The Flim Flam Man

The confidence game is one of the oldest games there is. You really want to believe the guy but he has a glint in his eye that makes you keep your guard up.

Regan really tucked it to me back in 1983 now this guy wants to finish the job.

"You’ll have the ‘option’ to put your money into a ‘personal’ (private’s a bad word) investment account and you’ll get to decide how to make it grow!"

What about dudes like me that only have fifteen more years to go until retirement. It's too late to make any meaningful contributions and I average two to three jobs a year?

If things keep on going the way they are, the stock market’s going to go flat line again like it did in 1929.

If the real estate bubble (that’s being propped up by foreign investors) doesn’t have you convinced then take a look at the staggering amount of credit card debt that the nation is carrying.

It’s all smoke and mirrors folks. We’re dead in the water but the money boys refuse to close the lid on the coffin.

That, good citizen, is likely the scariest thing of all.

Since money is no longer tied to anything real, the rug can be pulled out from under it at any moment.

What is the value of a buck? Whatever you’re told it’s worth and who decides that?

That is the question we should all have in the back of our minds.

Whoever controls the value of your money, controls you.

Can’t get ahead? It’s part of the plan. You bust your hump, doing a job it formerly took three people to do and you’re barely getting by.

So what are you going to do when they declare a bank holiday after they’ve told you the money in your pocket is no good?

Wait like our grandparents did for the opportunity to trade ten of your old dollars for one new one?

Billionaires will become mere millionaires but you my friend will be well and truly.

Of course, with the money tied to nothing, it’s conceivable that they could go on as they are indefinitely…until a trip to Micky D’s sets you back a C-note and the gas to get you there runs you about the same.

The value of a buck. It’s the price you pay for a cash driven society. The criminals get there’s for doing absolutely nothing while you bust your hump for what will soon be sixteen hours a day (with no overtime) just to keep food on the table.

The national salesman said on national TV tonight that the ruckus over his judicial nominations was due to the ‘politics’ of the people he nominated to the bench.

What he didn’t specify is what those politics are and why the senate is unhappy about it.
It’s not like the man hasn’t done enough favors for business in his five years in office but apparently it hasn’t been enough.

What he’s trying to do now, for the sake of commerce, is to eliminate the New Deal. Key amongst the New Deal measures that he’s trying to repeal is the laws regarding overtime pay and the forty hour work week.

Thus, as a new ‘condition of employment’, you’ll be informed that the new hours of operation are 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM, your full cooperation is anticipated.

But this may not happen to you. Since they will now be able to force workers to do a fourteen to sixteen hour shift without paying them overtime, it only stands to reason that they only need half the people they formerly needed…even if your employer had a one shift operation.

So half of the employees in the entire nation will receive a pink slip, in the same week.

The more ruthless will refuse to let anyone go, forcing those who can’t maintain the pace to quit.

What do you suppose that’s going to do to the economy?

The already rich will get richer still and you…between the extra money you’ll need to pay for daycare (which will now be day and night care) and eating all your meals on the shop floor, are going to go broke.

But if we had a labor driven society!

Since everyone (by law) would work and since there isn’t enough work to go around, everyone would work a REDUCED shift.

Since the exploitation of one human by another would be illegal, nobody would own anything. You’d have a home that suited your needs for free, free transportation, free education and free medical care.

How would we do that?

Think about it. Since there would be no more employers (taking their cut off the top), we’d all work for an organization that managed our specialty, whatever that was.

They’d pay us to do what we do. So if you went to see the doctor, he/she is getting paid to do what they do by the organization, there’s no need for you to pay them too!

Electricity, free. Why? Same reason. The people that work at the power plant get paid by their organization, there’s no need for you to pay them too.

If everything’s free, what do you need money for?

Perishable or items that have limited availability. Money in a labor driven society would serve as a ‘regulator’ limiting access to high demand or scarce items.

Who’d cook for themselves if restaurants were free? Who’d do housekeeping if hotels were free? You’d have a labor crisis in each industry at the end of the first week if you failed to put some kind of inhibitor in place.

With a well thought out system of checks and balances, Labor driven society could save our children’s future.

