Why are state and federal budgets in peril? Don't worry, you won't get a convoluted, technical answer here. It's because the employees - and the idiotically unsustainable pay structures they have built - are both essentially garbage!
The entire system is designed to extort from non-governmental revenue streams.
Everybody who is a government employee knows (or thinks they know something they don't) that it is their job to extort and process extortion. These jobs are invariably referred to as 'cake' jobs. Thus, wouldn't we all want a government job? Of course, because they aren't really 'jobs' at all - they're 'cake ' positions of extortion.
And that's why the budgets are fucked - because those who make up the system are fucked too. Of course, not every government employee is completely fucked. Each is unique and some work hard. But you'll never hear an honest government employee say that the system isn't fucked - and that's because the system most definitely is fucked.
Those who 'work' there know this better than anyone, and that's the basis of this piece. The only people who want to 'fix' it are those who don't benefit from how fucked it is - namely, the general population.
Those of us with our heads out of the sand know that there is a big to-do in Copenhagen. Apparently over 5,000 journalists including the Exploited Times are covering this media circus. Diplomats from around the world have flown, swum, jogged, cycled, surfed, scuba'd, and dirigible'd their ways here, purportedly to discuss climate change remedies. But in reality they are here to figure out new ways to consolidate more of the world's resources into their own hands. These resources will be hoarded - and diplomats, their families, and associates in industry will sequester themselves, like so much carbon, safely behind the locked gates of wealth. Make no mistake, this will be done at the expense of the failing masses of humanity, left to grovel in famine and poverty until they perish. The greatest error of these masses is the entrusting of their pitiful lives to these uncaring diplomats posing as well-intentioned leaders. The masses aren't scared and can easily be pacified by simple lies put forth in media headlines. In fact, it is these diplomats and industry leaders who are scared shitless. For it is they who actually stand to lose something. It is these greedy power mongers who control all the resources on the planet- and they know all too well how depleted we really are. The powerful are the ones who can afford to conduct the insanely expensive studies that reveal the real truth. So these so-called leaders know there is no time left and they must seize control from the people now, or the people will use up all the resources for themselves and leave the rich out in the cold with the rest of us. For these elite power players, that is the most frightening thing of all, and they will stop at nothing to keep it from happening. The end of the world is nigh, and it will be much less painful for those who can hoard the food and water behind locked gates with armed guards. Paper money, stocks, bonds, sports cars, jewelry- all worthless. Real commodities like food, water and fuel for armament to protect it are all that matters. The diplomats in Copenhagen know this well. But do you?
It seems most wars are entered in the interest of protecting people and ways of life.
Based on this idea, the ultimate position of strength would be to avoid engagement.
If an army's strength is measured in fatalities and supplies, lack of engagement would provide a full supply stock and zero fatalities.
No war profiteering though. Damn, that sounded like a good idea!
What if, on Saturdays and Sundays, the legions of minivans and mega-passenger vehicles, transporting families to kid competitions- just stayed home?
Is swarming the asphalt with SUV's and marching kids out to a water-guzzling maintenance quagmire- all for the common excuse, 'just to get some exercise'- a sustainable practice?
Do kids need to line up against each other- like Democrats versus Republicans- wearing fancy uniforms (soon to be thrown out)- in order to get a little exercise?
How much energy could be saved if the uniforms, the minivans, the referees, the 14-foot-radius gas-guzzling grass cutters, the fossil-fuel fired electric water pumps, the swaths of Chinese folding chairs and screaming parents- didn't constantly run like an idling motor?
This charade apparently dictates the superiority of the victor- the uniforms, the parents, the coaches- as determined by the all-mighty score in points.
And it's really fun, too.
Does it prepare our youth for leadership and competition, such as that shown by state officials in California?
What if the families figured out they could actually get exercise- no uniforms, referees or scores even required- in and around their neighborhoods? Even without the use of Chinese workout machines stored in the garage? If the neighborhood is the kind where one is liable to get run over by a fanatical soccer mom SUV going 60 MPH, is it possible to run or jump rope in place?
