Why So Serious?

What is it with me lately? I haven't posted a music vid or comic for ages...

Guess its just the times, and my crestfallen disappointment with the Socialist President we all hoped would really be socialist. I know, it sucks.
Intransigent systematic capitalist/fascist takeover of our fair country is almost complete.

Does anyone remember Rollerball?

The original, with corporations taking over the world in the corporate wars, no governments, no individual heroes allowed. Only corporations and their needs to be met.

I never realized how prescient this movie from 1975 would be.



Friends, tell me this is not happening, please.

Republicans Are Assholes. Well, maybe not all - but, I bet all assholes are Republicans.

Economic Desperation - The Manna of Republican Corporatists (Fascists)

Robert Reich has a handle on the economic issues inundating this country today. The right wing/corporate media is complicit in downplaying the problems as well, as we all know. Why is it so hard for the general populous to see that demand side economics are the ONLY answer to the income inequality problems we see today? Because the media, all the fucking media, replays the old Reagan supply side mantra, job creators, ad naseum. I, for one, have had enough of this bullshit. Brainwashed by corporate media, the scared, general population continues to vote against their own self interest only for survival. this is no way to live. Scared, afraid, broke, desperate. Ask anyone, there is no security in this Republican world.

Fear Is Why Workers in Red States Vote Against Their Economic Self-Interest

By Robert Reich

Excerpts:

Last week's massive spill of the toxic chemical MCHM into West Virginia's Elk River illustrates another benefit to the business class of high unemployment, economic insecurity, and a safety-net shot through with holes. Not only are employees eager to accept whatever job they can get. They are also also unwilling to demand healthy and safe environments.

So why wasn't more done to prevent this, and why isn't there more of any outcry even now?

The answer isn't hard to find. As Maya Nye, president of People Concerned About Chemical Safety, a citizen's group formed after a 2008 explosion and fire killed workers at West Virginia's Bayer CropScience plant in the state, explained to the New York Times: "We are so desperate for jobs in West Virginia we don't want to do anything that pushes industry out."

Exactly.

The wages of production workers have been dropping for thirty years, adjusted for inflation, and their economic security has disappeared. Companies can and do shut down, sometimes literally overnight. A smaller share of working-age Americans hold jobs today than at any time in more than three decades.

People are so desperate for jobs they don't want to rock the boat. They don't want rules and regulations enforced that might cost them their livelihoods. For them, a job is precious -- sometimes even more precious than a safe workplace or safe drinking water.

This may explain why Republican officials who have been casting their votes against unions, against expanding Medicaid, against raising the minimum wage, against extended unemployment insurance, and against jobs bills that would put people to work, continue to be elected and re-elected. They obviously have the support of corporate patrons who want to keep unemployment high and workers insecure because a pliant working class helps their bottom lines. But they also, paradoxically, get the votes of many workers who are clinging so desperately to their jobs that they're afraid of change and too cowed to make a ruckus.

Amen, brother.

Global Climate Change Windfall Benefits Safety Net Recipients in Maine

If only...

Maine Governor Touts Economic Benefit Climate Change Will Have In His State
as per Think Progress

"Climate change could have economic benefit to Maine, the state’s governor said Thursday."
The The Northern Sea Route, a shipping passage from the East Coast of the U.S. to Asia, has historically been blocked most of the year due to sea ice. Recently, due to warmer temperatures, the passage has opened up — in 2011, 18 ships made the journey through the passage.
This, according to LePage, is good news.
“Everybody looks at the negative effects of global warming, but with the ice melting, the Northern Passage has opened up,” Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said at a conference on transportation. “So maybe, instead of being at the end of the pipeline, we’re now at the beginning of a new pipeline.”

AND that pipeline leads directly to increased revenues for those who need it most in Maine. It's the least we can do after this:

44,000 to lose Medicaid coverage in Maine

and this:

Maine Gov. LePage Unveils Budget That Guts Necessities For Main Street To Pay For Tax Cuts For Rich

and this:

Maine governor claims ’47 percent of able-bodied’ Mainers don’t work

Wait, what's that? (hand to ear like Jon Stewart) He's not going to use this windfall to shore up the State's safety net or expand healthcare? He's giving it to who? Because they must be more "virtuous"?.

Oh, never mind.

Drone Capitalism

Holy flying monkey-sharks!!

I didn't order that!

Amazon Tests Drones for Same-Day Parcel Delivery, Bezos Says


Update!!

