we are being laughed at

The Daily Show has been the only voice in the media that seems to

understand, or really is willing to point out, that the spokespeople for the

Bush Administration and Bush/Cheney campaign are smuggly and arrogantly

laughing as they spew forth their daily talking points of lies and deceipt.

As Jon Stewart remarked a few weeks ago, these guys know they are telling

us lies and know that they are ironically being ironic and enjoying every

minute of it.



Today's news is a classic example.  The Families USA group issues a pretty

simple statistical report on the heels of the Rand corporation's report

about the state of health in the USA.  Rand says living in areas with

significantly increased urban sprawl is dramatically unhealthier than living

in densely populated integrated urban cities, like NYC, Boston, Seattle, San

Francisco.  Families USA's report shows that more and more people are

spending more and more on health care premiums and on health care while

their incomes, adjusted for inflation are dropping.  This results in fewer

and fewer citizens purchasing health insurance.  How does the Administration

respond???





Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Bill Pierce said Families

USA's agenda "is purely partisan."



Pierce said the study ignores increases in enrollment in Medicaid and the

State Children's Health Insurance Program as well as last year's Medicare

prescription drug law, which "will cut the costs of medicines by half for

all seniors who participate and to nearly zero for low-income seniors."



This is one of those classic moments.  "The study ignores increases in

enrollment" for welfare programs that are specifically targetted for huge

cuts in the 2005 budget!!!  And to suggest that the prescription law will do

anything beneficial in terms of costs flies in the face of the current

inquiries into the administration's silencing of officials whose actuarial

data showed enormous deficits in the program, requiring seniors to pay more,

not less, over the next few years.  Truly great stuff.  

sometimes it gets harder to understand

CBS, cowed by conservative criticism, is refusing to air a news segment – which is critical of the Bush administration's use of forged documentation in its claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger – until after the election.

well this makes perfect sense really.. CBS, like nearly every other participant in the major media of the US, has been coerced into behaving by the threats of the FCC and the Bush/Cheney team. if you don't play by their rules you will not be allowed to participate in their events. this is a serious threat to the commerce of media. we are on the brink of a total and complete fascist takeover of all media consumed by the masses. fear and intimidation are used against those that don't follow the correct talking point messages. has Fox been threatened for it continuous blatant disregard for the truth? of course not. lie all you want as long as you don't tell lies about "US" who are your masters.

ADMINISTRATION PRIVATELY LOWERS EXPECTATIONS: Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) said that members of the administration have privately told him they've lowered expectations for democracy in Iraq. Kolbe quotes one administration official: "When we went in there, I thought we would build American-style democracy. Hell, I'd be happy with Romanian-style democracy now."

this at the same time that the General in charge of Iraq suggests that Iraq can model its elections after our own in 2000, complete with fraud and marginalization and discounting of voters. and need i remind people what is meant by Romanian-style---a pure and horrendous totalitarian abusive dictatorship. yep that would be perfectly acceptable to Bush. Powell knows its going bad, as do most of the Repugs senators, but that no longer means anything. and why? well because of the next story i think.

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices have surged to new record highs near $50 for U.S. crude as Nigeria emerges as the latest focus for worries about supply security on world energy markets. U.S. light crude gained 86 cents to $49.74 a barrel on Monday, the highest in 21 years of trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange contract. Growing concerns over militancy in Nigeria, OPEC's number five producer, are compounding worries about supply security in Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
"All these factors create apprehension in the market and reinforce the view that we're on a knife's edge in terms of supply and demand," said Daniel Hynes, industry analyst at ANZ Bank in Melbourne." "The uncertainties heighten the risk premium applied to this market."
Global supplies have risen strongly this year but are still straining to meet the fastest demand growth in 24 years. World crude output is close to its limit after many years when OPEC producers kept large volumes untapped. The lack of a supply cushion has reinforced the view among some investors that oil near $50 is not overpriced, despite a 50 percent jump crude prices since the start of the year.
"The market faces the prospect of years without sufficient flexibility or insulation from shocks during a period of extreme gepolitical stress," said analyst Paul Horsnell of Barclays Capital.