Instead we travel by motorized coach to a designated far-away place to exercise, the potential exercise in travelling notwithstanding.
The point is our culture is very busy employing bonehead mechanisms for bonehead reasons. One might say we are boneheads, and it is this self-scrutiny that can lead to the positive change our kids need to survive. Currently, it is doubtful we could be more inefficient if we tried.
It's not just our cars and light bulbs that are inefficient- it's our culture. The way we live our lives is inefficient.
It is not uncommon for people to drive 30 minutes or more for a 1 hour exercise session. Both ways, the commute can exceed the class time. One could do exercise on the floor and never even get in the car, gain an hour out of traffic and save fuel, money and carbon output.
But there is no time or place in this culture for making sense, and we know that many drive to exercise- simply to avoid the guilt of not driving to exercise.
In fact, this culture assumes that anyone walking is very poor and cannot afford to drive, and we must feel sorry for that obvious loser.
Rides are given as favors to those in need.
Perhaps we could do ourselves a favor and learn how to walk again.
Now, if we could only figure out how to catch a ride to wherever it is we want to walk...
The global "effort" to curb emissions has been steadily working backwards, and the US is the leader of the anti-environmental movement.
The much-ballyhooed issue has been recognized by the global scientific community since the 1970's, and since that time damage to the planet has been increased exponentially.
Convicted felons have been treated with more respect than our scientists.
As long as deception and paralysis are the top functions of world leaders, no positive progress can be made. As elected representatives of the people, something besides deception and paralysis needs to be demanded from our do-nothing politicians. They are NOTHING BUT SERVANTS OF THE PEOPLE, so let's get to serving!
These politicians claim responsibility and leadership for the people, but hide in their mansions with no transparency!
By all service accounts, these politicians are nothing more than an unacceptable waitstaff that needs to be fired.
Get 'em outta here, the sooner the better.
That's the first step to fixing this country.
A scary exercise is to track your paycheck to the top and see where the money is really being generated.
This is not for the faint of heart, so if you're in denial like most of us you might want to stay there.
Sad chances are those wages are tracked to a source that is in one way or another either fucking over yourself, someone else, or both!
Don't despair, this is human nature.
But for the sake of efficiency at least, why do we fuck ourselves?
We wish we had the answer, but this is just one self-inflicted cycle: Corporate Food Supply- Sick Nation - Big Pharma-Healthcare for Profit.
Seems like a cycle to inflict on enemies. So obvious, so dumb.
Lucky we've got razor-sharp reps to take care of this stuff in our best interests.
Hey Mike Duvall, can you help us out?
Like most if not all of you, I have been reading an awful lot of garbage lately.
I mean mostly pure shite. When writers don’t have anything good to put out there, it doesn’t actually mean they absolutely must produce pure shite like the thousands of specimen pieces currently floating.
Notice the following piece:
We’ve got Bruce Springsteen and….
“5.5 million manufacturing jobs, nearly 32 percent of the U.S. total, have been lost in the United States since George W. Bush took office in 2000.”
Don’t be fooled by this ‘new’ administration telling you we’ll make it in America. Here’s a bit of the old Korean free trade agreement:
“For every car the United States exports to Korea, we import over 1,000 into the United States.”
And the upcoming agreement that Obama’s pushing is even sweeter, making sure that the US subsidizes Korean clean energy development ahead of the US. Business and jobs in America really means subsidizing slave labor in kingdoms like Korea. How can you fight labor costs with a country which won’t comply with international labor laws?
Gotta love the stars and stripes.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/147957/despite_fresh_rhetoric_about_saving_u.s._manufacturing%2C_obama_is_quietly_pushing_failed_bush_trade_policies/?page=3
Seems like there has been endless crying over all the poor home’owners’ who lost everything and wound up in the ditch with a jug of cheap wine and nothing but sob stories.
