Here's a New Meme

Here's a meme that progressives should make use of. It just occurred to me, and I'd like to pass it on.

Being born rich has no intrinsic value; it is in no way productive, useful or desirable. Most rich people contribute far less to society than do ordinary factory workers, bus drivers and janitors. Therefore, living off of ancestral wealth made by Daddy, Grand-dad, or Great-great-great to the nth degree going back to pre-Civil War plantation days is no more ethical than living off of welfare. In many cases it's far less ethical. So here's the meme:

Let's start calling that condition Ancestral Welfare, and bring up the term every time people who were actually brought up by nannies complain about "The Nanny State." The term goes hand-in-hand with the already familiar terms Class Warfare and Corporate Welfare, and is intimately connected to both.

Class warfare couldn't exist if it weren't for the scions of the last generation living off of the avails of their parents. And most of those inheritances are in trust funds tied into holdings of corporate stock.

Nobody with an ounce of sense believes that prominent heirs like Rush Limbaugh or Charles Krauthammer's points of view are anything but self-serving. The idol bloated bloviaters have not only stolen America's wealth, they've also dominated any conversation concerning wealth. So whether you're talking about social benefits, education, health care, or the structure of the tax system, you'll always get only the opinions of those who can well afford those things without any help from government.

What is the solution? Start taxing capital gains at a rate at least as high as that levied against money that is actually earned. And set the estate tax to something that promotes the American ideal of all men being created equal instead of eroding it.

The estate tax should be 0% for the 1st $1 million, and 99% for anything above that. If you are survived by a wife and six kids you'd be allowed to leave a legacy worth $7,000,000. That's not too shabby when you think about it.

Anybody who can't turn a million dollar inheritance into a pretty comfortable life has demonstrated an inability to compete in any kind of economy, especially a capitalist one. With $1 million you could buy a nice house or a platinum education or you could open a small business. In fact you could probably do any two of those things with $1 million and have considerable change left over. So anyone who says their children can't make it unless they get a billion dumped in their lap is really implying that their children are drooling idiots, fit only for wasting away in a hammock.

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On a more general note, it is lamentable that the so-called 'left' in America can't come up with counters to the memes put out by The Powers That Be, even when they're staring them in the face. If you're going to change the way things are going, or even halt the slide into modern feudalism the first step is going to be to change the tenor of the conversation. If you fight the battle on the other side's terms you don't have a chance.

TAGS: Capitalism, Leads to, Oligarchy, Every. Bloody. Time.

A few words for Sarah Palin

Honey, if you insist on thinking that Jesus is talking to you, could you please just listen when he tells you to STFU?



TAGS: Sarah Palin, Queen of the Dumbasses, Bigot, Hypocrite

TGIF is another way to spell GIFT

A favorite song from a gifted group.
Enjoy the weekend folks, and don't forget:
Don't get too drunk until AFTER you leave work.

TAGS: The Staple Singers, I'll Take You There

GOP Platform in Song and Dance

OK, so there wasn't really any dancing. Disappointed? Not nearly as much as you will be if the GOP keep their promises.

TAGS: Roy Zimmerman
GOP, Organized Crime

How much is too much?

For Gawd's sake, this kind of thing pisses me off, and if it doesn't piss you off I submit that there is something fundamentally wrong with you.

A little tidbit from Robert Reich at the Huffington Post: The Super Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Gets Poorer, and the Democrats Punt

"Charles and David Koch, the energy magnates who are pouring vast sums of money into Republican coffers and sponsoring tea partiers all over America, each gained $5.5 billion of wealth over the past year. Each is now worth $21.5 billion."

Let me put that in perspective for those of you who aren't already pissed off enough just by that blunt factoid. $21.5 BILLION is a shitload of money. More than you'll see in your lifetime, I would wager. I'll even give you odds.

The median American household earns something just above $50,000 per year. That's HOUSEHOLD, not person. Nowadays most families can't get by without two wage earners, and unless they're both lucky enough to have full-time jobs with benefits, this could actually mean the earnings from 3 or even 4 part-time "McJobs."