so here we have it.. the real issue is that since there are tragically diminishing world supplies of oil and more and more people demanding more and more oil, there must be some lines drawn around the world and in the US. in order to draw these lines, democratic processes must be discounted so that harsh judgements can be made for the sake of the survival and success of the few against the many. learning how to fight in urban war in iraq is essential for national guard troops who will be pressed into service trying to stop unrest here in the US after these harsh regulatory restrictions are set in place, particularly the provisions of Patriot Act2.

can't you just see it... a nation of fortified gated communities of the wealthy, around which troops and security forces control populations of impoverished laborers whose tasks are to maintain the external components of the infrastructure.... visions of the future as found in handmaid's tale, blade runner, farhenheit 451, 1984, etc...

post literate nation

a couple of years ago i got in trouble with my school district for suggesting that it is the peak of arrogant hypocrisy for the ESEA/NCLB legislation to demand that children in the US be tested for literacy when the man that signed that legislation refuses to read anything, except a teleprompter that has been read to him several times previously. the story goes:

Perhaps the most astonishing pronouncement of the inarticulate President of the United States is that he doesn’t read. George W. Bush says that his advisers tell him what he needs to know. What an amazing thing for the husband of Laura the librarian and the son of Barbara Bush, campaigner for literacy, to say! But more than that, it is deeply disturbing that the president of the dominant global power, the leader of the free world, the most powerful man in the world, would choose to have his perceptions of the world censored and spoon-fed to him by his underlings. It is simply unfathomable.

However, it does help one to understand how Bush could honestly say, as he did in a recent interview with Larry King on CNN, “I don't have a sense that there's a lot of anger [towards me].” *

If Bush reads nothing and his campaign workers screen all the members of the audiences at his campaign stops and require them to sign a loyalty oath promising to vote for him, how could he perceive anger towards him? If his critics are described to him as the usual pot-smoking, hippie malcontents that he expects them to be, can he know that protestors against the war in Iraq cut across age, race, and class lines?

Bush cannot read substantially sophisticated texts; hell he probably can't read Dr Zeuss. He was never properly retrained for his dyslexia. He allowed himself to be socially promoted with the support of anyone who owed his parents anything. We are led by a man who received C- grades all through life for work he didn't do, but that was done for him. The number two guy flunked out of Yale, flunked out of a local Wyoming college, and required the direct support of his wife to not only get him through U of W w/ a BA but also keep him out of the draft.

we all should be ashamed.. we should feel horrible that decisions are made by a man who literally knows nothing about anything and must be told "stuff" in order to function. no wonder we are living through a mess. Bush learns how to do stuff from FoxNews and conservative talk radio and pundits who have his ear and from the direct common sensical relationship of "you pay me i do this" way of governing. we are in deeper shit than we imagine even. it actually can't get any scarier.

why does the US majority not really care. because they too suffer from a lack of literacy, albeit self imposed choice to not read. they are lazy and filled with the desires that the media conglomerates have laid out before them from which they get to consume.. why would they even try to figure out what is going on, when all they have to do is act like Bush, and wait to be told what to do by the media that has been so dear and precious to them

doonesbury's point

this week Trudeau put our a series based on the storyline about the classroom presentation about an iraq war amputee. during the presentation, two students were shown quibbling about their presentation grades will suffer because of the emotional and metaphoric content of the "anti-war" presentation.

this is not unlike the media out there who are ignoring the substantive issues to focus on the glamour and glitz of their own self-importance. this is not unlike the administration that continuously ignores all reality and creates issues for itself that are designed solely to focus a nice feel good light on them. reality has become too much for us so we simple fall back on our adolescent moments of being able to get our own fifteen minutes of fame for not reason except to have it. blogging is like that.. so many blogs are outthere because people just want their moment.. and their moment is more valuable and more important and more REAL than all the world going on around them...