5 Reasons Why Drones Won’t Deliver Anything But Hype For The Foreseeable Future

Capitalism Fail

'Tis the season to make money, Fa La La La La, la la la la.....
 (At least for some people, not the workers that's for sure)

A confluence of events this week. The Pope called for a "global economic system that puts people and not 'an idol called money' at its heart, Followed by Black Friday, the capitalists' wet dream where money meets desperation in this broken economy.

It is really a sad commentary on our economic system when our economic strength as a Country (capital C) rides on a religious holiday, built on the teachings of a guy who gave away all his shit? WTF?

Of course there are the usual random vids of violence at these events to celebrate a holiday based on the birth of a man who loved his neighbor as himself, turned the other cheek, and told the money-changers to get out of the temple.

Conservatives have no clue as to who he really was. In their conservative bubble, the real Jesus has been left behind... like an Education Program that I remember...

Republican Jesus...  

But, this guy seems to have a clue:

"Pope Francis has hit out at unbridled capitalism and the "cult of money", calling for ethical reform of the financial system to create a more humane society."

"In an impassioned appeal, the Argentinian pontiff said politicians needed to be bold in tackling the root causes of the economic crisis, which he said lay in an acceptance of money's "power over ourselves and our society".

"We have created new idols," he said in a speech in the Vatican. "The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal."

Attacking unchecked capitalism, the pope said the growing inequality in society was caused by "ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good".

... Ethics, he said, were too often dismissed as a nuisance. "There is a need for financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone," he said. "Money has to serve, not to rule."

But, can I still get my tax-break on my ridiculously expensive "Business Expense"?

Oh yes, the Church Exemption taxes thingy...  but that's another post for another day...

Bernie Sanders Talks About The Real Cost of Low Prices At WalMart

From the Raw Story

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appeared on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” on Saturday and scoffed at the idea that major corporations like Walmart can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage and that to raise the U.S. minimum wage would be bad for the economy.

 

I've been railing about this for years.

The Senator laughed when host Ed Schultz asked what he would say to people who insist that mega-corporations like Walmart and McDonald’s can’t afford to raise their wages.

“Ed, do you want to hear one of the great obscenities of our time?” Sanders asked. “The wealthiest family in this country is the Walton family. They are worth about a hundred billion dollars. That’s more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people.”

“One of the reasons that the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, are so wealthy is that they receive huge subsidies from the taxpayers of this country,” he said. “When you pay, at Walmart, starvation wages, you don’t provide benefits to your workers, who picks up the difference? The answer is that many of the workers in Walmart end up getting Medicaid, they get food stamps, they get affordable housing paid for by the taxpayers of this country while the Walton family remains the wealthiest family in America.”

“If that is not obscene, I don’t know what is,” Sanders concluded.

'Nuff said.

Moments in Asshatery from the Great State of Maine

Anyone who voted for this assclown deserves what they are getting.

I've been trying to ignore this ignorant asshole, but the latest barf out of his piehole just set me off, so I have compiled a short list, by no means all-inclusive of this ignorant git's misguided at best and destructive more than often than not governance of my beloved state.

Here we go:

LePage orders removal of labor mural, sparking outcry

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 

AUGUSTA — Gov. Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting Maine's labor history from the lobby of the Department of Labor.

He hadn't been in office more than two months and the "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs," governor took down the labor mural. Yeah, sure - jobs... Then we get this:

 Maine Governor Gets Testy With N.A.A.C.P.
Gov. Paul LePage of Maine directed a graphic insult at the state’sN.A.A.C.P. leaders on Friday after they questioned his decision to pass on attending Martin Luther King Birthday events in Bangor and Portland. 
[snip]
When the reporter asked Mr. LePage to respond to the suggestion that he had a pattern of slighting theN.A.A.C.P., he replied, “Tell them to kiss my butt,” adding, “If they want to play the race card, come to dinner; my son will talk to them.”

Supposedly he has an adopted son who is black - I pity the boy.

Benjamin Todd Jealous, the president and chief executive officer of the N.A.A.C.P., said that Mr. LePage’s “decision to inflame racial tension on the eve of the King holiday denigrates his office.”

Just like everything else he does.“His words are a reminder of the worst aspects of Maine’s history and out of touch with our nation’s deep yearning for increased civility and racial healing,” Mr. Jealous said in a statement on Friday. “Our goal for more than 100 years has been to build One America, and One Maine. From defending Franco-American Catholics from the Klan in the 1920s to fighting mistreatment of Muslim Americans and racial profiling of black Americans today, we are proud of our history in the state of Maine.”


Next:

Governor LePage: Maine Wind Turbine Runs On ‘A Little Electric Motor That Turns The Blades’

This is the one that set me off. I really couldn't believe it. Can't we have an I.Q. test for Governors to qualify to run for the seat, please? 

