveal that the total cost is only $25 billion and the other $625 billion has been recovered.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report that ranks the effectiveness of actions that will reduce the unemployment rate. At the top of the list is extending unemployment benefits. The least effective action is tax cuts, but that is about the only thing conservatives promote.
You can read the summary here or listen to the rich guy that thinks he should pay more taxes.

dirt people

I just finished a damn good book titled The Dirt People by Ray Bawarchi. He has a blog as well.

You should check it out/

Notes

I don't know if you've heard about the giant trash piles, as big as Texas, floating in the oceans but it was covered by ABC Good Morning America and there is a new site dedicated to the subject,
5 Gyres. Check it out, it led me to Vimeo.

Reminder to investigate more about the end of the free market. Harpers did a fine job covering it.

Saw an interesting movie, My Sister's Keeper. I'm a big fan of ethics and morals and the movie is a new twist.

Crazy like a

Crazy like a brainwashed FOX viewer. Yeah, I think people who watch FOX news, especially those who watch and listen to Glen Beck are crazy in a brainwashed way. I suspect that it is a disease caused by indoctrination. It's an ideological degenerative disorder. Conservative is socially regressive, the opposite of progressive.

Anyhow, just watch the following to see how crazy Glen Beck and shameless FOX News is.

Or you might want to check this out and see who is more right and who isn't...

Average of Three Misperception Rates among Viewers and
Listeners: WMD Found, Evidence of al Qaeda Link,
and World Majority Support for War
(percentages)
News Source Average Rate per Misperception
Fox 45
CBS 36
CNN 31
ABC 30
NBC 30
Print Media 25
NPR/PBS 11
Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks

You can click here to see where that chart came from.

The prevailing view in this country is that mainstream media has a liberal bias. I remember when PBS was funded by the government and donations from viewers. I remember when major corporations became sponsors. That worried me and it seems that a liberal bias is a thing of the past if it were ever true. New and old studies along with some investigative research indicate that the opposite is true, mainstream media has a conservative bias.

Heck, the LA Times even published an article criticizing FOX. You can read about that in more detail here. There are lots of good links including Outfoxed, an NGO and the title of a documentary film by Robert Greenwald.

Here's an article from the Dartmouth that cites a couple of studies...

It's amazing, the Obama administration gave us the biggest middle class tax breaks in history and lots of people think that their taxes increased. Epistemic closure is why the more conservatives know the more they get wrong.
Michael Shermer gives his two cents, which is about what its worth..

This is the guy I like though

The scary thing about all this is that "backfire" is a natural defense mechanism to prevent cognitive dissonance. You can read about that here.

I was searching for groups that oppose Fox news, they weren't plentiful or easy to find, but here are a couple; turnoffyourtv.com
media matters
but then again, maybe Fox should fund NPR

YES, here is what I was looking for; TurnOffFox

You might want to watch and listen to what Rachel Maddow

and there's more....Fox Attacks

Some people go so far as to say the Fox news makes people stupid.

Thank goodness we still have the internet...for a while...

foolish fears be banished

John Mueller, author of Atomic Obsession, set me straight about nuclear weapons. Thanks to you John, and to book TV.

Swiftboats on steroids

A potentially mortal blow to democracy was struck today in a Supreme Court ruling, yes sir, CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION, which basically rules that; money = free speech.

One cannot out-shout reason, a louder voice does not make a more logical argument, but that's not the opinion of five advocate judges.

Combine this ruling with the repeal of truth in advertising law and there will be no limit to moneyed propaganda of special interests. I hope that Senator Feingold is outraged, but I wonder what Senator John McCain really thinks. I remember when McCain was one of the good guys, before he got swift-boated by the GW handlers henchmen.

Supranational Democratic Institutions

I happen to be an advocate for global democracy, but we have a long, long way to go before we might see that happen. I read a great book on the subject a few years ago and I can't seem to find it anywhere. I probably passed it on to someone before I wrote any notes, oops. I thought the authors name was Brian Belsito or something like that, but google searches aren't helping me now. If I remember correctly, he was a member of the Integral Institute or at least somehow affiliated. If anyone can help me out, please do so.

I suppose I am a disciple of Thomas Jefferson. I revere him above all other men. I tell you this so you will have a more clear idea about what I refer to when I write about democracy. Perhaps I should refer to myself as a progressive, a liberal democrat or a socialist. They are all just labels and do not seem very constructive to me. Too many people have too much bias concerning these words which makes reasonable discussion far too difficult.

The United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund are all institutions that exert profound influence on a global scale. These institutions are far from democratic. I believe that we need to create new democratic institutions, supranational democratic institutions to work with the aforementioned institutions and possibly replace them.