i think kerry and the left and the anti-war movement and so forth simply need to dress up their messages in all sorts of fashion and frills and glossy graphics.. then the media will fall all over itself to be the ONE that gets that hot new novel story.. hehehe. aaaahh yes the novelty of real life has worn off and the residual tarnish that is the ruination of the environment and human spirit, and peaceful harmony.. yeah that must be it.. get glamorous, gushy, happy smiling faces to talk about how totally cool war is and how we can all just really ignore the environment.. you know.. paris hilton brings you the happy news from our successes in iraq... brittany spears reminds us to care about how we shop stepping through a clearcut to a new fashion mall.. this could be a cool way to get these message out there.. mmmmm

deeply grokked paranoia

it would be deeply remiss of us to ignore the rhetoric coming out of the US administration with regards to Iran. the casual assumption that the US wouldn't invade that nation because it has nuclear capabilities is seriously questionable given both the behavior of the US towards Iraq and the history of the use of nuclear weapons against an enemy. there are three factors to consider when evaluating whether the US would attack Iran and whether it would attack Iran with nuclear weapons.

factor one: one of the most dangerous and toxic natural elements found in the US is radon gas. it has a radioactive half-life of 3.85 days during which it begins to break down into other less potent, less toxic elemental forms finally resolving itself into lead(not exactly free from a toxicity of its own). radon gas is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smoking US citizens, and is contributory to lung cancer in those who smoke. it can leak into our homes and basements and schools and so forth, poisoning us without our knowledge. but remember it lasts only 3.85 days and can be dealt with by filtration and active air movement systems.

factor two: in gulf war one and in gulf war two the US used more than 2500 tons of depleted uranium munitions on iraq. studies on such weapon use in bosnia and kosovo(approximately 60 tons worth) show that this radioactive elemental dust has blown over most of the balkans and spread to areas far from the initial targets. in iraq, the volume of dust is exponentially large as are the winds and other factors that spread this material all across the region. though depleted uranium DU is a low level radioactive substance, in that it only emits 1/1000th of the particles as does radon gas, as a dust, and particulate areosol it is far more toxic and deadly. this is due to its relatively long half life. i say relatively because scientists can only conclude an estimate of its decay rate against the theoretical lifespan of the planet earth. thus it is assumed that at the very least DU's half life is something over 4 billion years. with radon gas you go from a toxic dose of rads to a non-toxic dose in less than a month. with DU you have a low level source of rads for essentially ever. and in iraq, you have literally tons of it all over the place. how much DU dust is too much DU dust?? we need only ask those members of the military who served in the first Iraq conflict. the DoD has tried for more than a decade to kill the story, but many many thousands of troops are sick and getting sicker from their exposure. the current amounts used combine with the previous amounts and create a virtual toxic killing field for the rest of human history.

factor three: the US understands that iraq is now a radioactive hazard. in order to extract the oil resources technologies will be used to overcome the threat of DU and protect those assigned to that task. unlike the lack of protection for those assigned to protect those contracted to extract the oil. to bomb the nuclear facilities of iran and create a contiguous radiological hazard zone underwhich lies vast amounts of oil resources can not be considered improbable. if we look carefully at a map of the region we can see a beltline between Kosovo/Bosnia-DU deposited; Ukraine-Chernobyl blew; Iraq-vast DU covering; Iran-potential high level radioactive sites; onto various former soviet nations that have histories of their own radiological accidents. in a sense the earth has its own international sacrifice zone. adding to this by bombing iran's nuclear centers and spreading that material all over that nation and, well low and behold, afghanistan is just north and downwind from iran. eliminating the nuclear threat of iran, without using troops is perfectly good military policy for the Bush administration. and it is something we have to think is possible when we vote. because these guys have no moral values whatsoever.

my oh my what a wonderful day..

let's look at three news stories from noon today:
The former CEO of software giant Computer Associates International Inc. and a former key sales executive both pleaded not guilty Thursday morning to allegations of a massive securities fraud involving the company. --
one interesting fact in relation to this: of the 20 executives indicted in the HealthSouth scandal(remember this is the organization tied to Frist, the Senate Majority leader) 17 have pled guilty and a whopping zero have served any prison time whatsoever. what does this say about the Justice Department's determination to interdict in white collar crime versus the prosecution of "terrorists"--oh yeah, that's right of the six major cases the Attorney General trumpeted as landmark examples of our war on terror and our healthy homeland security, three have been acquitted and three were convicted for using fraudulent green cards(ooops)--and now Cat Stevens.