So let’s clarify this. First of all, the mortgage holder is the actual owner of any home with a mortgage on it. So anyone whose home had a mortgage didn’t, in fact, own that home in the first, or second, or whichever place. Rather, they entered into an agreement with a lender to purchase the home. This is a blatant fact that everyone seems to prefer to ignore in this so-called crisis.
You can’t ‘lose’ what you never had. The dream or charade or whatever you want to call it, is really that all these wanna-be homeowners ever owned anything at all. Because they didn’t.
Now, if your home didn’t have a mortgage and you actually did own it, than that’s a different story. You can be pissed off all you want, but nobody took your home away from you. You still own your home that you actually owned in the first place. It may not be worth jackshit, and that’s what you can be pissed about, but nobody, ‘took’ your home. Don’t let’s pretend that mortgage holders owned their homes.
They never did, so at least get the sob story correct.
“handling manure and dead chickens with their bare hands, and living amid rats and cockroaches in the company’s trailer park.” – OSHA report on routine business as usual at Maine egg farm, describing workers and conditions
I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. Note this is business as usual.
http://www.alternet.org/food/147956/out_of_control_egg_producer_flouts_regulations%3A_consumers_deal_with_500_million_salmonella-tainted_eggs/
How is it still possible that the Republican versus Democrat farce battle continues to successfully harness this population of sloths?
Do those actually exist who believe a noticeable difference in power could result in the ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ of one or the other of these team colors?
This country (USA) is reduced to the equal depths of barbarism and meaninglessness, as perfectly represented by the NFL. No issue of greater importance than the score of a perfectly useless football game has even been approached by this government.
So what happens when you wake up the day after ‘winning the game’ to find out it was nothing more than points on a screen?
Fucking sad.
“The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error.”
Wow. That’s some heavy stuff. Maybe all we need to do is find the air nozzle on the planet and pump it up so it’s twenty times the size it is now, to fit more growth. But wouldn’t that still mathematically have a limit?
Lucky for us these questions are relegated to pre-school classrooms with four year olds and never enter into any adult arenas.
Uh-oh. Wait a second. This is a quote from Larry Summers. The pre-school teacher, you ask? Actually, no. This Larry Summers is the Chief Economic Adviser to Barack Obama, the President of the United States.
Did you know, “On a typical day, when about 43 million tons of goods are carried on U.S. transportation networks, a third of that tonnage is coal and oil?”
Beam me up Scottie. Or should I say, Larry?
Whatever.
-Passages from Bill McKibben’s ‘eearth.’
‘McCord would return home early, suffering long-term injury from IED attacks that left him with a shattered lower spine and traumatic brain injury (TBI). He says the military at first tried to deny him treatment but eventually agreed to grant him back surgery after civilian tests showed serious injury. Despite TBI and severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), McCord says the military refused to grant him a medical discharge and instead discharged him with a pre-existing personality disorder, a distinction that precludes him from receiving disability benefits from the military’ – Sarah Lazare and Ryan Harvey, on one of the soldiers involved in the Wikileaks helicopter video
‘wants the public to understand that “war kills civilians first.” He says, “I think Americans…need to take responsibility. If you pay taxes, you pay for that soldier’s wage. You’re just as guilty as the soldier pulling the trigger.’ -Ray Corcoles, soldier from same unit
That’s where the denial comes into play. Get up, get some coffee, get in your SUV, go to your health club, take your kid to soccer practice, come home and eat some GMO chemical food, go to sleep and do it again. Pretend none of it exists, and tell yourself you’re not like that. That’s the other guys. The bad guys.
These are the spoils of war.
http://www.thenation.com/article/38034/wikileaks-baghdad?page=0,1
“Brand new World Bank study says that the demand is going to exceed supply by 40 percent in twenty years.” -Maude Barlow, talking about world water supply
Mmmm, very interesting. What can be done about this? For starters, I say build more golf courses at a faster rate. Also, let’s have kids at a faster rate too, and hopefully, with any luck, they’ll turn out to be golfers!
