. . .
K “When the government pays folks not to labor, folks learn to enjoy not laboring.”
J “Many if not most of the jobs were crappy, but many of the jobs on this planet are crappy. There will always be some crappy job that cannot be automated.”
. . .
Bumper stickers Sweatshirt of the week:
College
. . .
4 “They say that welfare is the bribe paid to the underclass not to revolt. The bribe is no longer enough. The underclass reasonably seeks more from the overclass. Many of them do not want a bribe, they want opportunity. There is no opportunity today and will be even less opportunity tomorrow. There is more restiveness. There is more restlessness. There will be more unrest.”
6 “The war on poverty has become the war on those in poverty.”
4 “Always a war. Could be a hot summer. Or a hot winter.”
6 “A hot winter? Is that anthropogenic global climate change?
. . .
Bumper sticker of the week:
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” John F. Kennedy
. . .
L1 “Labor economists divide life into time spent pursuing ‘work’ and time spent pursuing ‘leisure’ or, if you prefer a four letter word for symmetry, then employ the word ‘play.’ An employee should be paid for the work he or she does for an employer but not for the time he or she plays for himself or herself.”
L2 “That is also the settled law in the Republic of America.”
L1 “Except at the Supreme Court which rewrites the laws to protect corporations at every opportunity and cost.”
L2 “I’m not amazed that Amazon requires a security check as part of one’s work. Fine. That time should be compensated under the law because it is work and is not play.”
L1 “The ‘Justices’ get paid for donning and doffing their robes. Most police get paid for the time they put on their uniforms and the time they take off their uniforms.”
L2 “The ‘Justices’ all agree that the underlying maxim in American law is ‘Might Is Right’ and, like politicians, are shrewd enough to support the police and others who defend them against the populace.”
L1 “The ‘Justices’ work a part-time job and get not only full-time pay but lifetime pay even when they should be discharged ‘for cause.’ The irony is delightful . . . and obscene.”
L2 “Another unprecedented problem plaguing the Court is its eagerness to reward the lawyers/lobbyists who litigate and lobby on behalf of the corporations. The Court has never at any time in the history of the country been more obedient to the corporations and less accessible to the American public.”
L1 “In another trend than has been consistent now for decades, the Ninth Circuit correctly interprets the law and then the Supreme Court improperly imposes its ideology.”
L2 “There are some nice enough folks on the Supreme Court, but law just is not their forte.”
L1 “They say that the conjunction ‘but’ is an acronym that means ‘behold utter truth’ because everything before the word ‘but’ in a sentence is a polite untruth.”
L2 “The Republic will require at least 50 years if not a century to recover from the lawlessness and criminality at work and in play at the Supreme Court today. But it may not recover.”
. . .
[See the screed at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-433_5h26.pdf.]
[See the commentary at “Humanity’s Motto: To Enslave And To Colonize (January 27, 2014).“]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Own A Supreme Court ‘Justice’ Today (Corporations Only, Please)
America has many rules and many laws but not much rule of law.
. . .
M “The election came down to the Republicans putting an elected official who was not even running for office on every ballot in America.”
L “And putting him on trial. This race was about race. American politics is a perennial battle between fear and hope. The midterm elections were a verdict on whether a Black man should be President of the United States. And the verdict is in. Those American people scared into voting are more than uncomfortable with a Black man and his very Black woman in the House for Whites. And then toss in Ebola and ISIS or ISIL or whatever it is and fear cripples the citizenry.”
M “In recent decades, every President who has won a second term and had a Senate majority to lose has lost the Senate majority.”
L “The Republicans could not say that a candidate is in the same party as the ‘n-word’ guy. ‘Reggin’ and ‘monday’ are too blatant. They unleashed a cacophony of dog whistles. ‘Romney – Obama Care’ passed as the ‘Affordable Care Act’ and was excoriated as ‘Obamacare.’ Republicans accused all incumbent Democratic Senators over and over and over and over of casting the deciding vote for ‘Obamacare.’ ‘Obamacare’ is the socially acceptable substitute for the ‘n-word’ today.”