So what if you hate working. You’d only be obliged to surrender a few hours a day in exchange for a world without taxes, war or bad economy.

You’d be in direct control of the government as there wouldn’t be a standing system of elected officials. You’d get to vote directly on every issue rather than living with what someone else thought was the right thing to do.

There would be a core set of laws that could not be changed that would eliminate ninety percent of the issues that you would need to vote on, so it’s not like you’d spend you days voting on every idiot proposal someone dreamed up.

Best of all, your retirement would be A. at around fifty and B. you’d retire with half of your regular pay.

Given that most major expenses are covered (no rent, no utilities and no taxes) you may not eat filet mignon every night but then again you might.

Take a good look around at the mess made of our one and only planet for the sake of allowing a ‘few’ to be rich.

Then think about your children and the kind of hardships they’ll inherit if you sit on your hands and do nothing.

If not for your sake, do it for them.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Whose money is it anyway?

I used the word money but in the end, what it really comes down to wealth, which most people associate with money.

How far would you get if you had to do everything (and I mean everything) all alone, with no assistance?

Imagine yourself naked and alone in the wilderness with only your wits to keep you alive. How long do you suppose you’d last?

With that thought in mind, the world as we know it is not the product of any individual’s efforts but the sum of all of our efforts…the ones who are ‘profitably’ employed anyway.

Yet the economic pie is not divided equally.

Since it takes all of the ingredients (not just some of them) to create a finished product, who can justly say that their input is any more ‘valuable’ than anyone else’s?

Short answer, no one. Yet it’s regularly done.

To make a bad situation even worse, the ones that do the least, take the most!

This, in case you didn’t know it, is the law. Laws that you had no say in making and aren’t likely to change without engaging in a bloody revolt.

Unless you smarten up that is.

Surrendering your labor for less than your fair share is often a moot point. There’s an up to date list kept of the ‘prevailing wage’ for every classification of work. Unless you’re blackmailing the boss, you won’t get one cent more.

You’ve got your head in a vise and there isn’t anything you can do about it if you like living indoors and eating regularly.

The accepted definition of slavery is someone having a bill of sale with your name on it.
But if you are forced to act against your own best interests by laws that you had no hand in creating, isn’t that the same thing?

It is law that creates both of these situations, not natural laws but laws created by other humans for the purpose of exploiting you.

You’d think there’d be a law prohibiting any human from exploiting the efforts of any other, but that would nullify the employer/employee relationship.

Horrible thought, eh?

This brings us to the ‘purpose’ of commerce. Does it exist to serve the needs of the community or does it exist to enrich its owner?

Quite simply put, we do the things we do because life is a lot tougher if we don’t. It’s foolishness to think that we’d stop trying to survive if the companies that cater to our needs ceased to exist.
Companies fill needs, needs that exist whether or not there is a company established to satisfy that need…so the need would get satisfied with or without a company…a.k.a. an employer.

Under our current laws (laws made by criminals in the truest sense of the word) a company exists to provide profits for the shareowners, the consuming public and it’s own employees be damned!

Once a company ceases to be ‘profitable’ (for it’s shareowners) it is liquidated and it’s employees cut loose.

Which brings us to that most sacred cow of the capitalist system, competition.

This begs the question as to whether life is a competitive venture or a cooperative one.

Were it competitive, you’d rise every morning and kill everyone who crossed your path…but you don’t, do you?

No. Instead, the workplace is governed by teamwork, developing a synergy that gets the job done in as efficient a manner as possible.

Seems far more cooperative than competitive to me.

So what’s the ‘benefit’ of competition? There isn’t any. It’s a wasteful redundancy that has proven counter productive to meeting the needs of society.

Did you say competition keeps prices low? Why do pay at all? For a ‘free’ society, there’s a stunning lack of free to be found anywhere.

Should there be any employers? No. The only way we will ever achieve full employment is by establishing a society that requires everyone to work.

Sounds cruel doesn’t it?

Yet what we have in its place is a society where those who do the actual work are exploited at both ends by those who place themselves above us.

Not only do the workers not receive their fair share but the taxes extracted from them are spent supporting the people commerce can’t ‘profitably’ employ.

