“Emerging Markets” represent America’s race to third world inequality.

If you despise labor movements (unions), fair wages, equitable employment, and all government regulations to these effects then you support the corporate distortion of the free market.  Rejecting labor means you embrace the “global economy” now pushing the American middle class closer to third world conditions with every passing day.  There is no middle ground.  The corporate takeover of government is all about removing any resemblance of a level playing field.

The labor agenda is known:  Increased wages, worker benefits, equitable education, all parts of the plan.  They could stand to calm down on the pension issue.  Overly generous pensions, lifetime free rides were a mistake, many causing great harm but we’ve not even begun to feel the pain from these ill conceived devices now that contributions are decreasing.  What is not widely known is how far corporations have gone with their presumptions that the American consumer base is declining and may soon be forsaken.  The accepted economic phrase is “emerging markets”.  Loosely translated these are markets where consumer spending power is increasing when compared to America.  Wal-Mart wants in.

US corporations thank you for believing their tall tales of how free trade agreements will help American companies export goods.  Never mind we don’t have the public infrastructure, ports, to handle the worlds largest container ships.  Don’t worry about those details.  Who needs taxes for infrastructure for the future when immediate profits can be pocketed now?  Free trade agreements are cheap labor agreements, nothing more or less.  As one international textile executive put it “we chase poverty”, moving mobile sewing operations anywhere the labor is cheapest on the globe.  I personally know a textile executive who stopped in my office on his way from Chicago to negotiate with Butner Federal Prison in NC for cheap manufacturing labor.  Ironically he spotted Bernie Madoff working the cash register in the canteen.

Corporations are not interested in job creation.  No tax break will make them interested in job creation.  Therefore any politician towing their corporate sponsors line is not interested in job creation or wage increases, they are interested in increasing profits for shareholders. <- That’s a period.  The United States is, after all, beholden to the shareholder economy.  The only solution put forward by corporate owned legislators, “lower taxes”, is about the most aggravatingly insane, narrow minded, out of touch one liner that working American’s can be insulted with.  A repeated call for a failed and failing strategy.  But you like it.  Why?  You don’t like being a primary component in the international consumer base?  Think your spending power should rival that of a typical Pakistani seamstress on a loom?  There almost isn’t an answer that can be correlated to prosperity for the American middle class.  Our demise is often blamed on “liberalism” through some abstract, loosely correlated dialog or completely out of touch racist or bigoted rant.  Somehow gays getting married and abortions are the causes of wage stagnation?  Truth is there is no political party beholden to American workers.  Politicians are RIGHTFULLY beholden to their corporate persons.  That’s the way the law is written per the SCOTUS and their Citizen’s United ruling.  Having conquered US politics these corporate persons now have their sights set on bypassing international laws and regulations with TTIP.

Until we can break the invasion of government by Wall Street the American middle class and working poor are at the mercy of an international race to the bottom deigned by corporations and implemented through their political ties and donations.  This means voters must embrace consumer and labor advocates who are prepared to fight for a stakeholder economy and oppose the seemingly national obligation to insure investment gains on Wall Street at all costs.  To do otherwise is to contribute to your own demise and you will not be at peace with the Lick Liberal.

Worship and Neglect: The Altar of the Dollar

“Our disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of rank, class and the order of society, is, at the same time, the greatest and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.  Wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which should be reserved only for wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often more unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.” – Adam smith

The WRAL.com comments on articles will reduce your IQ.

It’s a bastion of f*#king ignorance.  Mean, bigoted, financially illiterate ignorance.  But hey, you’ll get three shouts if you just say “It’s Obama’s fault”.  It’s A forum of conservadorks worse than those who slurp Faux News through a straw.  Moderated, ignorant assholes who have on-line babysitters making sure no one is offended by their bigotry and racism.  Cute.