So sticking with that number, how many households does it take to earn 21.5 BILLION in a year? That would be 2.15 X10^10 divided by 5X10^4, which works out to an astonishing 430,000 households. Almost half a million FAMILIES!!

Let's take into account now that the average household is just above 3.1 persons (Astonishingly low! Back in the '70s it was around 4.5. I guess people simply can't afford to have 4 or 5 kids anymore.) You're now talking about the money that 1,333,000 people of median income live on, enough people to populate a city the size of Dallas, Texas. Which by the way is ninth on the list of largest cities in the US. If you take the worth of both Koch brothers as your starting point, you're somewhere between the size of Chicago and Houston, which are 3rd and 4th respectively.

The Republican party and a significant number of Democrats, Blue Dog and otherwise, don't want the Bush tax cuts to expire. Obama wants to extend them only for people who make less than $250,000 per annum. That's fewer than 2% of the population. Putting that into perspective, someone making a cool quarter of a million a year gets a paycheck of nearly $10,000 every two weeks -- which is about equal to someone working for $10/hr makes in 6 months at 40hrs/wk.

One comment at the HuffPo post asked a simple, pointed question; "How much inequality in wealth can a democracy tolerate?" I of course can't quantify that as easily as I can compare the Koch's wealth to the rest of the country. But I do know this -- the tolerable level has long been passed. America's system of government is a sham, a democracy in name only -- a demock-racy. It should be revolting enough to cause a revolution. The fact that it hasn't is cause for concern.

Mercenaries Afraid of Disclosure Laws

Billion-dollar Whiny Ass Titty Babies!

Defense companies and other major industries are hoping to block disclosure of their own fraudulent or substandard performance in federal contracts, despite a mandate this year by Congress that such potentially embarrassing information be released to the public. Sensitive to concerns raised by the companies, the White House has delayed enacting the little-known disclosure provision while it studies the issue, officials said.

When, if ever, is the White House going to be sensitive to the concerns of the taxpaying public? And do you suppose that studying the issue is going to take...oh, I don't know...maybe into and beyond their second term? The good news: PresBO has himself become an expert on Fraudulent or Substandard Performance issues. So much so that he could create a cabinet-level position out of it.

The thing is, when people wearing body armor and brandishing automatic weapons perform in any the consequences usually result in a bunch of innocent people being killed, America's reputation being even further ravaged, and stated* policy objectives being moved even further away from any chance of completion.

(* - as opposed to the real clandestine objectives of world domination and endless war, perpetuating the profits of the mercenaries)

Just one example of how the Blackwater/Xe thugs-r-us boys spread cheer and the Good Will of the American People is seen in this recent story from Peshawar, Pakistan. This brings the meaning of fraudulent and substandard to a new level.

The residents are mainly concerned about Blackwater's reputation as a ruthless, unbridled private army whose employees face multiple charges of murder, child prostitution and weapons smuggling in Iraq.

'Sometimes, these guys stand in the streets and behave rudely with the passers-by, sometimes they point guns at people without provocation' said Imtiaz Gul, an engineer, whose home is a few hundred metres from the US contractor's base on Chanar Road in University Town.

'Who rules our streets, the Pakistani government or the Americans? They have created a state within the state.'

Receiving tens of BILLIONS of fiat dollars from Chinese lenders the federal government, you would think that these civilization-destroying savages would feel some obligation to at least pretend to do the job that they were payed to do. You would be wrong. They are in a class with the Mongol hordes of Atilla the Hun, blithely unconcerned with the devastation they bring with them everywhere they operate. And as I recall about the Huns, they seem to have done sufficient damage to bring Europe into the Dark Ages -- from which it took over a thousand years to recover.

Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows

Wow, so much good news lately that I may have to put my cynicism on a shelf for a while - where it can keep company with my now-out-of-date pessimism. First of all the gulf is pretty much cleaned up now according to BP and the US government. Even PresBO himself agrees. Sure they've lied to us about this from the get-go, but I'm sure we can trust them this time.