It’s not a case of people being unwilling to work. That’s like saying they aren’t willing to live. It’s more insidious than that. Free market capitalism REFUSES to employ them.

Remember ‘more with less?’ Less employees equals more profits, thus has automation and outsourcing decimated the workforce to the detriment of our entire society.

Over sixty million people and rising.

What makes sense to you? A society where everyone works and contributes, thereby providing them with the means to obtain the things they need or is it more sensible to allow those who rob you blind to continue to exploit a situation that they themselves have created?

They’re rich and you’re not. Think about that.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Ground Swell

In an interesting editorial, one commentator put forth a rather unusual idea; that the Internet could propel a virtual unknown into the Oval Office.

The Internet was supposedly the driving force behind the Howard Dean candidacy (until it came unraveled at the last minute.)

The Internet has proven to be a medium that more people are turning to in order to find out just what like-minded people are really thinking.
Even members of the ‘established’ media have created blogs in an attempt to keep people ‘on message’.

A message that goes something like, "We’ve got it all under control. No need to be concerned. Go back to sleep."

The established media sold out long ago but that’s how it’s always been. It’s not possible to comment ‘objectively’ on the same people you rely on for paycheck.

When it comes to reporting the news, the truth will set you free…free to find a job doing something else.

The papers, like the network news, are brought to you by advertising dollars…in case you’re wondering why every newscast consists of twenty minutes of commercials and five minutes of talking heads spewing garbage nobody cares about.

So reading the opinions of those whose world-view is formed by what they learn from the same said advertising based media isn’t exactly ‘illuminating’ to say the least.

How much truth do you expect from people whose livelihood relies upon A. the continued goodwill of advertisers or B. remaining in the good graces of the political powers that be?
Which brings us to the net. I post here ‘cuz it’s free. I’m a working slob that can’t afford my own web site.

This is a distinction to be mindful of when you go searching for the truth out there on the information superhighway, know what you’re looking at.

Back to topic.

To be fair, the commentator did say this vehicle would most likely be used successfully by an established politician like McCain or that other Kerrey from Nebraska.

Not that there’s anything (except pull) stopping the average knothead from mounting a presidential campaign on the Internet.

You for President!

That’s a scary thought, isn’t it?

Naturally, it’s not as simple as throwing your hat into the ring. You won’t get the voters attention if you have nothing to say on the issues.

Again, the commentator was helpful enough to point out that a serious void exists smack dab in the middle of the political spectrum.

How nice is that? Well, it would be nice if being a labeled a moderate these days wasn’t the equivalent of being called a wimp in today’s world of political brinksmanship.

Leading the charge for mediocrity or even handedness isn’t likely to put your name on the lips of every voter in American.

The beleaguered and besieged want leadership and they want it now!

Leadership that will provide viable solutions to very real problems…not the least of which is a system of government that has gone totally over the top.

When the media speaks of the crisis we’re experiencing in healthcare they studiously avoid the fact that the problem started when the formerly public healthcare system was converted to a private, for profit venture.

CEO’s that don’t generate profits for the shareowners don’t remain at the helm very long.

Then there’s the issue of almost every avenue of employment imaginable is being shipped to the cheaper there.

Not only do the shareowners reap the benefits of significantly reduced wage and benefit costs but the jobs they export are building a new customer base for their products at the same time!

Nice to be a shareowner! (I refuse to use the PC term of ‘shareholder’ it deflects too much guilt from the reality of the situation.)

US companies make it there and sell it here at many times the profit they used to make.
Does the media breathe even a single word of this intentional rape of our society?

No, instead the media says we’re ‘hooked on imports!’

Sellouts!

This is but the tip of the iceberg.

Real people. Real problems…

And here you will find real solutions.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

A Slap in the Face

A recent NY Times editorial that lamented people's sinking faith in the media called this phenomenon a 'slap in the face'.

Confidence in the media has dropped to 37%, an all time low. This same commentator went on to give several possible factors that were contributing to this disturbing erosion of confidence and he was pretty much off the mark on all of them...which is the real reason the people have lost faith in the media's ability to report the events of the world with anything that even comes close to an accurate account.

In the rapidly shifting sands of life, it is not possible to make sound decisions without accurate information.