This is just one of many stellar ideas that can and will be employed to combat this issue.
http://www.alternet.org/water/147704/un_declares_water_a_fundamental_human_right_–_u.s._abstains_from_voting_on_resolution/?page=2
But definitely not in the USA.
‘When our republic was created, the population ratio between the largest and smallest state was 13 to 1. Now, it’s 68 to 1. Because of the abuse of the filibuster, 41 senators representing less than 11 percent of the nation’s population can, in principle, block action supported by 59 senators representing more than 89 percent of our population. And you wonder why it’s so hard to get anything done in Washington?’ – E.J. Dionne
As Dionne says later in this piece, what an embarrassment.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_politics_of_stupidity_strikes_again_20100728/
‘..instead of paying workers well enough to allow them to buy things like cars, as Henry Ford proposed to do, companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s pay their workers so poorly that they can afford only the cheap, low-quality food these companies sell, creating a kind of nonvirtuous circle driving down both wages and the quality of food. The advent of fast food (and cheap food in general) has, in effect, subsidized the decline of family incomes in America.’ – Michael Pollan
Isn’t that great? This is part of the beautiful picture that is the success of America. While she wallows in the spoils of war, her citizens are graced with the unique luxury of not only living in cars and on couches, but also eating manufactured chemical garbage that will make them sick and even kill them!
Oh, the glory of world domination.
http://www.alternet.org/food/147661/michael_pollan%3A_the_mighty_rise_of_the_food_revolution/?page=4
It's too bad Jim Jones didn't make it through his infamous kool-aid party in Guyana back in 1978. In fact, the 31st anniversary of Jonestown was Friday, December 18th. The world population in 1978 was about 4.3 billion, about 2.5 billion less than it is today. Jonestown saw 913 church-cult members bite the dust, drinking cyanide kool-aid in a mass suicide.
This fascinating and true tale is of some relevance today in Copenhagen, where diplomats continue to discuss what's for dinner after the discussion.
One solution to their "problem" that's not on the table is Jones' ingenius idea of mass suicide. Jones was able to get close to 1,000 heads to call it quits over 30 years ago, way before the internet. No doubt that number would be 100 times that - or much, much greater, if he were proliferating today. Given the state of the world and all its atrocities, a mass suicide would be an easy sell to the populace today. The late great comic George Carlin (RIP) worked this concept into one of his later routines - and it is likely he was not kidding at all. To quote Carlin from another bit, "Why don't you do something useful - like commit suicide." As funny as he is, Carlin's acid edge satire frequently contained great world truths, and this is one of them. If any of these bonehead suits - who can't wait to get out of Copenhagen and get back to the business of raping the Earth - were inclined to display any real leadership, a proposal along these lines would be made. If there aren't enough martyrs out there already, well, just make a TV show out of it like Carlin suggests. We'd have more than enough 20th- and 21st- century clones lining up to end it. Don't forget millions are walking non-arable land in search of water and food as this is written. But we know well that wasting millions in genocide (Darfur) or Iraq (Operation Freedom) isn't going to make a dent in the freakshow of propagation put on by this species. What we need is about 3-4 billion to bite it. The Exploited Times defies any diplomat - or any other weenie masquerading as a leader - to come up with anything coming remotely close to working as well as a mass suicide. Of course the imminent nuclear attacks could render similar fatalities, but these will also thrash the planet, and we're trying to preserve the planet for a reasonable number of humans. It sounds sick and wrong, but in the big picture it's really healthy and right. Of all the bullshit trivia out there that all the dipshits feel they must debate - one giant, glaring, obvious and paramount problem sticks out bigtime - and it's called the human race. But the fact is we're just a bunch of pussies, too scared to deal with it rationally. Big problems need innovative solutions, and slogans. Just End It.
