Corp Germ > Corp Seed > Corp Monster - 3

Electric Public Transportation Destruction

In this series we are posting and commenting about how corporations began as a twinkle in the eye of public officials, with an eye toward public service.

That history has been distorted to generate a meme complex inhabited by the neoCons of the right-wing news media who have by now fabricated a false history of corporations, free market economics, and American capitalism.

In doing so they use Adam Smith as a forerunner, making him out to be someone who had their corporatist ideology, when he in fact was not one of them:

The other part of the story is the development of corporations, which is an interesting story in itself. Adam Smith didn't say much about them, but he did criticize the early stages of them. Jefferson lived long enough to see the beginnings, and he was very strongly opposed to them. But the development of corporations really took place in the early twentieth century and very late in the nineteenth century. Originally, corporations existed as a public service. People would get together to build a bridge and they would be incorporated for that purpose by the state. They built the bridge and that's it. They were supposed to have a public interest function.

(Corp Germ > Corp Seed > Corp Monster). The germ idea, or germinating concept, of the corporation was that they were to serve a temporary public function, then that corporation was to be dissolved once the service to the community had been accomplished.

Then along came war which engendered a toxic environment exactly as an early American statesman wisely warned:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied : and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?, quoting James Madison). Notice the phrase "war ... develops the germ of every [enemy to public liberty]".

Notice also that what President Madison said is the opposite of current propaganda, which the media uses to ultimately tell us that "war is the source of your freedom".

We can quickly and easily test President Madison's theory with a case in point:

General Motors produced vast quantities of armaments, vehicles, and aircraft during World War II for both Allied and Axis customers ...

The General Motors UK division, Vauxhall Motors, manufactured the Churchill tank series for the Allies. The Vauxhall Churchill tanks were instrumental in the UK campaigns in North Africa (ironically often being used to attack German logistics units using Opel [GM made] trucks). Bedford Vehicles manufactured logistics vehicles for the UK military, all important in the UK's land campaigns. In addition, GM was the top manufacturer of U.S. Army 1½ ton 4x4 vehicles.

Nevertheless, while General Motors has claimed its German (Opel) operations were outside its control during World War II, this assertion appears to be contradicted by available evidence. General Motors was not just a car company that happened to have factories in Germany; GM management from the top down had extensive connections with the Nazi Party, both on a business and personal level. During war Opel's Brandenburg facilities produced bombers JU-88, trucks, land mines and torpedo detonators for Nazi Germany.

(History of GM). The corporation went from germ to seed to monster through the toxins of power on steroids during a war.

The photo to the right shows a clean energy rail system we could have had if the corporate monster had been contained.

The photo at the top of this post shows the carcases of victims of GM Corporation's post war atrocities, which ended up destroying the existing clean energy public transportation system.

The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) refers to an largely unpublicized program led by General Motors to systematically replace streetcars and electric train in many cities across the United States with petroleum fuelled bus services.

Some believe that this program was directly responsible for the virtual elimination of effective public transport in American cities by the 1970s.

General Motors Corporation and others were subsequently convicted in 1949 of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products via a complex network of linked holding companies (Street Car Scandal).

We now know that clean energy transportation is key to our freedom from the addiction to oil.

So we can conclude that President Madison was indeed a wise visionary, noticed by one writer who has published a blog hoping to find a way back to where we were, and then beyond that to freedom from the oil addiction:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish” - Proverbs 29:18

A society that does not plan or prepare, that does not consider the consequences of the present and contingencies of the future, a society that lives only for today, the next quarter or the next election is doomed.

Events and a changing reality will, sooner or later, catch up with those that refuse to prepare. Available resources, time and most importantly, wisdom will simply not be at hand to allow us to adapt and recover from foreseeable negative developments – developments that reasonable people would have started to prepare for decades ago.

(Economy Free From Oil). We can be sure that the corporate monsters in our midst will declare war on anyone who challenges The Twinkie Empire, because we now live in The Criminally Insane Epoch.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post is here.

A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 2

Ingredients come from China Oil Fields

In the first post of this series, A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA, we took a look at the reach of the tentacles of MOMCOM.

The "O" in MOMCOM, (oil, gas, coal), has an incredible reach, from plastics & pharmaceuticals to the ingredients of Twinkies. Remember the infamous "Twinkie Defense"?

In that case a man killed the Mayor of San Francisco, was charged with murder, then the media said Twinkies were somehow involved since he had changed his diet from health food to junk food:

"Twinkie defense" is a derisive label for an improbable legal defense. It is not an actual legal defense in jurisprudence, but a catchall term coined by reporters during their coverage of the trial of defendant Dan White for the murders of San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk and mayor George Moscone. White's defense was that he suffered diminished capacity as a result of his depression. His change in diet from health food to Twinkies and other sugary food was said to be a symptom of depression. The media misinterpreted this defense as a claim that sugary food was itself responsible for White's criminal behavior. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

(Wikipedia, emphasis added). MOMCOM had a twofer in that case because an "M" in MOMCOM represents the media which is always there to "misinterpret" or worse, while the ingredients in whole or part of the Twinkies came from the "O" side of the MOMCOM personality.

Since we are focusing on the "O" in MOMCOM in this post, lets look at the ingredients of the Twinkie.

We can reveal some of what the MOMCOM empire is feeding the citizenry, what is in the bottle, and what is not:

Twinkies and their rocky ingredients were the subject of a 2007 book by Steve Ettlinger called “Twinkie, Deconstructed.” For research, Ettlinger interviewed bakers and even traveled below the Earth to see where Twinkie ingredients were mined. The dessert cakes contain sorbic acid, which is derived from natural gas. Some ingredients were found to come from the oil fields of China. Others came from phosphate mines in Idaho. So-called vitamins in the dessert come from petroleum.

(Twinkies, emphasis added). Believe it or not, there is Twinkie material around, over, under, beside, and in us, as shown by a partial list of 6000 things made with "the blood of MOMCOM", hydrocarbons (oil):

Solvents, Diesel fuel, Motor Oil, Bearing Grease, Ink, Floor Wax, Ballpoint Pens, Football Cleats, Upholstery, Sweaters, Boats, Insecticides, Bicycle Tires, Sports Car Bodies, Nail Polish, Fishing lures, Dresses, Tires, Golf Bags, Perfumes, Cassettes, Dishwasher parts, Tool Boxes, Shoe Polish, Motorcycle Helmet, Caulking, Petroleum Jelly, Transparent Tape, CD Player, Faucet Washers, Antiseptics, Clothesline, Curtains, Food Preservatives, Basketballs, Soap, Vitamin Capsules, Antihistamines, Purses, Shoes, Dashboards, Cortisone, Deodorant,

MOMCOM 1% Feeds The 99%

Footballs, Putty, Dyes, Panty Hose, Refrigerant, Percolators, Life Jackets, Rubbing Alcohol, Linings, Skis, TV Cabinets, Shag Rugs, Electrician's Tape, Tool Racks, Car Battery Cases, Epoxy, Paint, Mops, Slacks, Insect Repellent, Oil Filters, Umbrellas, Yarn, Fertilizers, Hair Coloring, Roofing, Toilet Seats, Fishing Rods, Lipstick, Denture Adhesive, Linoleum, Ice Cube Trays, Synthetic Rubber, Speakers, Plastic Wood, Electric Blankets, Glycerin, Tennis Rackets, Rubber Cement, Fishing Boots, Dice, Nylon Rope, Candles, Trash Bags, House Paint, Water Pipes, Hand Lotion, Roller Skates, Surf Boards, Shampoo, Wheels, Paint Rollers, Shower Curtains, Guitar Strings, Luggage, Aspirin, Safety Glasses, Antifreeze, Football Helmets, Awnings, Eyeglasses, Clothes, Toothbrushes, Ice Chests, Footballs, Combs, CD's & DVD's, Paint Brushes, Detergents, Vaporizers, Balloons, Sun Glasses, Tents, Heart Valves, Crayons, Parachutes, Telephones, Enamel, Pillows, Dishes, Cameras, Anesthetics, Artificial Turf, Artificial limbs, Bandages, Dentures, Model Cars, Folding Doors, Hair Curlers, Cold cream, Movie film, Soft Contact lenses, Drinking Cups, Fan Belts, Car Enamel, Shaving Cream, Ammonia, Refrigerators, Golf Balls, Toothpaste, Gasoline

(Products From Petroleum, [Oil-Qaeda "lost" it so here is the Wayback Machine copy of that page] emphasis added). Highlighted items are things you put in you or on you, but a close look at the items that are not highlighted will tell you MOMCOM is quite "next to you".

The "toothpaste" caught my eye, because it is the symbolic item used by some scholars & educators to point out to you that even government is handled and constructed like a Twinkie:

One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.

And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public — and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US—roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control.

And by now these are huge industries. They not only dominate marketing of commodities, but they also control the political system. As anyone who watches a US election knows, it's marketing. It's the same techniques that are used to market toothpaste.

(Noam Chomsky, emphasis added). In this election cycle MOMCOM has been busy "selling the toothpaste" while lots of politicians have been using the Twinkie defense, the Twinkie Offense, and the Twinkie induced self deception [they hid that page so use the Wayback Machine version here].

It is enough to drive a civilization nuts.

One might say Twinkiedom is a product of the Amygdala in some degree.

So eat good food liberally, without fear.

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The next post in this series is here.

Etiology of Social Dementia - 2

"There must be some way out of here"

Regular Dredd Blog System readers know that one can find posts here which argue that government and corporate deceit has done great damage to the citizens of the country.

The first post in this series, Etiology of Social Dememtia, laid out some of the background for that charge.

We cite to scholars who both left and right wing pundits, writers, teachers, etcetera, also quote and reference.

We have also advanced an argument, from time to time, that this system of deceit has a nexus to what we call "toxins of power" as well as "a cosmic Alzheimer’s" of sorts.

One post that ties the dynamics together is The Criminally Insane Epoch Arises.

In that regard, I must say that a piece in The New York Times caught my attention:

OUR government is ignoring what is likely to become the single greatest threat to the health of Americans: Alzheimer’s disease, an illness that is 100 percent incurable and 100 percent fatal. It attacks rich and poor, white-collar and blue, and women and men, without regard to party. A degenerative disease, it steadily robs its victims of memory, judgment and dignity, leaves them unable to care for themselves and destroys their brain and their identity — often depleting their caregivers and families both emotionally and financially.

(The Age of Alzheimer’s, NY Times, emphasis added). The nexus to national behavior is clear when the many in a nation behave in a manner that establishes the national persona which the rest of the nations observe, so we have stated bluntly:

But there are obviously times when entire nations "go crazy", and do strange things. Things like attacking other nations for no sound reason, or becoming inexplicably belligerent, or the like.

(Etiology of Social Dememtia). Our nation now is spending more on military weapons of mass destruction, armies, navies, and air forces than the rest of the nations combined.

A belligerent military persona is beginning to replace our traditional character as seen by the rest of the world.

This madness is damaging the fabric of our economy, our political debates, and the ability of the government to function coherently.

We are not going in the direction of a kinder, gentler nation, instead, we are becoming a colder and more brutal nation, as our leaders have cautioned us:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied : and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?, quoting President James Madison). More recently one who likewise understood the danger afoot, stated:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

(The States of War Budgets, quoting President Eisenhower). So we find ourselves in economic hard times, wars, crazy elections, with a populace that says over and over in polls that we are heading in the wrong direction.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

It Has All Gone Poll-itical Now - 2

In the first post of this series we focused on the estimates and guesstimates of FiveThirtyEight, an organization that was very accurate in the last presidential election.

This post we take a gander at The Cook Political Report:

"The Cook Political Report's pre-election House outlook is a Democratic net loss of 48 to 60 seats, with higher losses possible. A turnover of just 39 seats would tip majority status into Republican hands."

(The Cook Political Report, as of Oct. 26). That is essentially the same as what FiveThirtyEight is looking for.

As to the Senate race Cook has it going down this way:

"With the election just seven days away, The Cook Political Report's current outlook continues to be a 7 to 9 seat net gain for Republicans. Currently there are 57 Democrats, two independents that caucus with Democrats, and 41 Republican Senators. Post-election, Republicans could hold between 48 and 50 seats to 50 to 52 seats for Democrats."

(ibid). I would hearken back to Dredd Blog posts for over a year that this was coming if the democrats, beginning with Obama, did not lose The W compass:

In this series Dredd Blog has been asking "how many seats will the democrats loose" due to their indiscriminate continuation of military spending for the hideous and unpopular wars.

(Democrats Pay How Much For War?). The Republicans get about a 24% favourable rating, but the big factor is the polls that show a vast majority think the nation is going in the wrong direction.

That implicates the Democrats now, because that poll has been solid for ten years, so, since they did nothing to end the wars except give lip service and major amounts of money to corrupt governments in foreign lands, they go down.

In March of 2009 Dredd Blog warned them not to forget what was rejected in the elections that put them in office.

They did not heed the warning, so now they are being rejected as Dredd Blog said they would be.

Republicans will undoubtedly make the same mistake so the decline will continue.

Evolutionary Weather Patterns Arising?

Some meteorologists on the weather channel today made an interesting comment concerning the large record breaking storm hitting Chicago and several states around it in every direction.

