http://www.alternet.org/media/7-rip-offs-corporations-and-wealthy-dont-want-you-know-about

Oligarchy, Plutocracy, whatever you want to call it...it  ain't right, and it's gotta change. Here's some clips from the article at alternet.org

http://www.alternet.org/media/7-rip-offs-corporations-and-wealthy-dont-want-you-know-about

1. Corporations Profit from Food Stamps
According to a JP Morgan  spokesman, the food stamp program "is a very important business to JP Morgan.
2. Crash the Economy, Get Your Money Back. Die with a Student Loan, Stay in Debt.
...banker-friendly "bankruptcy reform" has ensured that college graduates  keep their student loans till they die
3. Almost 70% of Corporations Are Not Required to Pay ANY Federal Taxes
The Wall Street Journal states, "The percentage of U.S. corporations organized as nontaxable businesses has grown from about 24% in 1986 to about 69% as of 2008, according to the latest-available Internal Revenue Service data.
4. Lotteries Pay for Corporate Tax Avoidance
Some astonishing facts reveal the extent of the problem. Low-income households spend anywhere from  five to nine percent of their earnings on lotteries. A Pennsylvania  survey found that nearly half of low-income residents planned to gamble at a newly-opened casino. America's gambling losses in 2007 were  nine times greater than just 25 years before.
5. The National Football League Pays No Federal Taxes
One of the most profitable organizations in America, with billions in tickets, TV rights, and merchandise sales, and with an NFL Commissioner who  earned more money than the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and AT&T, is considered a non-profit. It has a  tax-exempt status. 
A Harvard University urban planning study  determined that 70 percent of the capital cost of NFL stadiums has been provided by taxpayers, rather than by NFL owners.
6. Live on Park Avenue, Get a Farm Subsidy
A disturbing but fascinating  report called "Farm Subsidies and the Big Dogs" lists Washington, DC, Chicago, and New York City, in that order, as the worst offenders.
7. Profit Margin Magic: Turning a dollar into $100,000
Calculations by  DataGenetics reveal that the ink in a $16.99 cartridge comes to almost $3,400 per gallon.
...and... Companies buy public water at almost no cost, treat it in  unknown ways, and then sell it back to us at an exorbitant markup.

We live in a mirage democracy

Following are a few clips from a long but worthwhile and eye-opening article.
Part one of two parts from Truthout.  Take the red pill and move on to your next webpage or other distraction, or take the blue pill and read on...

td

Wednesday, 13 February 2013 00:00By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , Truthout | News Analysis

http://truth-out.org/news/item/14489-lifting-the-veil-of-mirage-democracy-in-the-united-states

"We live in a mirage democracy," Zeese and Flowers assert, as they trace the history and describe the institutions of a not-so-robust US democracy.

....

Justice Louis Brandeis said it well when he stated, "We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

Over the past 40 years, income inequality in the United States has exploded from its lowest level in 1978 . What kind of democracy exists under these circumstances? And is real democracy possible for a global empire? How does nation-state democracy exist within the new globalized economy that serves transnational corporations?

....

The United States celebrates the founding of the country and the so-called "Founding Fathers" as the birth of democracy, but the real democracy movement occurred before the American Revolution. In fact, it was the founding fathers, a group of propertied elites, slave holders, noted lawyers and wealthy merchants, who created a system designed to prevent a truly democratic state.

....

President Abraham Lincoln warned in a November 21, 1864, letter to Colonel William F. Elkins about the corruption that would follow this rise of corporate power:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

....

Part II of this series on democracy, will focus on how participatory government and economic democracy are being put in place in Latin America and steps being taken in those directions in the United States. If we are to achieve the "We the People" government to which we aspire and end the mirage democracy we are in, these are the twin pillars on which real democracy will stand.

You can hear our interview with Chris Hedges and Cliff DuRand: What Kind of Democracy Exists in the US? on Clearing the FOG Radio (podcast) or view it onUStream/ItsOurEconomy.

This is Part I in a series on democracy in the United States. Next week we examine participatory democracy as an antidote to managed democracy.

You can intervene in the nation's budget debate by watching a Roots Action video and writing your Congressional representatives and the president here.

This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication.