Maine Governor Paul LePage accused the University of Maine of turning on an electric motor when the wind wasn’t blowing their turbine to fool people into thinking that “wind power works.”

LePage was not joking when he made the comment to the Skowhegan Area Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, as Mike Tipping with the Bangor Daily News reports:

Now, to add insult to injury, The University of Maine, Presque Isle — anybody here been up there to see that damn windmill in the back yard? Guess what, if it’s not blowing wind outside and they have somebody visiting the campus, they have a little electric motor that turns the blades. I’m serious. They have an electric motor so they can show people that wind power works. Unbelievable. And that’s the government that you have here in the state of Maine.

No, you stupid shit - that's science... You're the reason government doesn't work in the State of Maine.
  
Asked about this curious claim, the University spokesperson’s first response was to literally laugh out loud. There is no motor. The project is actually a success story for the university, and for Maine. This was the first mid-sized turbine installed by a university in the state, has a 600 kilowatt capacity, and has produced 680,000 kwh worth of clean electricity in its first year. That’s $100,000 off the University of Maine at Preque Isle’s utility bill, and 572 tons of CO2 not burnedinto the atmosphere.
Dumb Fuck, he did not add, but I would have.  

Now we have the latest demonstration of just how low his I.Q really is: 

LePage touts his plan to grade Maine schools

A through F
"It's so hard to read all the mumbo-jumbo in a detailed report on how schools are doing", he did not say. "Let's dumb it down so even I can understand it", he implied.

How does an obviously unqualified yokel get elected to the highest office in this state? 

LePage’s Koch Brothers connection revealed

If you're looking for a poster child for the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics, you'd have a hard time doing better than the American Legislative Exchange Council.

ALEC is one of the nation's most powerful and most secretive lobbying entities, and it focuses exclusively on state legislatures. Disguised as a non-partisan professional association for legislators, it is actually a corporate-funded mechanism to allow business interests to write their own bills without leaving fingerprints for the public and their elected representatives to see. ALEC hands out model laws to willing or naïve legislators — including some in Maine — which are drafted by secret task forces and approved by ALEC's corporate donors, who provide virtually all of its funding. Major donors include the infamous Koch Brothers, the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, and big drug and tobacco companies. The laws seek to deregulate industry, protect the powerful from responsibility for their misdeeds, or dismantle and privatize government. Hundreds of ALEC-written laws are passed in state houses every year, usually without anyone realizing who really wrote them.
Guess who is the new corporate chair of ALEC for the state of Maine?
Confidential documents from ALEC's annual meeting last month in New Orleans obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy reveal it is none other than Ann Robinson, a trusted advisor to Governor Paul LePage who simultaneously maintains her day job as a corporate lobbyist at Preti Flaherty Beliveau & Pachios. (Her legislative co-chair is Senator Richard Rosen, Republican of Bucksport.)
Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/126378-lepages-koch-brothers-connection-revealed/#ixzz2REuBMHLr
Oh and don't forget about this little tidbit:Federal official confirms Maine Labor Department probe; state workers union seeks independent review of LePage
AUGUSTA, Maine — Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Seth Harris told Gov. Paul LePage during a telephone call late Wednesday that an audit of the Maine Department of Labor’s handling of unemployment claims came in response to complaints of inconsistencies, not due to comments the governor allegedly made last month during a Blaine House lunch.
Meanwhile, the Maine State Employees Association said in a press release Thursday morning that it is calling for an independent review of the state’s unemployment system and potential attempts by LePage to intimidate unemployment hearing officers into ruling on the side of businesses.
[snip]
Ginette Rivard, president of the union that represents the majority of state workers, said LePage’s recent reported comments to unemployment hearing officers at a Blaine House lunch constituted “attacks on the integrity of the entire system of unemployment compensation.”
And the hits just keep on coming. 2016 can't come soon enough for me.

_________________________________________________________________________________
Note - Sorry about the poor formatting, I was in a snit. The content is real.

Spruce Head Home for the Emotionally and Socially Disturbed

Hi Friends. I am finally moved into my new place on an island, connected by a causeway, in Spruce Head. I am no longer in a conservative neighborhood - aka surburbia hell.

This is my view off my back deck. Fuck it. I deserve it. So do the Greendaykids. Can't afford it, but what else is new. I'll make it. Like I tell the kids, "Have faith in your skills and abilities".

Everyone is welcome. Especially you Suze and Busted. I can't wait to see you. I have a spare room, actually plenty of room for all.

You can borrow my boots, you Ornery Bastard.