The need to form these institutions has never greater when we consider the global problems of environmental degradation, nuclear proliferation, increasing socioeconomic disparity and an escalating clash of cultures.

There are people working for the creation of such institutions, but there seems to be little momentum, inept organization and insufficient public awareness or enthusiasm for these efforts to bear fruit. Why is this so?

I suspect that the answer is that there are powerful antidemocratic forces at play. Rather than waste time and energy identifying the villains, which has already been done and continues to be done in an exhaustive manner, I would prefer to concentrate on the who and how to create viable supranational democratic institutions.

As for the who, at the top of my list is Al Gore. I can think of no one better qualified to lead a global effort for the common good. Other choices include; Thom Hartmann, Paul Krugman, Jeffrey Sachs, Leonardo Dicaprio, Amy Goodman, some of the cast and crew from Who Killed the Electric Car? Bono from U2 might be a good choice. Heck, maybe Michael Moore could help.

We need to get as many people on board as possible of course, but we are going to need the talents of some good propagandists and high profile people.

Someone from Egalitynow was quick to respond, THANKS! That warms my heart a little. Yesterday as I was working on this blog I was researching the subject and became more than a little disheartened. I have a hard time understanding it. It seems like a no-brainer to me. Modern democracy has been so good for the world. No modern democracy has ever suffered famine and no modern democracies have ever been at war with one another. Amazing! The spread of modern democracy has been a boon for the world and is still ongoing, the trajectory and implications seems obvious. Millions of people complain and rant and rave about the WTO, IMF and the structures within the UN, but it seems that few are working in earnest for economic democracy.

Be Warned, again

We were warned before, but it did us little good. We are now being warned again. If you are wise and lucky, then you may be able to minimize your personal losses. For others with little, like myself, there is little we can do to prepare for the next chapter of economic disaster.

I caught just a few minutes of my favorite radio host talking with Ravi Batra, and what little I heard was disturbing. They were in agreement that a new economic bubble was going to burst not long from now. When exactly that may be, they could not say, other than certain powers that may be could keep sticking their fingers in the dike until the next election cycle is completed. I suspect that they are correct, because they are smart educated men who have no vested interests in profiting from the losses of the masses.

They contented that no structural changes have been made in our financial system while speculative investing has inflated commodities such as gold and oil. Meanwhile, the national debt has never been greater nor has the debt burden of Americans ever been so great. One-third of mortgages are under water.

I don't think one needs to be an economist to understand Batra's wage- gap theory. It's pretty simple. If productivity outpaces workers wages, then nobody will have enough money to buy much stuff. Supply and demand. Productivity= supply, Wages= demand. You don't need to be an economist to figure out that supply and demand need to be relatively balanced for the economy to be healthy.

I guess it's about time for me to add some more labor into Moore's Law, less work, but I digress.

Back to Batra, or about him, "on the eve of the Great Depression, 1 percent of the people in this country owned 36 percent of the wealth — the highest wealth concentration in this country, up to that point. Currently, the richest 1 percent of U.S. households have 38 percent of the wealth, according to Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University.
In 2005, the Fed chairman’s continued love affair with debt and rising productivity at the expense of wages led Batra to write Greenspan’s Fraud, a searing critique of Greenspan’s economic policies since 1987." which I lifted from here.

If I had any money in stocks, I sure as hell would get it out. The stock market is not a good place for middle-class money which includes retirement accounts. I would not invest in gold either.

The wealthiest 5% own about 75% of stocks. Let them take the losses, they can afford it. The bottom 80% of wealth holders only own about 4% of the stock market. If that bottom 80% took all their money out of stocks, it would hardly matter. It wouldn't create a run and collapse the financial system. Don't let the propagandist talking-heads fool you. By the way, I got those figures here. You can find more up to date information at the Economic Policy Institute.

I sure hope Batra's optimistic predictions come true and we witness The New Golden Age: The Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos.

In the meanwhile, get ready for a rough ride that may last a few years. It looks like a return to Depression Economics.

Here is a great article outlining the history of how we got here.

Near the end of January 2010 we witnessed the Dow Jones drop more than 500 points in reaction to President Obama's call for financial reforms. I consider this shot across the bow as another example of how a small minority of financial elites can produce big results. Too big to fail should be too big to exist, but the giants do exist and will not go gently into the night.

As I write, I am watching Meet the Press and it appears that a lie of omission will be committed by ignoring the big story of fascist victory in the Supreme Court. We shouldn't be surprised, NBC is a big corporation owned by another bigger corporation. Face the Nation on CBS sure devoted lots of time to the matter, good for them.

Alan Grayson appears to be aligned with main street, but I doubt his legislative proposals to save our democracy will get any traction....at least not without your help. Until then it will remain a democracy for the few, as it has always been.