Antarctic glaciers are thinning and slipping ever faster into the sea, according to several new studies. Warmer air and sea temperatures are blamed, and the changes are expected to cause an appreciable rise in sea levels.
there is of course no relation to this story and possible ramifications of global warming. that requires decades more study of course, as do the numerous hurricanes now spawning in the atlantic and pacific. oh yeah and another one to hit florida later this weekend. hehehe.. i shouldn't laugh but really, what is the point of ignoring the inevitable? rising sea levels have all sorts of insidious impacts, mostly for nations: along the coasts of asia, numerous pacific islands, southequitorial africa, and brazil. But!!!! a significantly growing population of US citizens live in low lying areas formerly wetlands, like the remainder that bush wants to fill with houses. that means that within the next couple of decades of storms large populations of citizens will be bankrupting insurance carriers in order to rebuild homes that will be heavily inundated. which is perfectly reasonable to the current administration since it will bailout the insurance companies and do so by taxing the lower two-thirds of the population.

The Senate has voted overwhelmingly to confirm the nomination of Representative Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, as director of central intelligence.
let's see if i got this straight. the Senate confirms the first politician to head the CIA at a time when that office has been found guilty of politicizing intelligence. can it get any weirder?? we get a phone and fraud to lead an agency charged with finding out what is supposed to be really happening. thus we can only expect to get fraudulent and deceptive information. once again the US public is being forced to swallow something so against its own well being, and not only does the public swallow it but it does so with happy blissfilled thoughts of the coming weekend football schedule--who's number one? we are... we vote for number one.. we vote for cheaters and theives and deceivers, and war mongers, and liars, and all that as long as they can be perceived as being number one...

when the music's over turn out the light and hide from the fascists

Cat Stevens, Brittany Spears, Tyler Hamilton--CBS?? mmmmm i become so curious indeed. it is amazing that these stories can all be of such importance to our culture that the media is able to ignore the bigger more heinous crisis of the failure in iraq and the ongoing ever expanding movement of money from the bulk of the US population to the very few.

Fascism by every other name is surrounding us at every turn. the official stories are pablum for the masses. Literally thousands of people are refused entry into the US every year, among these are some extremely important and vital authors, musicians, philosophers, etc. Margaret Atwood for one, Farley Mowat for another. Why? because there are members of the administration who feel the fear they are told to feel by those who have the most fundamental and literal associations with make-believe deities. but do we hear about all these, no! we get one story out of thousands about a pop folk singer from the 60's, of course the sixties, isn't that what this really is all about anyway. the least reported aspect of the story is that he has been in and out of this country six times since 9/11 and only now, with the election coming up, is he, and emblem of the sixties tied to islam, made a news story. Fascism... you bet

Brittany Spears dominates entertainment stories because she got married? a freaking pop princess?? please please tell me that the same people that will vote for Bush are so enormously happy with their lives that they want and need to know all about this. i can't begin to express my outrage at this diversion program. keep the masses thinking they are being entertained and they will ignore the vile and despicable.. the chick is going to be a short fat blimp in ten years... we will be shocked at how ugly she will be when she attempts a comeback tour... no different that jessica or christina or beyonce or any of them... none of them have the discipline or stamina or focus of madonna.. speaking of more diversion from the crises around the world... wow she goes to israel to study a mystical tradition that was banned by israel for decades because of its over all spiritual message which ignores completely references to a physical material state of a nation... but wow so much happy support for it now isn't there.. fascist hypocrits..