Chevron-Ecuador case expert switches sides - SFGate

This case has been ongoing for a long time, and I've figured there was manipulation on both sides, but this is disappointing.  Too bad. Simply put, Texaco made a mess and then did cleanup that was stamped OK by gov't monitors - who likely weren't able to fully inspect all the problems. Chevron buys Texaco fields, and is held accountable when the full extent of the problems are documented...protracted legal battles follow, with David v.Goliath model. David uses many really hard rocks, Goliath uses lots of money to build protective armor. David apparently tries a less than legit tactic - not that Goliath hasn't done the same - so both sides have less than stellar records now. The blame is now obfuscated by years of ownership changes, manipulation and back room cigar smoke but fact remains - there remains a lot of petroleum nastiness out in the forest that needs to be cleaned up.

Chevron-Ecuador case expert switches sides - SFGate:

"The long-running environmental lawsuit against Chevron Corp. in Ecuador has pitted whole armies of lawyers, activists and technical experts against each other. Now a former combatant appears to have switched sides[to Chevron]."
...

"An Ecuadoran judge ruled against Chevron last year, ordering the San Ramon company to pay $19 billion. Chevron has vowed not to hand over the money and has sued the other side's lawyers for extortion and racketeering. The Ecuadoran team is now pursuing Chevron's assets in Argentina, Brazil and Canada to collect on the judgment.

Racketeering suit

Chevron obtained Reyes' statement as part of the racketeering suit. Company spokesmanKent Robertson said Reyes was not paid for his statement, nor was he promised work with Chevron.

"The fraud is going to come out, and he wants to be on the right side," Robertson said.

Karen Hinton, a spokeswoman for the Ecuadorans' legal team, accused Chevron of ghostwriting some of Reyes' comments, and said her team had not tried to force Reyes or anyone else to compromise their professional ethics. She also insisted that tests showed extensive oil-field contamination in the area.

"Reyes either lies or is mistaken when he claims that the plaintiffs acknowledged that the data from the judicial inspections did not support their claims," she said.

Reyes became involved in the suit at the end of 2005. He had just published a book "Oil, Amazon, and Natural Capital," arguing that Chevron and the Ecuadoran government together needed to clean up the oil fields."

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The price of inequality

FROM: The price of inequality, in colour | The Equality Trust

Evidence shows that:

1) In rich countries, a smaller gap between rich and poor means a happier, healthier, and more successful population. Just look at the US, the UK, Portugal, and New Zealand in the top right of this graph, doing much worse than Japan, Sweden or Norway in the bottom left. 

2) Meanwhile, more economic growth will NOT lead to a happier, healthier, or more successful population. In fact, there is no relation between income per head and social well-being in rich countries.

3) If the UK were more equal, we'd be better off as a population. For example, the evidence suggests that if we halved inequality here:

- Murder rates could halve
- Mental illness could reduce by two thirds
- Obesity could halve
- Imprisonment could reduce by 80%
- Teen births could reduce by 80%
- Levels of trust could increase by 85%

4) It's not just people in poorer communities who would do better. The evidence suggests people all the way up would benefit, although it's true that the poorest would gain the most.

5) These findings hold true, whether you look across developed nations, or across the 50 states of the USA.

from: The Rude Pundit

Dear Rude Pundit,
Thank you.
td

The Rude Pundit

11/07/2012

A Few Brief Notes to Republicans on the Day After Their Defeat by Barack Obama:
In four of the last five presidential elections, you lost the popular vote (we won't get into the fact that you really lost four of the last five elections completely). Is that telling you something? No, it's not. Because you're Republicans. And you don't care what reality is. You prefer to attempt to bend reality like a contortionist porn actor trying and failing to lick his own taint from behind.

You lost. It wasn't close. It wasn't a squeaker. It wasn't a nailbiter. All of your internal magical mathematicians were wrong. It was over the second the polls closed on the West Coast because it was over before the election even started. It was over because you nominated a fraud, a Tin Man who spent the entire campaign looking for a heart not because he really wanted one but because his advisors told him that he needed one. It was over because whatever else he tried to be, Mitt Romney was as close to a caricature of a rich dick as you could get without looking like he was merely plagiarizing The Simpsons or Dickens. It was over because, despite every effort to smear and lie about the President, Americans saw that Barack Obama was not your crude Bolshevik monster, but a cool, rational man who kept trying to get things done despite monumental opposition, despite monumental debt, despite a monumental storm. You won't see these things, though, because you're Republicans, and self-reflection is to you what a hot needle is to a cyst on your ass.