The stock market suffered triple digit losses for the third consecutive day. There's barle a person out there that doesn't have an IRA or a 401k that's worth a fraction of what it was before the dot.gone era.

Imagine what would happen to your 'private' Social Security individual investment fund on a day like this. The brokers would make jillions (in commissions) while your retirement fund was reduced to confetti.

It's a real no win situation coming to a head out there. The current administration is giving away billions in tax breaks to coporations that are taking that money and investing it overseas. In the mean time, schools, police and fire departments, cities and towns can't meet their budgets...so they 'restructure' the property valuations and viola! Instant tax revenue!

And they can continue to do this until people can't afford to pay, there's no way to stop them.

Energy costs affect the price of everything. Not only do goods cost more to make but the cost to bring them to market rises also, a cost that is passed on to the consumer.

It's not until this cost gets ridiculous that an employee sees any 'relief' (in the form of a wage increase) and by the time relief comes, it's only a small fraction of how much the cost of living has risen.

We went down this road in the late Seventies and it's still haunting us today.

The voodoo economics has to go.

Imagine a world without taxes, mortgages, utility payments that provided free education for life, a twenty hour work week and a society that enjoyed 100% employment.

It's not a dream, it what will happen if we convert from being a cash driven society to a labor driven one.

Remember, money was invented to simplify barter. It has no other purpose yet you couldn't tell that by the mess we're in today. Whosoever controls the value of your money controls you...Get King Kong off you back.

Think about it.

Thanks for letting me inside you head,

Gegner

The Average Joe

Given the fact that we are far more similar than dissimilar to one another, it boggles the mind to consider how easy it is for a human to come to hate an entire civilization that they themselves have no first hand knowledge of.

Because the media tells us they’re our enemy.

I was raised during the Cold War, a time when it was better to be dead than Red. One can only imagine what Ivan in the street was told about their deadly adversary, the American pig.
We weren’t taught to hate the Soviets as much as we were taught to fear them. Halfway around the world lurked this ‘empire of evil’ that possessed enough nuclear firepower to kill every man woman and child ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, six times.

Having this capability wasn’t the scary part as we had an edge, a numerical superiority in the arms race…as meaningless as this actually was.

There’s a perverse kind of comfort in the knowledge that you can hit them harder than they can hit you even if there was no winner in the end.

No, the scary part was the possibility that the other side might attempt the ‘unthinkable’. Theoretically, in the game called nuclear annihilation, the first one to push the button wins…
by (hopefully) knocking out ‘most’ of the enemies counterattack capabilities in that crucial ‘first strike’.

As I matured I began to look at this situation a bit differently. Put yourself in the other guy’s shoes and walk around in his head for a while. Ivan in the street wasn’t any more anxious to die than I was and he wouldn’t have any more choice/say in launching a first strike than I would. He was no more a mindless zombie than I was and in all likelihood, his day was pretty much like mine.

Getup, go to work, do whatever it takes to get through the shift, go home, eat dinner, relax for a while, maybe go hang out with our pals, then it’s home to bed so you can repeat the routine the following day.

Guess what? This is a pretty typical day for humans all over the planet. Okay, for most people, the ones that don’t have a foreign army of occupation busting their balls as they go about the above routine.

No monsters, no mindless zombies just average people who are just like you that are trying to get by, just like you.

So where are all the crazed berserkers, these insane murderers of women and children? You won’t find them on the streets or even underground. You’ll find them plotting in the world’s oval offices.

Every government has as it’s primary function the defense of the nation. If there’s nothing to defend the people from there’s not much legitimacy in their ceaseless demand for more taxes.

When put in this perspective it becomes clear who the real terrorists are.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Divided We Fall

United we aren’t. If one were to believe the media, there exists such a diverse set of opinions out there that it would seem none of us are able to agree on anything.
Thanks in no small part to the same said media.

It is not possible for us to see with our own eyes everything that goes on in the world. We must rely on the reports of others for this information.

We live in a society where nothing is free. Thus our ‘free’ news reports are ‘sponsored by’ advertisers. With this as a given, the media seldom bites the hand that feeds it. Even more disturbing is the fact that key economic reports are being ‘manufactured’ by agencies of our own government using Enron style accounting methods.