If yesterday was Good Friday and tomorrow's Easter then today must be...

Supply Side Saturday!

CEO Pay Growing At 3 Times The Rate Of Everyone Else's: Study

From the SideBoob Gazette
If you feel like your pay isn't going up, then you’re probably not a CEO. CEO pay rose 8 percent on average last year, according to an analysis from USA Today. The increase pushes the median pay to $9.7 million, and marks the biggest CEO pay boost in two years. But while corporate chiefs are raking it in, paychecks for us normals aren't going up all that much. The median pay raise for workers was between 2.7 and 2.8 percent last year, according to NBC News.So while workers are increasing their pay somewhat, CEOs are enjoying jumps that are three times that amount. Compensation expert Ravin Jesuthasan told NBC that workers should get used to the disparity -- experts expect the average raise to jump to 3 percent in 2013, but that’s becoming the "new normal," he said. Because unemployment is still high, corporations can retain workers without huge pay boosts. Major companies squeezed more money out of workers last year as corporate profits soared to a record high. Ironically, it’s the companies’ record amounts of cash that prompt them to reward CEOs with such high salaries, according to USA Today. At the same time, The New York Times reported earlier this year that wages, which have remained largely stagnant, are now a record-low share of the U.S. economy. The result: the U.S. median income fell to $50,054 in 2011, the most recent year with full-year data available.

Such Bullshit. When will these assholes realize that demand drives the economy? Please, anyone... Bueller?

I Really Like This Woman

Elizabeth Warren Asks: Why Isn't The Minimum Wage $22/Hour?

 What would the US Senate be without Elizabeth Warren? She's a national treasure. Transcript of the meeting here.

Costco is proving Republicans and the Wal-Mart wrong by paying workers a living wage while also earning record profits.

Finally, some good news from the private sector dispelling the middle class killing myth that higher wages kill growth.

From PoliticusUSA:  While Wal-Mart experienced February sales that were considered, “total disaster,” Costco’s earnings for the second quarter of the year climbed 39%. The New York Times reported, “Costco Wholesale’s net income for its second quarter climbed 39 percent as it pulled in more money from membership fees, sales improved and it recorded a large tax benefit.”

Costco CEO Craig Jelinek openly supports raising the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour, “At Costco, we know that paying employees good wages makes good sense for business. We pay a starting hourly wage of $11.50 in all states where we do business, and we are still able to keep our overhead costs low. An important reason for the success of Costco’s business model is the attraction and retention of great employees. Instead of minimizing wages, we know it’s a lot more profitable in the long term to minimize employee turnover and maximize employee productivity, commitment and loyalty. We support efforts to increase the federal minimum wage.”

I agree wholeheartedly. supply-siders and trickle-down tools have been proven wrong time and time again that higher wages stunt economic growth. Simply not true. Even the known fascist Henry Ford wanted his employees to make enough money to afford the cars that they built.

From "Daily Finance" (not exactly a liberal magazine) : In 1914, a business executive named Henry Ford did a startling thing: He announced that he was going to more than double the wages he was paying his employees, from $2.34 to $5 a day -- the equivalent of $120 a day in today's money.

snip...

More: The story you hear frequently about why Henry Ford made this decision was that he wanted to allow his workers to be able to afford to buy his cars. The wage increase certainly made the cars (and many other products) more affordable for Ford employees, but the historical consensus is that Ford actually made this decision for a different reason: To reduce employee turnover--and, in so doing, reduce recruiting and replacement cost. Regardless, it worked.

I highly recommend reading the whole article - very informative.

I hope Wal-Mart Management is reading the same articles but I doubt it. 

From PBS: Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the United States after the Federal government with over 925,000 employees. Each year, the company hires 550,000 more employees - three times the number of people the U.S. military recruits every year - replacing those lost to rapid turnover and replenishing its workforce.

Imagine if all those people made a living wage. It's easy if you try.

A worker at Costco makes $19.50 after four and a half years, according to Slate Magazine. It’s about $7 an hour more than employees with the same seniority at Costco’s competitor, Sam’s Club.

Some Wall Street analysts haven’t been happy about that or about the company’s generous health plan. No doubt, Costco could be making a higher profit. And yet, the company does just fine. The value of Costco stock has more than doubled since 2009, and the company’s founder, James Sinegal, said those wages buy the company a low rate of employee turnover and theft.

Costco’s generosity saw renewed publicity recently when Wal-Mart became mired in strikes over low pay and bad labor relations. Although Wal-Mart is admittedly a much bigger company, the Costco model proves you don’t have to squeeze employees to be successful.

'Nuff said.