M “Money carried the message and the day. They say the sword is mightier than the pen, but the pen that writes the campaign checks is mightiest. Justice Roberts’ plan in Citizens United is unfolding like a carefully choreographed chess game.”
L “It is always about money. Obama won in 2008 in substantial part because he rejected public financing and substantially outspent McCain. Americans were fearful then, but in the perennial battle between fear and hope, hope triumphed over fear. Bush had made such a mess of the economy and foreign affairs that a continuation of Bush was frightening. The fear of another Bush combined with the hope espoused by Obama was right for the times. In this race, spending by the mega PACs bought the elections for Republicans by appealing to race and avoiding any concrete policies. Few of the Republicans were honest enough to concede that the Republicans have used all available resources to stymie legislation and then blamed Obama. The public voted against what they were told is ineptitude in Washington.”
M “In 2008, in their gut, many devout Republicans said they simply could not stomach ‘President Palin’ at the helm.”
L “Many pundits proclaimed that America was ‘post-racial’ then, yet America was and is still very involved in the racial mix and maelström.”
M “When the finals are held in 2016, virulent racism will not be on the national exam. Gender is much less incendiary. America is much closer to a ‘post-gender’ electorate.”
. . .
M “Maryland and Massachusetts are lapis lazuli blue and yet both elected Republican governors. At some point, citizens tire of taxes and regulations.”
L “I was heartened to see that four red states – Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and North Dakota -–adopted provisions to increase the minimum wage. And the blue city of San Francisco joins the Emerald City in adopting a minimum wage. You cannot spend money if you do not have money.”
M “Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia adopted more rational and realistic marijuana policies. Reduce civil rights violations, increase tax rolls and cut spending on prisons. Regulate marijuana like alcohol and discourage and dissuade the use of both.”
. . . .
L “Save your Confederate dollars. The South is rising again.”
M “Will they substitute as the world’s reserve currency?”
. . .
[Fall of the Berlin Wall: Yesterday – 25 years]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Deal race, buy votes
Save your Confederate dollars. The South is rising again.
Lee surrendered. I didn’t.
The New Confederacy – Same Old Same New
The New Confederacy – Same as it ever was
. . .
1 “Two books do offer more insight. But that is just me.”
2 “Three if you have a spare three-day weekend.”
. . .
1 “Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist often said that his world view was strongly influenced by a book he read as a young man, The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich von Hayek. The best-seller was published in 1944 during the last days of World War II.”
2 “I can see why Fred’s missive captivated the young private from Milwaukee. He was conscripted by Big Government to fight other privates conscripted by other Big Governments. Fred warned of the dangers of what he called collectivism and big government and predicted that the path to socialism, the ‘road to serfdom’ of his title, would eventually collapse. The world sure looked like it was collapsing.”
1 “My original edition notes that the printing has been redesigned by the publisher to conform to the government’s request to conserve paper during that War. Government making reasonable requests?”
2 “The government was right, we tattoo far too many fallen trees. My copy warns the reader right on the cover that Fred may not have any idea what he is talking about. The publisher warns the prospective purchaser that Hayek got the Nobel Prize in E-con-omics.”
1 “What if Rehnquist had stumbled on a book that warned of the dangers of raw selfishness and big corporations and predicted that the path to corporatism and kleptocracy, the ‘road to serfdom’ of the new publication, would eventually collapse.”
2 “Fred lived during a period of time when the governments of many world powers, at the direction of their military and financial elites, marketed much evil and inflicted great pain, grief, and violence on the world. His distrust is not unfounded but myopic.”