Here’s a little excerpt of what their moderators find appropriate on today’s article about Egypt sentencing 183 to death over an assault on police station:

“Apparently Egypt knows how to deal with criminals and executions. Dang shame America doesn’t follow suit and fire up ole Sparkie or Ned the Needle and clean out all the death rows in every prison”. -pork rinds and jelly donuts

Because we haven’t executed enough innocent people who didn’t kill anyone?  You’re a fucking genius “Pork Rind”.  A mean, angry, bigoted genius who calls for the killing of those who do not commit a capital crime.  Heinous ass hole?  No, no, that’s not a question.

“When most things bad can be blames specifically on liberals and the president, it pretty much never ends” -arfamr1015

Oh ya, those “bad liberals” again.  Wanting higher wages, equitable justice and education systems.  Vile.  When will their evil end so they can start calling for the execution of more innocent minorities like the Pork Rind Donut inbred fool?

“With all the criticisms on WRAL comments, keep in mind that we still have the best country in the world” – HomebrewDude.

What is this inbred brewing?  Crystal meth?  Don’t wake him up from his dream wrapped in the farce.  Just be careful he doesn’t fart a lie during slumber.  “The best country in the world”.  I would love to know by which measure this fool assumes his comment holds any merit.  First in what?  Gun ownership?  Military spending?  Otherwise let’s remind the ignorant assholes who stay in denial one more time…

  • 9th in Literacy
  • 50th in Life Expectancy
  • 174th in Infant Mortality
  • 4th in participating Labor Force
  • 3rd in Median Household Income
  • 4th in Exports
  • 13th in the quality of Medical Care and falling
  • We can go on all night without hitting a #1.

Hard right assholes will deny each factual statistic as they go buy more Chinese made American flag magnets for their trucks and proclaim that damn liberals don’t know what makes this country great.  That’s the exclusive territory of Jesus and guns according to GOP doctrine.

America’s in a bad spot with ignorant, bigoted social rejects who think being introverted is a distinguishing characteristic and have little to offer in the form of solutions.  They provide the only simple minded answers they can correlate mindlessly to any topic: get a gun, end taxes on the wealthy, tax the poor and execute more innocent people who haven’t committed capital crimes (insert loathing, disdain and fear here).  You can’t make up this kind of insane rhetoric that’s embraced by 8th grade educated, Skoal slurpin’, rednecks rockin’ their Sunday School agenda.  It’s really a service WRAL provides by letting them make their comments for the whole world to see how amazingly foolish these people can be as they are lead around by Koch media.  Keepin’ it simple for stupid and allowing them to show their overwhelming ignorance, defying all laws of physics and fact through their “faith”.  Meanwhile they remain too self righteous and ignorant to understand that any working employee voting Republican is simply a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

 

TTIP: The hostile, corporate takeover of world governments via ISDS.

Have you heard of TTIP?  Most people have no idea what it is.  It’s the Trans Atlantic Investment and Trade Partnership.  It’s all about removing “non tariff trade barriers”.  In other words, allowing businesses to undermine government.   They put aside the idea that Democratically elected governments SHOULD reflect the will of the people.  More often now these purchased government officials represent the lobbyists who’ve bought them.  That must be remembered as context for the remaining explanation.

Think about a dark, smokey room, closed doors, full of billionaires and politicians from the EU conducting these “negotiations”.  That’s not much exaggeration.  It’s what’s happening right now and it is the greatest threat to regional government sovereignty in the history of planet earth.  The premise is simple from the corporate perspective: removing regional legal barriers to international trade will result in prosperity for big business and therefore prosperity to all.  An international “trickle”.  Except this is pissing on everyone and everything for profit, not just the working poor.  The international version of “What’s best for Wall Street is best for Main Street”, the ongoing farce wrapped inside corporate PR lies.

Imagine a country having rules in place about GMO’s, environmental protections, addictive substances such as cigarettes voted on and supported democratically by the voters of that region or country.  Then understand that a built in component of the TTIP, an ISDS or Investor State Dispute Settlement clause, would allow corporations to file suit against a government for imposing laws that impact a corporations profits.  That’s right, a direct mechanism for international corporations to undermine democratically enacted laws for consumer, environmental and economic protections.  It’s ugly.  Real ugly and many a pro-business corporatist will stop at nothing to proclaim this a benefit.  Really, allowing corporations to over ride local and regional government regulations and protections a benefit?  I don’t give one damn how they try to candy coat that BS.  It stinks.