You are going to get advice from everywhere, all over, left, right, crazy. So the Rude Pundit's not going to attempt to say much here because you're not going to listen. It comes down to this: Stop being jerks, and, as Joe Biden said, get out of the way. Stop being jerks to women, to immigrants, to gays, to union members. Just...well, just fucking stop. If you don't understand how the GOP strategy of the last three and a half years affected you on a national basis, no matter what the gerrymandered House district yahoo votes told you, then you are damned to be party of nothing more than bodies in the road, slowing real progress, only to be crushed and run over one at a time, hoping that enough of your squashed and squeezed viscera gums up the engines of government enough to bring it to a halt. Or until the bodies are plowed out of the way, as they were in 2006 and 2008. If you think the lesson is that you weren't conservative enough, you know nothing about the United States.

Ultimately, you won't learn anything. Because you're Republicans. And there's something tragically touching and almost poetically ignorant about stubbornly clinging to the anchor of your principles even as the ship sinks and everyone around you is saying to let it go and take a life preserver.

Yeah, now we to look forward to the inevitable endless investigations of meaningless things before the push for impeachment. Because you're Republicans. And that's just easier to do than actually govern.

Why Legalizing Marijuana on Election Day Might Not Be a Good Idea - The Daily Beast

There are less than rosy sides to full legalization, and this article points out some of them.  They are a bit disconcerting, but still add up to less than the status quo on the issue.  The author closes with this:

As the Seattle Times recently put it in an editorial endorsing legalization in Washington State, the relevant question isn’t whether marijuana is good: “It is whether prohibition is good. It is whether the people who use marijuana shall be subject to arrest, and whether the people who supply them shall be sent to prison. The question is whether the war on marijuana is worth what it costs.” 

Quite obviously, the answer is no. In fact, of all the available options the status quo of criminalizing what millions of people enjoy—most of them nonwhite, poor, and in for a world of collateral damage as a result of their arrest—is probably the least attractive choice, worse only than full legalization. The better decision is incremental reforms at the state level and a hands-off approach from the feds. Let people grow pot, and sell it, but not for profit, and without advertising, and in a tightly regulated marketplace. Tinker every year, adding new provisions and privileges as much needed new research comes in. And always update the law with a sunset provision. That way the process can’t be hijacked by lobbyists and special interests—and only one thing goes up in smoke.

Why Legalizing Marijuana on Election Day Might Not Be a Good Idea - The Daily Beast

xkcd: Tradition

xkcd: Tradition:

I think this mindset is what drives the tea-publicans ...

"Can't we just get back to when everything was 'swell'!?"

I don't like 'change'.  

Get off my LAWN!"

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xkcd - just because I like it,

xkcd: Premiere

Here on Earth -

Here on Earth:

WTF did space exploration ever do for ME?
OK...follow along boys and girls...and remember that NASA/space exploration portion of the U.S. budget is less than one half of one percent...see the graphic and text below.
Go see the nice informative website at www.ridingwithrobots.org
td

Here on Earth:
“Why are we spending money and effort on space exploration when we’re facing so many issues here at home? We shouldn’t go into space until we solve all our problems...Here On Earth"

A Very Thin Slice of Pie

Ask many Americans what percentage of the federal budget is taken up by NASA, and they’ll answer with something in the double digits. The actual amount? Less than one percent. Less than one half of one percent, in fact. In this famous interactive infographic by The New York Times, the space budget is represented by one of the tiny sub-squares in one of the small squares in the lower right, far too small to be labeled at this scale. 

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Astronomy Photographer Of The Year Winners | TPM Media

These are spectacular...and it wasn't even Hubble...

td


Astronomy Photographer Of The Year Winners | TPM Media:

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Will 9 GOP Governors Electronically Flip Romney Into the White House?

Will 9 GOP Governors Electronically Flip Romney Into the White House?:

"In Ohio 2004, at 12:20 election night, the initial vote tabulation showed John Kerry handily defeating Bush by more than 4%. This 200,000-plus margin appeared to guarantee Kerry's ascent to the presidency. But mysteriously, the Ohio vote count suddenly shifted to Smartech in Chattanooga, Tennessee. With private Republican-connected contractors processing the vote, Bush jumped ahead with a 2% lead, eventually winning with an official margin of more than 118,000 votes. Such a shift of more than 6%, involving more than 300,000 votes, is a virtual statistical impossibility, as documented in our WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA'S 2012 ELECTION (www.freepress.org)."