The Exploited Times asks what is fast becoming the preeminent question now facing our nation. The democratic experiment in freedom has led to the rampant proliferation of dipshits. These dipshits manifest ill-conceived rights of ignorance and engage in all types of dipshit maneuvers, putting us all at risk! This terrifying issue is examined in the forthcoming print edition. Contact info at top of page to subscribe!
Economists and pundits use the word 'contraction' as a reference to doom and failure- the barometer of a recession.
But what if we took a step back, and instead of racing to build more, faster, bigger and cheaper- we slowed down and took a real look at supply and demand?
What if data showed that- based on life resource availability- contraction is exactly what the doctor ordered?
Well, the data has shown this- from over forty years of research by top global scientific communities.
But somehow we decided that endless growth is the best socio-economic model to employ- despite all science to the contrary.
Our socio-economic policy history reads like a science fiction comic book, wherein we will apparently exhaust our resources- but only on planet Earth. For in the comics, there are multiple galaxies and planets to exploit.
We can zip through the universe at light speed, and maintain lucrative trade agreements with alien civilizations.
Sound fantastic?
Not compared to the existing fundamentals of the US (and global) economies.
CSU admins say it's all the state's fault; the state says it's all the CSU's fault.
If this sounds familiar that's because this is your government in action, which is to say inaction.
One thing we know for sure is that all the admins and state 'reps' are clearly enemies of students and faculty.
Admins and state dicks make golf course deals that end up jacking broke-ass kids and teachers out of 45% more cash they never had. We think all the CSU/state liars should sell all their cars and club memberships and take their cokehead kids out of the Ivy league, to pay for real students and teachers. Their cokehead kids are already the future of legislation anyway.
Students and faculty don't create budgets so they can't be the ones who fucked it all up!
Democracy, the type of government purported to be in use in the US, is fundamentally out of effect according to a new study to be released shortly.
The Exploited Times has commissioned a sweeping survey of the citizenry and the results are expected to be indisputable.
A senior member of SurveyProStreet confirmed the data.
"Democracy is majority rule, but it turns out the majority of the US hasn't the faintest idea what democracy means!" she exclaimed, adding, "You can really learn a lot working on some of these surveys."
Indeed.
How can the value of the dollar be greater than the value of humans? It is actually quite simple:
Government policy represents corporations, which in turn represent profits in dollars.
End of cycle, no humans represented.
So, quite fundamentally in the US, the dollar has greater value than the people.
Should the dollar supersede the people in representation?
Before that contention is debated, we must first acknowledge what is currently occurring.
This noble task would thankfully be left up to our dutiful representatives in government, which represent the corporations, which in turn...
The sooner we all get it, the sooner we can all fix it.
Here is #3 GOP House leader Mike Pence explaining his anti- health reform stance:
"How we respond to these challenges could determine whether America retains her place in the world as a beacon of freedom, or whether we slip into the abyss that has swallowed much of Europe in an avalanche of Socialism!"
What an orator.
Mike, please forgive me for interrupting your game of Russian Roulette with Mike Duvall. Actually, some of our elected representatives with a brain consider much of Europe a "beacon" of many things, including energy use and transportation- as opposed to an abyss in which to "slip."
Is the threat of losing our freedom the universal cry of greedy corporate lobbys?
Excuse me, but improving health care does not equate to lost freedom.
When pressed on how she could support the proliferation of plastic water bottles, GOP lobby hack Debra Saunders retorted, "In free countries, people make their own decisions!"
Ohhh-Kaayy, but what the fuck does that have to do with non-biodegradable plastic stacking up in the oceans?
Apparently scaring people about their freedom is a good way to distract them from what's going on.
The next time someone is yelling about your freedom, take a closer look.
They're probably really yelling about protecting corporate profits derived from bogus products. Products that should be taxed or banned- for the benefit of us all.
Citizens are already suffering the consequences of a corporate policy that supports the dollar instead of the
people. We shouldn't have to pay to clean up their mess too.