Tyler Hamilton dopes his blood to achieve success in bicycling... the great thing about blood doping is that it is extremely difficult to prove but great to create rumors about... we accuse you of blood doping and you can't disprove it and we can't prove it.. so we got our lie out there first and you have to defend it... sound familiar... a microcosm of US politics... all lies and innuendo and rumors and gossip intended to distract from facts...

marshall media message mather mcluhan

media media everywhere but not one free for consumption... i often wonder why the citizens of this nation are so screwed up in terms of their principles and intuitive insights.. then i read stuff like this and it all makes perfect sense:

There are more than two million corporations in the United States. What is the number of corporations that account more than half of all media revenues (including TV, radio, newspapers, book/magazines, films and CD's)?

ANSWER: d. 5. This number is 10 percent of what it was in 1983 when 50 corporations dominated the media. The five corporations currently accounting for half or more of all media are: AOL/Time Warner, AT&T, CBS/Viacom, Disney and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000. Figures updated by Project on Media Ownership, New York University.

what??? five corporations help spend $58billion per year just for advertising products, services, and ideas. we get news from five, we get movies, music, books, magazines, billboards, etc., from five... we get lied to by all five... and we keep accepting it.. why? i ask... well here is the candy treats they give us>

RYDER SNATCHES ROLE: Winona Ryder has signed a deal for her first lead role since being convicted on shoplifting charges. She will play a slacker actress who has life-changing experiences after eating marijuana-laced brownies. The actress obviously hopes the director will bring her luck. ''Mary Warner'' is being helmed by Michael Lehmann, who directed Ryder in the 1989 dark comedy ''Heathers'' -- a film that many credit with propelling the actress to stardom.

9:00PM 09-14-04 CATNIP AND TRUST- When Larry (voiced by John Goodman) and Kate (voiced by Cheryl Hines) discover a bag of catnip in Sierra's (voiced by Danielle Andrea Harris) room they fear the worst -- that their teenage daughter has become a "nip-head." Taking the advice of the community drug counselor, they decide to confront Sierra but only cause her to run away. They find her at a rave where they are given a catnip(ecstacy/entheogen type drug) laced sausage necklace, which they eat and get high. Sierra confronts them on their hypocrisy and they all discover that the original catnip drug belonged to Larry's dad.
So we now discover that tv and film media gives us happy drug using stories... aimed at making the liberal leftists more tolerant of programming and less critical of the medium that brings us lies and deception and greedy selfish agendas.... we are so stupid... like zappa said: if god made us in his image, and there are so many really stupid and ugly people out here in the world, then god must be really stupid and really ugly.

it's not whats on the front page--

how scary is it? to be told over and over by an administration that everything is fine: iraq, the economy, the environment, the health care system, the outlook for the future... and all along you know that none of it is fine, hell all of it is really bad and getting worse. for instance two lovely stories today make one ponder some of the imponderables... i came across these as i was focussed on writing about how the media determines the response in the polls and not the other way around... "if we keep telling the people that kerry is a loser, then bush will win" and low and behold, bush moves up the polls that the media create to show that bush is a winner... like a mad sort of catch 22.. tell the lie over and over again and we can all start to believe it...

but story one:

CEOs at companies that outsource the most US jobs are rewarded with bigger paychecks, according to a new report, “Executive Excess 2004: Campaign Contributions, Outsourcing, Unexpensed Stock Options and Rising CEO Pay." Average CEO compensation at the 50 firms outsourcing the most service jobs increased by 46 percent in 2003, compared to a 9 percent average increase for all CEOs at the 365 large companies surveyed by Business Week. Top outsourcers earned an average of $10.4 million in 2003, 28 percent more than the average CEO compensation of $8.1 million. From 2001 to 2003, the top 50 outsourcing CEOs earned $2.2 billion while sending an estimated 200,000 jobs overseas.
Political contributions also appear to pay off. CEOs of the 69 companies that sponsored this summer’s Democratic and Republican National Conventions saw their pay jump 52 percent in 2003, far outpacing the 9 percent raise for the average large company CEO. Similarly, the 38 CEOs who have personally raised at least $100,000 for either the Bush or Kerry presidential campaigns earned an average of $15.2 million in 2003, 88 percent more than the average large company CEO.
After two years of narrowing, the CEO-to-worker wage gap is rising again. The CEO pay to worker pay ratio reached 301:1 in 2003, up from 282:1 in 2002. If the minimum wage had increased as quickly as CEO pay since 1990, it would today be $15.76 per hour, rather than the current $5.15 per hour. Average CEO pay is 56 times more than the pay for a US Army general with 20 years experience ($144,932) and 634 timesmore than the pay for a starting U.S. soldier ($12,776).

and not only that but couple with this story was an AP wire post yesterday that suggested that the boards of 1156 corporations that re-issued earnings reports that showed that the companies lied in previous accounts and over paid executives by huge and obscene amounts refuse to ask for those bonuses back... why is that?? how much greed can greed contain... how long will silly americans keep ignoring the reality that all of that is our money... ours.. not theirs.. a stupid sign i came across today reminded me of this: some far right winger has his own theater sign board in front of his house and today it read.. all business taxes are paid by the consumer... and then went on about changing tax law... But wait... hold on... why are all business taxes passed on to the consumer... because we let them do that.. .it isn't the tax laws .. or the taxes.. it is the greed of the businesses to increase profits by shifting their tax burdens onto others... just like offshoring industries and outsourcing labor... we are letting them do that.. and we don't have to... not at all

Story two:

A new study conducted by the Chinese Red Cross shows that some three-quarters of all Chinese city dwellers are in ill health and that

life expectancies are declining for skilled and educated workers.   The survey by the Red cross Society of China covered 16 Chinese cities

 with populations of over one million, including Beijing, Shanghai and  Guangzhou.   The report said the problem was worst among senior and mid-level  managers and well-educated white collar workers. Their life expectancies have fallen to 58 years - less than the national average of 72.    China's industrial boom and soaring vehicle use have contributed to  severe air and water pollution, while changing diets and exercise habits  have led to increased obesity, stress, heart attacks and strokes.



today we read this and wonder about how bad bad is and shrug it off and not try to think about it.. but people.. this is the spawning ground of the planet's flus and viral infections and bacterial outbreaks.. and if all these people are sick and getting sicker and their environment is sick and poisoned and they can't stop living how they are living just like we can't stop it.. then the whole planet is getting much sicker and more ill prepared to accept humans as a species very much longer... there are huge enormous issues to be understood from 3/4ths of china's urban population experiencing chronic illness.  nearly all of our manufactured goods come from there.. that means that sick people are making all this stuff for us... they are becoming wealthier in terms of their economy and are able to travel from this... bringing to us their new morphed diseases... will what doesn't kill us now make us stronger later... not in this case... all it means is that the viral and bacteriological agents will be stronger and more adaptive and more effective in overtaking hosts and feeder sources and such---us... not good.. if you want to live and prosper and succeed.. mmmmm

slow news days = hidden discoveries

i love sundays... they make for slow news days where hidden in the reporting are the real gems of the machinations of the agenda of the fascist leadership of this country. perhaps the most relevant to this notion is the reporting on Bush campaign stops. we all know that these are sumptuously staged events complete with scripted ovations and highly detailed set and art direction. most important to this, is the very high scrutiny paid to those attending; signing of affadavits and loyalty oaths and such. so it really should start to get us grievously concerned when even the media are forced to show a scene all too reminiscent of italy and germany in the 30's. Huge choruses of staged chants, responding to key words and phrases used in the robotic cadence of the new duce of the neo-feudal lords of capital.