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xkcd: Geology

Gneiss! I knew I made the right choice those many years ago...just an eyeblink in geologic time, but already there are new wrinkles...I think I may be having an orogeny. No schist!

xkcd: Geology: "http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geology.png"

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Economy In Perspective - unemployment, jobs, GDP growth, inflation, the deficit, and tax receipts

If you can read this small but informative website - it's just a few pages and reads sequentially - and still want to vote for a Republican I will be amazed.  Please explain.

td

Economy In Perspective - Home:


INTRODUCTION

"During an economic downturn politicians often have very heated arguments about the best way to approach the problem.  This made us curious about how effectively the economic policies of previous presidents might have dealt with these situations.  In 2009 we began researching the issue and compiled some statistics.  Our goal was to create a long-term view of the economy, using the metrics that everyone brings up to show how good (or bad) things are going. These are: unemployment and job creation, gross domestic product (GDP) growth, inflation, the deficit, and tax receipts.  This would let people put numbers to common questions such as, “What was happening” and “How did we get that way”."
...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Department of Commerce have been compiling economic data for decades, and whenever possible we have taken the data directly from their website.  For data on national debt and federal receipts, our source is the St. Louis Federal Reserve. 
...

so the authors took lots of data and made many graphs and charts like this one here

...
CONCLUSION
We disregarded all the arguments and took the simple step of finding the economic measures that seemed most important: jobs, growth, spending and inflation, and asked when they looked good and when they looked bad.  We found the answer very surprising.  With few exceptions, the economy looked good when democrats were in the oval office, and less good when republicans had taken over.  It seems somehow that it can’t be that simple, but we’re content to let the analysts fight over that.  For us, the numbers speak for themselves more clearly than any economic analyst ever has.

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Chart of the day, HFT edition | Felix Salmon

This astonishing GIF comes from Nanex, and shows the amount of high-frequency trading in the stock market from January 2007 to January 2012. (Which means that the Knightmare craziness of last week is not included.) The various colors, as identified in the legend on the right, are all the different US stock exchanges. You might think there are only two stock exchanges in the US, but you’d be wrong: there are only two exchanges where stocks are listed. There are many, many more exchanges where stocks are traded. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/08/06/chart-of-the-day-hft-edition/

High Frequency Trading (HFT) has warped the stock market.  Literally millions and billions of trades are made lasting only micro-seconds, sometimes pulled just before completion, affecting the stock price up or down, then entering again to buy or sell at that newly affected price - scraping profits off of manipulating transactions within the market system - not based on buy and hold.  It's what the day-traders of the 80's and 90's used to do - only done over micro-second intervals, not hours or days.

One of the points here is that there is a chance to generate some revenue and hold down the manipulation of the market by adding small transaction fees - particularly for these rapidly traded transactions - not for your purchase of XYZ Inc. for dividend or long-term investment.

If not "significant losses will end up being borne by investors with no direct connection to the HFT world" - and just like in the 2008 market collapse, the guys with the computers and suits will profit, while the rest of us take it in the shorts.

td
Update from a SlashDot comment on the post - where I first saw the HFT article.

by cpm99352 (939350) on Tuesday August 07, @07:51PM (#40911727)

To repeat my comments from just a few days ago [slashdot.org] , the fine article [caseyresearch.com] states on page 4:

Many HFTs will make near-simultaneous trades on different exchanges and profit because of the delay in one of the exchanges. An example will help me explain: let’s use the NASDAQ and EDGE exchanges, and say that ABC stock is trading at $1.00. The HFT will send a bunch of quotes (offers) to NASDAQ and EDGE, trying to sell ABC stock at $1.01. Once the NASDAQ order is accepted, the HFT can simultaneously cancel the $1.01 sell order on the EDGE exchange and replace it with a buy order at the original price of $1.00. EDGE immediately accepts that $1.00 order, because its system has not caught up to the new price of $1.01, and the HFT’s net position becomes zero. This is possible because of latency, which is jargon for delay in the system. The net result is, the HFT captures a $0.01 arbitrage. By scalping this tiny amount from many trades, the profits add up quickly

Let's repeat: the HFTs are putting orders on the system for which they have no intention of fulfilling. This is a violation of SEC rules, yet the SEC does nothing. There was an AC responder to my post who made a blanket denial cancellations were happening. Care to respond?

Chart of the day, HFT edition | Felix Salmon:

"The stock market today is a war zone, where algobots fight each other over pennies, millions of times a second. Sometimes, the casualties are merely companies like Knight, and few people have much sympathy for them. But inevitably, at some point in the future, significant losses will end up being borne by investors with no direct connection to the HFT world, which is so complex that its potential systemic repercussions are literally unknowable. The potential cost is huge; the short-term benefits are minuscule. Let’s give HFT the funeral it deserves."

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The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic - NYTimes.com

OK, now will you stop listening to the corporate message manipulators?

"Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."  