1 “He intuits that big is often bad, but he only got half the story right. We do not have a market economy. Today, Big Government is Big Business; Big Business is Big Government. Sit down and analyze the major industries in America. Each one of them is monopolized. The business is the industry; the industry is the business. In this Internet era, when someone concocts a new application or gizmo, that person has a monopoly on the application or gizmo.”
2 “We are racing down the road to serfdom. Yet the guvmit, not the private sector, has always enforced speed limits.”
1 “The government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the monopoly corporations. There are now no limits and no governors.”
. . .
1 “Let’s say that someone is deeply and genuinely concerned about the road to serfdom. Would the concerned citizen support a higher minimum wage or not? The folks who have minimum wage jobs today are serfs. They are at the end of the road to serfdom in a hopeless cul-de-sac. If the rate is raised, some folks will lose some of their serf status and yet a few may lose their job.”
2 “What I have noticed is that the opponents of a minimum wage increase do not give a hoot about the workers and only seek to do everything to cut the costs for the Owners.”
1 “Now that you mention it, Fred surely would support an increase in the minimum wage to avoid the nefarious road to serfdom.”
2 “What happened to Bill along his journey?”
. . .
1 “In The Age of Turbulence, Alan ‘Easy Al’ Greenspan describes the influence that Ayn Rand had on his intellectual development. So many young men are distracted by shiny objects.”
2 “So many things in life just are not a surprise.”
1 “Raw self-interest is not genius, but it sure does appeal to our baser instincts.”
2 “And it advanced her and his financial interests.”
1 “But not ours. I do not hold her exclusively responsible for the economic violence that he unleashed on the world, yet she is at the top of the list.”
. . .
1 “Think about the folks who look to the Good Book and only the Good Book for insight and inspiration. At one time, a person could only carry one gun, one knife, one bed roll and one book. That book was dubbed the Good Book. The struggle to exist limited one’s time to contemplate one’s existence. Space only allowed for one book and time only allowed for reading one book that had to provide all the answers.”
. . .
1 “Those who have access to more resources need to get a life. And scan a second book.”
2 “Asking someone to read two books is a lot to ask. Life is short.”
. . .
1 “When the smarter gender takes over, Nancy Drew will reign supreme.”
. . .
[Banned Book Week – September 21 – 27]
[Search the name “Carmen Segarra” on the Internet. She should receive the Profile in Courage Award for 2014, but it will likely go to someone like Greenspan or Bernanke. See the previous e-ssay at Profile In Cowardice Award (May 12, 2014).]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Scan a book, don’t ban books.
Read a second book; get a second opinion.
What we really need is a moment of science in the public schools.
. . .
1 “And the private sector solution.”
2 “Without a minimum wage, the government is providing massive subsidies for the workers laboring at major corporations that only provide sixty or seventy percent of the minimum livable wage. The employees are required to subsist on food stamps and other government subsidies and programs. If the minimum wage is instituted, more of the cost of production is internalized by the corporation rather subsidized by the tax payer.”
1 “There may be some lost jobs. However, all the large corporations have deployed their most cunning technicians to find ways to eliminate as many human jobs as possible already.”
2 “Reducing monthly government payments requires some foresighted policy at the outset. It is a no-brainer, but it requires an extraordinary brainer to understand.”
. . .
1 “The great debate over national health care fails to acknowledge that the United States has implemented the most inefficient national health insurance program in the history of human kind in Title 11, the Bankruptcy Code, rather than in Title 42, governing Public Health and Welfare.”
2 “The solution is simple. The public shall receive the same health care coverage as the Congress.”
. . .
1 “The Norwegians will not reward that notion with their Nobel in E-con-omics. If they do not reward that notion, the professional e-con-omists will not propound the notion.”
2 “We should go to the International Court of Justice and seek an injunction against the Norwegians and use the Nobel money for some other virtuous public purpose.”
1 “I am on board. How could a concerned member of the public organize a public boycott?”
. . .
Bumper sticker of the week:
The Minimum Wage: The Market Solution And The Private Sector Solution
e-commentary 