what we have is a shift in the cognitive function of a considerable portion of the electorate. these people can not possibly comprehend or understand the ramifications and catastrophic affects of this current administration on the nation and the world. they are so filled with zeal and faith and belief that they have lost all core rational thought. they chant and scream and raise their arms on cue as they too become the cloned ditto head robot minions supporting those that will soon simply take off their heads.

this goes as well for the actual slaves of the GOP. i received a form response letter from the Congressman from eastern washington who is running for a US Senate seat. the letter ostensibly is to show how sympathetic the congressman is to the plight of the US economy from the behavior of corporations hiding profits from US taxation. of course the letter fails to mention the report issued this past week that showed that more than $147 billion of previously taxable profits were taken off shore and safe from US taxation. the author of the letter, undoubtedly a staffer who was trying to prove his meddle to the GOP and Tom DeLay rather than trying to actually communicate fact, spent hundreds of words making up some of the most inane verbage i have seen on the issue. I quote a bit:

"what we must do is examine the underlying reason behind inversions: a burdensome and overbearing tax code....
"the US is currently one of the few nations that taxes companies not only on income that is earned on goods that are produced and sold in the US but also what is earned abroad...
"furthermore the US has the fourth highest corporate income tax rate at 40%....
"the loss from these inversions comes in the form of reduced tax revenue--revenue that goes to foreign countries.

taken as a whole these statements are highly self-contradictory... individually they are fraudulent and wrong. inversions in essence have nothing to do with the tax code which currently is more than highly favorable of business.... huge opportunities exist for corporations to use the tax code to significantly increase their after tax profits... the US does not tax profits for overseas operations.. it taxes operations of companies when they bring products into the US.. and it taxes the corporate board members of corporations for their overseas incomes if they live in the US.... the corporate tax rate hasn't been 40% since 1981... it is roughly now running about 17%... and the notion that these companies moved offshore because they wanted to pay foreign taxes is perhaps the most absurd... there are seven nations within a couple thousand miles of the US offering zero taxes at the moment... and most of these are within a couple a hundred.

the most evil part of this letter is the suggestion that "if the US were to institute a less complicated tax structure, like a flat tax or national sales tas, the cost of compliance with the tax code would fall, and America would become more competitve in the global marketplace." this is directly suggesting that through impoverishing the population, we would again provide cheap or slave labor--as a flat tax and a sales tax are the most regressive of all taxes paid by 40% of the poorest people. This letter can't be intended to be read and critiqued. it must be designed to be read by direct supporters. we are all in trouble if these plans are implemented. and they are being so.... HR 4520 reduces corporate tax on income from domestic production activity.. HR 737 which would have taxed offshore US companies was killed... along with HR 2896 and SR 1637 both of which would have increased offshore taxes... can't imagine how this nation, already in deep deficit doo doo is going to be able to survive another four years of this type of national revenue giveaway..

pay the piper

i started out to blog back on May 1st.... then i thought that i could start on the first day of summer.. i gave that up and hoped for labor day.. but burning man led to focussing on starting now on the first days of fall 2004...

why am i doing this? because there seems to be a limit to the wilingness of bloggers to actually espouse radical progressive agendas. too many conservatives have found that by flaming on weblogs that ostensibly support liberal themes, they can shut out the discussion of issues. they rage in vitrolic venomous bile, insulting and denigrating as their cohorts on Fox and other far-right conservative have shown them how to do. we need more succinct voices from the far left to begin to move the political and social discussion from the moderate right to at least the center if not a teeny tiny bit left of center.

thus i post. how radical shall i be. well Negri posited some theses for this in his book Empire, albeit getting the big stuff wrong. he, and his co-author, supported the economic empowerment of the people through community efforts to dictate local prices for global products. establishing the real cost of consumables is essential to creating an equitable society. and the most significant consumable commodity is health care. the flu season is almost upon us. millions of US citizens have no ability to pay for health care, but they will get sick, and they will share their flu and viral infections with their communities. it will be imperative that health care systems ignore insurance corporate profits and HMO orders in order to facilitate the care of whole communities.