Again, these negotiations are all taking place very much in secret.  Recently the BBC questioned this transparency and the only pro corporatist panel response was “transparency could help businesses decide”.  That infuriated me.  How about this… Screw your big business and your single track profiteering mind!  Profit seems to be the only thing these people can correlate anything to.  The transparency is needed for the human beings these negotiations will inflict havoc upon.  In case the smart ass, pro corporate geniuses haven’t noticed corporate profits do not translate into jobs or a more stable economy for the middle class, they enrich the 2%.  The European estimates show 600K jobs lost to TTIP.  European farmers will be undermined as TTIP lowers import standards for US foods while they must adhere to local laws.  The will of the people is going to be undermined by the will of corporate leaders and profiteers who will stop at nothing, including killing people, making others destitute and destroying the environment all in the name of a return to shareholders.  This is not an exaggeration.

It’s noted that 97% of European consumer consults reject TTIP.  Ninety seven f*#king percent.  Yet they move ahead with these “negotiations”.  Why?  Corporate influence.

The counter argument in favor of ISDS is that corporations should be able to invest in foreign lands without the threat of new laws undermining their profitability.  Governments see this as a way to entice multinational corporations.  In other words, they want to negate international investment risk and insure future corporate profits.  Too big too fail, tax payer bailouts, ISDS – all mechanisms distorting what they refer to as a “free market” in the name of sought after, insured revenue and profits.

How much longer is the world going to stand by and let the wealthy international corporations tear down all consumer protection barriers to insure profit?  Not long from now we will literally be paying taxes to insure corporations and industries do not fail and that shareholders are guaranteed returns.   Workers, humans, the environment, be damned.  To these short sighted fools it’s ALL about profit, all the time.  This is not just unsustainable, it’s f*#king ludicrous and self deprecating.  It’s a miscalculated destruction of a world wide consumer base over the long term.

When you hear anything about globalization sold as beneficial remember that LOCAL is best.  LOCAL wins.  We cannot continue to hand over the will of the people in LOCAL communities to big business so their shareholders are insured profits.  I don’t know how these corporatist pigs can sleep at night after worshiping at the altar of the dollar every day.

NC’s religious wingnuts file another bill to blend Christian beliefs into government office.

“The first NC Senate bill filed Wednesday would allow magistrates and employees of county registers of deeds offices to refuse to perform marriages or issue licenses due to religious objections”.

Any such bill would be challenged as unconstitutional at the federal level.  Do the wingnuts care how much they spend on such a failing endeavor in the courts?  Hell no, as long as they get a soap box in the name of Jesus.

This is really quite simple.  If you can’t put aside your religious beliefs in order to fulfill a government office without bias you are simply unfit to hold the office.  Done and done.  What’s the problem?  Get rid of any Magistrate who can’t separate church from their civic duties in office and move along.  That’s the way it’s designed to work under the US Constitution.  Anything argument to the contrary is semantics to justify an ideological or religious position.  When it comes to the execution of public office Christian, Muslim, Buddhism, Wicken… got nothing to do with it.

Put forth your argument in the name of Jesus or Christianity, then replace them with another deity or religion and see if your opinion holds true.  That’s the litmus test.  If you think Magistrates should not be held to their civic duties in office because of their Muslim or Wicken beliefs then you have an argument.  A bias towards Christianity provides no platform or foundation for such debate.

Did I mention all this is from the party of “less government”?  Horseshit.  The ONLY time any Republican’s wanted less government is when it comes to gun control, business/finance regulations or tax collection.

Trying WordPress on an iPhone 6

Not bad. Almost an easier editor than the full interface. Certainly simple enough.

Posted a pic to see how it comes out. The editor inserts the HTML only, no image preview. No compression, full image size. Ouch. That could use help. I’ll stick with my Instagram feed.