PresBO also announced that troop withdrawal from Iraq was going to be on schedule, exactly as promised. Except that 50,000 troops will still be there, but thats OK! They're 'transitional!!' Please ignore the Blackwater/Xe mercenaries who will also remain behind sucking up US tax dollars to enrich the old Cheney cabal. Anyway the country has been turned into a stable and prosperous bastion of democracy, so mission accomplished there too. I haven't felt this good since I found out that waterboarding wasn't really torture, just a 'little splash of water.'

So come on join in everybody, "Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows.."

TAGS: Unreality Based Community, Optimism, To the Point, of Gullibility

Open Thread for Jenn

See? We do respond when a request is made.

RIP Dennis Hopper

I'm just now hearing that actor Dennis Hopper has died. The first time I remember seeing him was as Billy in Easy Rider. Brilliant!

According to his IMDB entry he had at that point done dozens of appearances on film and TV including guest appearances on such outstanding shows as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Zane Grey Theater, and The Big Valley. He was also on some less outstanding fare like Petticoat Junction and The Time Tunnel. Oh well, a guy's gotta earn a living.



He was in a lot of westerns, befitting his birth in Dodge City, Kansas. He didn't have to work too hard to come across as an authentic cowboy. Starting with Giant in 1956 (when I was frickin' three years old!) he was in classics such as:
Cheyenne; Gunfight at the OK Corral (as Billy Clanton); Sugarfoot (as Billy the Kid); From Hell to Texas; The Sons of Katie Elder; The Legend of Jessie James; True Grit -- you get the idea. The list goes on, showing that he did as much to form the public idea of what a cowboy is as John Wayne or Slim Pickens.

A great career spanning over half a century, hopefully a life that was just as great for him as it was for his fans, he'll be missed.

So long, pardner.

TAGS: Dennis Hopper

Human Arrogance Examined

TAGS: Science, Evolution, Life, Human Race, Arrogance, Religion
I want to discuss science if I may. Specifically in an area that really arouses my passions: That is the ridiculous and arrogant assumption that the universe and everything in it was created with it's future inhabiting by mankind in mind. We've all heard the arguments about irreducible complexity and so forth. It's the basis of the idea of intelligent design. I say "idea" because "theory" isn't apt in this case. Theory is the analysis of facts and how they relate to one another while intelligent design takes facts and assumptions and even made up notions and preconceptions and compares them.
I'm not here to discuss intelligent design though. I want to address the over arching concept that without a whole lot of very specific events occurring, humanity wouldn't be here. That is absolutely true, without a doubt. If Theia hadn't smacked the Earth hard almost four and a half billion years ago, the moon wouldn't exist and our rotation and axis wouldn't be as stable as it is. There is a theory that if the Snowball Earth Era hadn't happened, life would have never been under so much pressure to adapt and to then be poised for the Cambrian Explosion when the planet finally thawed, ushering in the Phanerozoic Eon. If the Permian extinction hadn't occurred, maybe creatures related to Dimetrodon would rule the Earth and if not for a huge impact at the end of the Cretaceous, sentient dinosaurs may be quarreling about science versus religion.
We can argue and speculate about the details but it is certain that had some or all of these events not happened, the human race would not exist. We can go back even further and imagine that gravity never separated out of the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces at the very beginning of the creation of the universe with the Big Bang, leading to an endless ocean of subatomic particles that may have formed atoms but never bunched together to form anything more massive or complex than hydrogen or helium. No gravity = no stars = no people. Anywhere. There is also growing evidence that a gamma ray burst in our distant past may have also contributed to genetic modification of ancient and primitive life on Earth. What if the poles of that star had been pointed a few degrees away from us? Would I be sitting here typing this? Chances are I wouldn't be.
So yes. Except for a very specific grouping of some very unlikely events, the human race would not exist. Period. But does that then prove some divine guidance? Does that support the idea of an omnipotent sky daddy manipulating events and conditions to bring about the human race? I don't believe it does. The fact is that the universe doesn't have the properties it does for the benefit of mankind, rather WE have the properties we do because of the universe we evolved in. We owe our form, our method of reproduction, the mixture of gases we require, the temperature ranges we need, our nutritional requirements and etc because we evolved within this universe and on this planet. Conditions on Earth aren't perfect for us. We are perfect for the conditions on Earth. Assuming that life couldn't exist without those very specific circumstances and that intelligent life wouldn't be on the Earth at all if not for an accidental series of events is the very pinnacle of human arrogance. WE almost certainly wouldn't be here but I believe that life would go merrily on without us. Imagine that.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Before and After