This is pure propaganda, the same kind of thing that occurs under a dictatorship. They keep shuffling the data until the picture reflects the desired results.

All information is context sensitive. Most of the time the media fails to give the ‘background music’ upon which they based their report. So if they give the results of a poll and neglect to tell you who paid for the poll and how many people were surveyed, you have no idea how accurate the information is.

You may as well ask your whacko next door neighbor what they think and base you opinion on that.

You need to poll five thousand people to get the margin of error under five percent. Polling only four or five hundred (and polling them at a gathering for or against a specific cause) severely skews the results. To take the heinous poll thing one step further, most polls never say how the question that obtained the end results was phrased.

If you’re old enough to be reading this then you know it’s not what you say but how you say it that produces a given reaction…which also throws the usefulness of the information collected by the poll in doubt.

Believe only half of what you see and less of what you hear.

The majority of us are far more alike than you’ve been led to believe. The endless polls and surveys of which the media seems to have an inexhaustible supply serve but one purpose…

They exist to make you doubt your own judgement.

Humans are highly imitative of one another. The pressure to conform, to fit in, gives whoever controls the flow of information a tool of great power. Whoever has the power to tell you what to think has the power to mold public opinion.

You are being manipulated.

The only tools you have to combat this kind of manipulation are your awareness that this is happening and your own daily experiences. Each economic ‘strata’ has it’s own realities, realities that are shared across the board. Logic dictates that there are very few wealthy people, a large number of working stiffs and a growing number of the ‘chronically unemployed’ (which are people that can only find work some of the time.)

There are those who owe and those to whom it is owed. If the general perception were that people are having a hard time paying their bills, it’s easy to see which end of this spectrum would get a headache.

Thus the media, paid by the people who are owed, is under an obligation to report that everything is wonderful, even if your reality says otherwise.

So the next time you tune in to catch up on what’s going on in the world, consider not only what you are told but why you’re being told this particular piece of the story and wonder about how much they didn’t ‘see fit’ to tell you.

You’ll be better informed for it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

One people, One purpose

Greetings Good citizen. Welcome back.

I write these posts first and respond in private later in case you think I’m ignoring you (although sometimes that may well be the case.)

What do you suppose one people, one purpose is all about? Many organizations have been founded by the like minded but the ‘club’ referred to here is one that you’re already a member of whether you want to be or not. The one people referred to in the heading are all of mankind, every human, everywhere.

So this piece is about you and the fact that you are but one of many. You doubtlessly have your quirks, your likes and dislikes, your passions and your frustrations but when we get down to the LCD, the fact remains that you are a single human biological unit, no different than anyone else. All claims to the contrary are vanity.

I know how gifted you are, how talented and oh so very good at so very many things. You really are a wonderful person but at the end of the day, you’ll only last a few minutes without air, a few days without water and about a month without food no matter how good you are at all of those other things.

With that said, do you have a clue what the one purpose is? The young often wonder what life is about, why they’re here and when the going gets really tough, what’s the point of it all?

Life has no meaning until your life for you ends. The moment you hold your first born in your arms for the first time, the meaning of life becomes clear.

It’s all about survival.

Some don’t want kids and others will take that a step further with the wish they that themselves had never been born. There’s a world of difference between wanting a child and having one you’re not ready for but that’s a different debate entirely.

Take a look at nature. Every plant and animal in existence has but one primary goal, to continue the species. Your opinion as to whether or not mankind should survive is irrelevant.

Your primary purpose, the reason you exist, whether you choose to or not, is to continue the species.

It’s why you are here. All else is vanity.

Failure to understand this one simple fact leads to a variety of other misunderstandings that have made this world the cesspool it is today.

But all is not lost. It all begins with understanding and this is the first fact that you should understand.

We are one people with one purpose.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The beginning

Greetings and welcome to my (new) page.

If what follows looks familiar then you may have encountered my works on Blogit, where the only ones 'getting paid to write' were the people running the site.

It is the primary objective of this page to shed light into the dark recesses of your mind, bringing forth the questions that have gone unanswered all these many years.

The mission is not to tell you what to think but to get you to think.

with that said,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner