The Spirit of The 99%

by Matt Bors

The drawing to the left, part of a comic strip  by Matt Bors, tells it like it is.

We should realize that the 99% live in every nation on the Earth.

We should realize, that but for humane concepts, we would all become victims who are robbed of treasures we must have, but do not always see.

The video, included with this post, shows how blind bias hides so much intellect, talent, and benefits to society that all people are capable of having.

If we lose the bias, we will gain the values that bias hides from us.

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Entitlement Wars - Guns vs. Butter - 2

Jingoism For Money Honey

Sometimes we forget that the vast military, with thousands of sprawling bases and naval ports in ~130 foreign nations, and hundreds of such facilities in the U.S., has no real return on the vast amount of money spent, and lost.

MOMCOM is an entitlement program, the largest such program on Earth.

The oil companies receive billions of dollars of taxpayer money, as their profits soar through the roof, and as they feel free to not pay anywhere near their fair share of taxes.

We touched upon this aspect of massive deficit spending in the first post of this series:

We have seen that military expenditures of the U.S. are more than the rest of the entire world.

We have also seen that such expenditures are in fact entitlements, as in welfare.

The great general who also knew how to be Commander In Chief, as well as head of budget concerns, has said that when the military entitlements get out of hand, the military is in effect sacrificing the common people on an iron cross.

(Entitlement Wars - Guns vs. Butter). During the Vietnam war era the discussion was called "guns vs. butter" in the years of debate that took place then, a debate of wasted words, seeing as how the national leaders learned absolutely nothing from it.

The Etch A Sketch Nation

Kingdom of Etch-a-Sketchia, Bullshitistan

Where does a nation end up, once its government becomes The Kingdom of Etch-A-Sketchia, then enters Etch A Sketch mode?

Regular readers and bloggers here at Dredd Blog have perused the issue of the plague of campaign statements and promises, later forgotten or deliberately ignored once a politician is placed in office.

In the series The Elections of Pontius Pilots and When Accountability Is Plague, the issue of the disease of sovereign immunity and state secrets is shown to be a source of excess, a source where perverted political minds warp over into a notion that deceit of the citizenry is normal, a state of mind that does not fit with American constitutional values.

Under this current deceitful Plutocracy, both domestic and foreign policy are perverted into something Orwellian.

Yesterday, we dealt with this subject in a post that shows that Dredd Blog has done so from the beginning (e.g. see Propaganda Is A Toxic Asset).

Other posts that deal with the effects of this plague of dishonesty and deceit include The Etiology of Social Dementia and When You Are Governed By Psychopaths.

For an example showing we are governed by psychopaths, take a gander at:

The National Weather Service is kind of the anti–Mike Daisey, a just-the-facts operation that grinds on hour after hour, day after day. It’s collected billions of records (I’ve seen the vast vaults where early handwritten weather reports from observers across the country are stored in endless rows of ledgers and files) on countless rainstorms, blizzards and pleasant summer days. So the odds that you could shock the NWS are pretty slim.

Beginning in mid-March, however, its various offices began issuing bulletins that sounded slightly shaken. “There’s extremes in weather, but seeing something like this is impressive and unprecedented,” Chicago NWS meteorologist Richard Castro told the Daily Herald. “It’s extraordinarily rare for climate locations with 100+ year long periods of records to break records day after day after day,” the office added in an official statement.

It wasn’t just Chicago, of course. A huge swath of the nation simmered under bizarre heat. International Falls, Minnesota, the “icebox of the nation,” broke its old temperature records—by twenty-two degrees, which according to weather historians may be the largest margin ever for any station with a century’s worth of records. Winner, South Dakota, reached 94 degrees on the second-to-last day of winter. That’s in the Dakotas, two days before the close of winter. Jeff Masters, founder of WeatherUnderground, the web’s go-to site for meteorological information, watched an eerie early morning outside his Michigan home and wrote, “This is not the atmosphere I grew up with,” a fact confirmed later that day when the state recorded the earliest F-3 strength tornado in its history. Other weathermen were more… weathermanish. Veteran Minneapolis broadcaster Paul Douglas, after noting that Sunday’s low temperature in Rochester broke the previous record high, blogged “this is OFF THE SCALE WEIRD even for Minnesota.”

(The Nation). Now notice that President Obama has switched, from slowing down the Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline to accelerating it.

It does not look good when we can't partake of our own national government anymore, because it is not a government of, by, and for the people.

It is a government by the Plutocrats, for the Plutonomy, and of the One Percent, who want to follow the path of Nixon, Bush, and Obama.

Propaganda Is A "Toxic Asset" - 2

Here is the Dredd Blog post from this date in 2009:

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We have written about business propaganda being used every day and every where in the US, since about the first world war.

Recently the use of business propaganda in the main stream media (MSM) has brought us the oft repeated phrase "toxic asset".

The dictionary defines an asset as:

as⋅set –noun

1. a useful and desirable thing or quality ...

2. a single item of ownership having exchange value.

3. assets, ... items of ownership convertible into cash ...

Investopedia Commentary ... Assets are bought to increase the value of a firm or benefit the firm's operations ... something that can generate cash flow ...

(Online Dictionary, emphasis added). The definition of "toxic" is:

tox⋅ic –adjective

1. of, pertaining to, affected with, or caused by a toxin or poison: a toxic condition.

2. acting as or having the effect of a poison; poisonous: a toxic drug.

–noun
3. a toxic chemical or other substance.

(Online Dictionary, emphasis added). The news media promulgate the dichotomy "toxic asset" so as to deceive the public into believing junk is not junk, and that a toxic product has value.

They do this hoping we won't go ballistic when the government wants to use our taxpayer dollars to pay for junk.

One professor calls this doublespeak, and has written a book "Why No One Knows What Anyone Is Saying Anymore". He points out:

With doublespeak, banks don't have "bad loans" or "bad debts"; they have "nonperforming assets" or "nonperforming credits" which are "rolled over" or "rescheduled." Corporations never lose money; they just experience "negative cash flow," "deficit enhancement," "net profit revenue deficiencies," or "negative contributions to profits."

(William Lutz, Rutgers University). What is forgotten is that this propaganda is toxic and those who use it are doomed to eventually become deceived by it.

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Is 'Insanity' A Valid Defense To Ecocide? - 3

OILSTATE - the Goo Hands People

In this series we are considering what the nations think of the worldwide oil industry that has emerged from the womb of MOMCOM.

In the first post we pointed out that mock criminal trials were taking place.

In those trials, both lawyers and judges in Europe were practicing criminal prosecutions of oil barons and oil company executives who disregard environmental law, and who thereby do great damage to civilization and the people in various nations around the globe.

In that post we also looked at a trial where a chemical company was found liable for harming a farmer by poisoning.

Now the plot has thickened, oil barons have been detained in criminal cases because of negligent oil spills:

Authorities in Brazil have detained 17 high-ranking executives of U.S. oil producer Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) and drilling company Transocean Ltd. (NYSE: RIG) after a judge refused to let them leave the South American country pending possible criminal charges.

The travel ban was imposed as prosecutors prepare a criminal case against the companies and executives over their alleged role in deep-water oil spills last year and a second seepage last week, according to news reports.

(Brazil Detains Oil Executives). This is the kind of trend that is necessary, in the U.S.A. too, so that these 1% criminals, who are destroying the Earth, begin to comprehend that the other 7,000,000,000 people on the Earth are not going to stand by as they poison and ruin us.

Unfortunately, that is not the case in the U.S. because the politicians have no spine, and are fundamentally dishonest, when it comes to environmental issues.

Lawyers for the oil barons are going all out to shake the prosecutor from the case according to this Reuters Post.

The previous post in this series is here.

Doom Is A Government Department

You Have Been Inducted

What if you were told that the president was planning to sign an Executive Order ("EO")?

That the said EO gave him and his cabinet members the authority to take your money, your home, your children, your guns, your labor, and your services?

And that whatever was taken was to be used by the government as needed, because "national security" interests required it?

"That will never happen in our future", you might say, and you would be right.

Why?

Because, according to some observers, it happened last Friday, and is now in our history, which means it can't happen in our future now:

Section 101. Purpose. This order delegates authorities and addresses national defense resource policies and programs under the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (the "Act").

Sec. 102. Policy. The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency. The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness. The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States.

Sec. 103. General Functions. Executive departments and agencies (agencies) responsible for plans and programs relating to national defense (as defined in section 801(j) of this order), or for resources and services needed to support such plans and programs, shall:

(a) identify requirements for the full spectrum of emergencies, including essential military and civilian demand;

(b) assess on an ongoing basis the capability of the domestic industrial and technological base to satisfy requirements in peacetime and times of national emergency, specifically evaluating the availability of the most critical resource and production sources, including subcontractors and suppliers, materials, skilled labor, and professional and technical personnel;

(c) be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements;

(d) improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the domestic industrial base to support national defense requirements; and

(e) foster cooperation between the defense and commercial sectors for research and development and for acquisition of materials, services, components, and equipment to enhance industrial base efficiency and responsiveness.

'''

Sec. 201.  Priorities and Allocations Authorities.  (a)  The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:

(1)  the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;

(2)  the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;

(3)  the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;

(4)  the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;

(5)  the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and

(6)  the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.

(b)  The Secretary of each agency delegated authority under subsection (a) of this section (resource departments) shall plan for and issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources and establish standards and procedures by which the authority shall be used to promote the national defense, under both emergency and non-emergency conditions.

...

Sec. 502. Consultants. The head of each agency otherwise delegated functions under this order is delegated the authority of the President under sections 710(b) and (c) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(b), (c), to employ persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation and to employ experts, consultants, or organizations. The authority delegated by this section may not be redelegated.
...

(Executive Order, 3/16/12, emphasis added). This is an EO inducting every person into the service of the government "without compensation", if deemed necessary?

Here are two interpretations of that EO:

"In a stunning move, on March 16, 2012, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order stating that the President and his specifically designated Secretaries now have the authority to commandeer all domestic U.S. resources including food and water. The EO also states that the President and his Secretaries have the authority to seize all transportation, energy, and infrastructure inside the United States as well as forcibly induct/draft American citizens into the military. The EO also contains a vague reference in regards to harnessing American citizens to fulfill “labor requirements” for the purposes of national defense.

Not only that, but the authority claimed inside the EO does not only apply to National Emergencies and times of war. It also applies in peacetime" (Activist Post).

....

"On Friday, March 16, Barack Obama signed the “National Defense Resources Preparedness” Executive Order, authorizing his administration to begin "under both emergency and non-emergency conditions," ... " to employ persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation," and to retain other individuals and organizations with specialized knowledge or abilities, or otherwise important to the adminstration.

Even more worrisome, Sec. 308 of the E.O. authorizes administration officials to " procure and install ... equipment, facilities, processes, or improvements to plants, factories, and other industrial facilities ... owned by private persons" (Above Top Secret).

What is most important is the way that the government interprets this EO, because that interpretation may be classified:

The senators [Udall, Wyden], who also said that Americans would be “stunned” to know what the government thought the Patriot Act allowed it to do, made their remarks in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. after a Justice Department official last month told a judge that disclosing anything about the program “could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”

The Justice Department has argued that disclosing information about its interpretation of the Patriot Act could alert adversaries to how the government collects certain intelligence. It is seeking the dismissal of two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits — by The New York Times and by the American Civil Liberties Union — related to how the Patriot Act has been interpreted.

(FDL). Thus, all the blog talk that focuses on the text alone, like what was done with the Patriot Act, misses the key consideration that the government's own interpretation is the only way to know how they will implement the EO.

Nevertheless, be sure to make known your interpretation in the comment section please, so we can have something to compare to the government version of interpreting the EO, and the Patriot Act for that matter, should those interpretations ever be made known to the public.

The U.S. Supreme Court has visited upon these Presidential EO notions before, and one famous case that law students read in law school says:

The Executive Order was not authorized by the Constitution or laws of the United States, and it cannot stand.

(Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 585-589, 1952). That may be the reason the government does not want its interpretation known.

Friday's Obama EO does cite a statute, so the administration will be required to show in court where that statute or the Constitution allows what the administration says it is allowed to do.

Wasn't it just last Friday that AG Holder said the president can order the killing, at home or abroad, of any American he deems to be an enemy, without a grand jury, without defense counsel, without notice, and without a trial?

We were forewarned about this by this president and this president, so we have had centuries of warnings, including one from another president:

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny” – Thomas Jefferson

If our government thinks it solves problems by perverting freedom into tyranny, i.e. killing citizens without warning, or by taking all they have, then making slaves of them, how will mankind solve its much more difficult global problems (see World Solution Doesn't Exist)?

Long ago Dredd Blog indicated that the government solution to these problems would be Triage.

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