They said "it is more like a hurricane" than anything else.

The storm has a record low pressure for that area in October.

The storm has the swirl, the circular rotation like a hurricane, the strong winds approaching hurricane force, and it is so big that its clouds cover several states.

I have heard it said that one of the odd things about hurricanes is that they do some good, some balancing, in the overall heat management of global weather.

It sounds strange, but in that regard here is what is said about hurricanes:

They are essential features of the Earth’s atmosphere, as they transfer heat and energy between the equator and the cooler regions towards the poles.

(BBC). Under normal climate patterns hurricanes provide an important function in that they take heat from the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico then move that heat northward so the ocean waters are cooled, which is like an air conditioner of sorts.

What happens when the oceans and the atmosphere, even in the north, heat up as they are now doing with record breaking temperatures?

Are there going to be any effects on hurricanes and other storms that would have an evolutionary impact on general weather patterns?

Or perhaps the mutations will change even the basic nature of climate as we have known it since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution?

While it is true that this year was above average for tropical storms & hurricanes, there were no "great" hurricanes that would be expected if global warming makes hurricanes more violent.

The weather may be evolving in an unexpected way as the global temperatures evolve.

The vegetation of the Earth is evolving a response, so it would not be surprising if the storms of the Earth likewise evolve.

Hurricanes could diminish in power while other storms that are not normally like hurricanes in the sense of having a function of moving heat toward the poles, could evolve in unexpected ways.

Such storms are more often than not fireworks due to temperature contrasts as well as interplay between high pressure areas with low pressure areas.

But are we considering all of the evolutionary factors?

There are complaints by several climate scientists that we are missing some important contributing factors of climate change, one of them being "fossil water":

An important climate question is the contribution of this fossil water, through irrigation, to local, regional and global transpiration and [evaporation] from soils and other surfaces. This is a flux of water vapor into the atmosphere that would otherwise not occur.

(The Role Of Fossil Water On Climate). It is one important consideration, because water vapor & carbon dioxide are important factors in global warming:

"Water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth's greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study shows that the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide."

(Carbon Dioxide & The Kooks, emphasis added). Another factor to consider when contemplating the evolution of climate, is the factor of cycles.

It is well known by scientists that some of the foundational cycles of global climate, which could be compared to the steel I-beams of a sky-scraper, are being damaged by anthropomorphic behaviors:

Humanity may soon be approaching the boundaries for global freshwater use, change in land use, ocean acidification and interference with the global phosphorous cycle ...

Our analysis suggests that three of the Earth-system processes — climate change, rate of biodiversity loss and interference with the nitrogen cycle — have already transgressed their boundaries. For the latter two of these, the control variables are the rate of species loss and the rate at which N2 is removed from the atmosphere and converted to reactive nitrogen for human use, respectively. These are rates of change that cannot continue without significantly eroding the resilience of major components of Earth-system functioning. Here we describe these three processes.

...

... biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene has accelerated massively. Species are becoming extinct at a rate that has not been seen since the last global mass-extinction event.

...

Modern agriculture is a major cause of environmental pollution, including large-scale nitrogen- and phosphorus-induced environmental change. At the planetary scale, the additional amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus activated by humans are now so large that they significantly perturb the global cycles of these two important elements.

(The Damage Can Not Be Undone?). The voodoo economics of "cost effective environmental laws" fails to consider the long term costs of human government excursions willy-nilly into the unknown.

We are making the Frankenstein monster that will be the undoing of civilization if our carelessness continues.

UPDATE: The lowest millibar setting of all time was recorded in at least two states (Minnesota, Wisconsin) during the "over-land hurricane". Some reports indicate the same for North Dakota, Illinois, and Michigan.

UPDATE 2: The fauna of the Earth are being decimated to the point of extinction:

A fifth of the world's vertebrates are facing extinction because of invasion and the effects of agriculture ... at least 41 percent of amphibians are closer to extinction ... Thirteen percent of birds ... On average, 50 species of mammal, bird and amphibian move closer to extinction each year ...

(CNN). Such damage to tangible species certainly implicates the less visible climate system too.

Fun With Mystery Day

Do the flora sense something?

One wonders how bees, with tiny brains, can do in seconds what our super computers take days to do, and how it is that they think ahead.

How could algae have known quantum mechanics for billions of years?

What is up with a hexagon shape on Saturn larger than several earths?

Why is one of the largest lakes under miles of ice?

How are newts able to do what the best surgeons can't?

We will let you know when we figure it out.