TAGS: DA,DT LGBT Navy Douchehattery
Some of the readers here are familiar with the general parameters of my story so I won't get too specific. I used to be an airframe technician for F-14A aircraft during the last half of the 1980s until early 1991. Although I wasn't a huge fan of the United States Navy, I enjoyed my job and I was good at it. VERY good. In fact I was so good that after I had been outed as transgendered, (by a "friend" who used his knowledge to distract from his second DUI offense), and after I had gone to Captain's Mast and after I had been told they were going to strip me of rank, benefits I'd earned and half of my pay, I was actually involuntarily EXTENDED to serve in the first Persian Gulf War. You see, though I had been deemed "unfit" to serve, I was the only person qualified to troubleshoot launches for the airframes shop and to act as flight deck safety at the same time. They told me I was being unceremoniously discharged but had to stay long enough to qualify people to replace me.
Before the hostilities were ended, I was on my way back to the states. Within 24 hours of landing, I had been reduced two pay grades, stripped of the benefits I'd earned and given an "Other Than Honorable" discharge. I say this not because I'm still wallowing in self pity after all of these years but to point out that, abominable as it is, the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is a relative newcomer and much, MUCH better than the previous patchwork of regulations regarding LGBT service people. Then, it was largely up to the unit commander what happened to an outed person. In my own case, the unit commander had no problem with it because he knew me and what I was capable of. I was told nothing was going to happen. That was before the change of command. The new skipper DID have a problem with it, a huge one. As I hadn't even violated the UCMJ, charges were trumped up to get rid of me. I fought for a while but it was clear from the beginning that they would wear me down eventually. If they want you gone, gone you will be.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a compromise, (or capitulation), made by President Clinton and was codified into law on December 21, 1993 when Clinton issued Department of Defense Directive 1304.26, requiring the DOD to stop asking applicants and active duty service members to disclose their sexual orientation. It not only supposedly put a stop to that, it also homogenized the penalties and in most cases softened them, for violators of the policy against LGBT persons. For example, it was no longer solely up to the unit commanding officer what penalty violators would pay, they would all be given administrative discharges under honorable conditions, allowing them to keep their rank, pay and benefits. It didn't stop the harassment or the witch hunts though.
Though I detest the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, it is leaps and bounds better than what used to happen prior to it coming into effect. Randy Shilts wrote an excellent book called "Conduct Unbecoming" about lesbians and Gays in the military and I recommend it to people who harbor illusions about what the policy used to be and what it is today. As much as I would like to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", I have never heard of the policy being repealed for transgendered people, just for lesbians and gays. Presumably transgendered Americans will still be sexually assaulted, harassed and hounded out of the service on trumped up charges. That doesn't seem to bother gay leaders much, most of whom have never served.
I'll close by dispelling a few myths:
Myth 1) The military is some hyper macho organization, rampant with homophobes and conservative bigots.
Fact: The military is a reflection of society, except a more disciplined reflection for the most part and a much younger one overall than society as a whole.
Myth 2) Congress has to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Fact: Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a Department of Defense Directive, later codified into law. The commander in chief could repeal it unilaterally and immediately.
Myth 3) Repeal of DA,DT would affect unit cohesion
Fact: Actually this one is true, it will make it much better since dishonesty breeds mistrust, honesty can only foster greater trust.

Open Thread

Because we need one, as usual. And as usual, I'm too damned lazy to put up anything of substance.

TAGS: Open Thread