RICHARD A. MULLER

Published: July 28, 2012

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National Debt / Voodoo Economics Video & Slides

I love the guy at zFacts...

"This slide show explains why the Republican debt is $12 Trillion when calculated by the balanced-budget standard that Republicans prefer, but only $9.2 Trillion by economic standards. It aslo explains some about why the debt went out of control, and when debt is good and when it's bad."

National Debt / Voodoo Economics Video & Slides:
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Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist | Do the Math

This is an eye-opener - and it's not about climate-change, just an energy-use calculation.

The upshot is we've always argued bigger is better, growth is progress, and think that a steady state is somehow bad, economically. Well - we're going to have to get used to it, globally anyway - but that doesn't mean there isn't a wonderful flux of energy/economic forces that will keep things circulating and providing opportunities for millenia to come...read on.

timmmaaayyy



Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist | Do the Math:


Total U.S. Energy consumption in all forms since 1650. The vertical scale is logarithmic, so that an exponential curve resulting from a constant growth rate appears as a straight line. The red line corresponds to an annual growth rate of 2.9%. Source: EIA.




"Physicist: At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from now. By 2500 years, we would use energy at the rate of the entire Milky Way galaxy—100 billion stars! I think you can see the absurdity of continued energy growth. 2500 years is not that long, from a historical perspective. We know what we were doing 2500 years ago. I think I know what we’re not going to be doing 2500 years hence."

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They Are Both Keynesians Now - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast

They Are Both Keynesians Now - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast:

"Obama inherited an economy in free-fall and the most obstructionist opposition in decades. He prevented a second Great Depression, achieved a halting recovery, passed universal healthcare and won as solid a victory against al Qaeda as is conceivable. What he needs to argue is that this is just the beginning of a national renewal, a downpayment on the rest  - by insisting that long-term debt reduction can be done now, that immigration reform must be achieved for the next generation of Americans, and that the insane tax code can be rescued from the special interests.

 Obama will not win by playing safe, it seems to me, or defensively, so that external events determine his fate, and Romney can crudely but mercilessly try to blame all our woes on the incumbent. Obama's brand is inextricable from reform, and his campaign must be designed to break the Republicans' resistance to such reform. You don't need a new slogan. "Yes We Can" needs just some tinkering. "Yes We Must" is more 2012."

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If You Want Another Debt And Spending Binge, Vote GOP

I'm lazy today and just want to look at the pictures...if you're more inclined read the link below, and the counter from the other side that it linked to - and debunked.


If You Want Another Debt And Spending Binge, Vote GOP - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast:

For me, it's just like the headline and history indicates - Republicans spend like drunken sailors and complain when the Democrats try to tidy up their mess by tightening the belt and trying to generate enough revenues to pay for the Republican spending binges.



I tell my 'conservative' friends I'm a fiscal conservative and couldn't possibly vote Republican - they're not conservative - except socially, and I'm a social progressive who believes the richest (for now) country in the world should be able to take just a bit off our massive offensive (hardly defensive) military spending and take care of all the healthcare and social needs we have.

And quit whining that some people using the social safety net are able to or want to 'game the system' and 'live off the gov't teat' (woo hoo! - look at that lavish lifestyle).  The few that do are able to take so few real dollars compared to the corporate and defense contractor sucking on the teat that it's like a kid taking sand from the beach with a toy bucket vs. a line of dump trucks and a front end loader.

td
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Position available : id : (F576XLEBU4Q968627)...

Hey - I don't need the work, but if any of you do, please contact this company, I'm sure it's legit, the penultimate line says "This letter is an official job invitation and it has nothing to do with any suspicious activities."


td




Greetings,

Please, look at following offer.
Our company is called Transit Delivery Escrow incorporated. We are currently recruiting employees to fill in the position in the shipping processing and courier service department. Our recruiting department searches for candidates on the web, so if you have received this letter, that means that your CV has been seen on the web by the online recruiting department managers.

TDE inc is a European company based in Poland(city of Krakov) that provides retail sales and forwarding of many products(mostly modern electronics devices) and selling it to European customers. We are growing and continue to develop since 2005.

To fulfill your duties you will need to be able to receive the items and to send them off via United States Postal Service and many other structures.

There are totally no investments from your side. Salary is $1500 monthly minimal amount and it is built from each task rate with unlimited peak.

 You are required to have/be:
- 18 years old minimum
- be located at designated address on a regular basis
- be available to work on PC with internet access
- have day time contact phone number


There is no need in any storage.

This letter is an official job invitation and it has nothing to do with any suspicious activities.

If you are interested, please contact us via email.


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