Wouldn’t it be better if we stopped listening to the loud whiners?  Shut them off, change the station;  too busy admiring people who are discovering and inventing stuff.

The desire to classify ourselves is human nature.  Humans are influenced by each other to impose group boundaries.  For instance the 1% versus the 99%.  The 99% is vast,  not cozy;  whereas the 1% are in bed together cuddling and clinging.  Here are some pretty interesting things being done by members of both groups .

http://www.humdingerwind.com/#/wi_large/

Inventor Shawn Frayne has come up with a device that harnesses the power of wind without any rotating parts. Instead, his company’s Windbelts capture energy using fluttering fabric. Air passes over a taut membrane, it induces a vibration, somewhat akin to a violin bow.   Magnets mounted on the membrane bounce back and forth between metal coils, inducing an electric current.

What makes this so way cool is that it can be put on fences in urban areas and it can be palm sized or room sized and the materials it is made from are all available right here in the good ole USA.

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Richard Branson has started a “Carbon War Room”.  Does he qualifiy as part of the 1%?    He has an influence on them.  He concerns himself with the future of the planet and makes money doing it.  His latest venture is opening a shop  near the White House for Venture Capitalists to hang out and find investment solutions.  International corporations like Maersk, the global tanker operator, 3M,   and General Electric Co., the major U.S. maker of gas turbines, windmills and appliances;  find there is money to be made and profits enhanced by cutting noxious pollutants and carbon dioxide emissions.

http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/dynamic/article.page.php?page_id=7874&section=home

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Pegasus Global Holdings Announces Plans to Develop World’s Largest Tech Testing and Evaluation Center

Pegasus Global Holdings bought a town in New Mexico.   They needed a place to create and test green technology innovations.  How cool is that?  Is this the enemy doing cool things with their money?   Pegasus Global Holdings is actually one of those big scary conglomerates making billions from war tools and satellites; which qualifies them as a member of the 1%.  Perhaps refocusing their moneymaking prowess on technologies that have an end result of a healthier, cleaner, and subsequently happier planet is a good thing  –  even if their motivation isn’t benevolent grace.

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Trickle down economics isn’t causing that drip you hear, its drool.  Who cares what S&P thinks?  Except, “after the Dow Jones Industrial Average,  the S&P 500 is the most widely followed index of large-cap American stocks.”

We should all be listening to Fred.  The news is full of Standard and Poor (S&P) credit downgrade of the US’s borrowing worth.  I say, OK, so lets not borrow from them.  Lets revoke their use of ratings as a political weapon. I’ve read and read and read and can’t really find an answer.  Numbers, economics, and resources all seem to play a part.

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It may be disturbing to some to find out that not all good comes out of the wealthy corporate interests represented by the S&P’s 500.  Japan is pulling themselves out of their natural and man-made financial woes.  How?  Innovation.  It also helps that they don’t have a tea-party or christian fundamentalists standing on their drowning heads.  OK, with that sentence, I’m guessing I’ve lost about 25% of you.

Economics is nothing more than realizing that all the Earth’s resources are scarce and the study of Economics is how those resources get allocated amongst people.  A comparison of 1961 to today was made that sparked more research.  I asked my smart friend Fred  If our tax rate were the same as it was is 1961, would our deficit get payed off quicker?

and like a true economics guru he gave this reply…

Your question about the tax rate being what it was in 1961 would eliminate the deficit is a good one. The math is correct but ignores what has happened to the dollar since 1961. The top tax rate today is 35% on $357,500 of taxable income. In 1961 it was 34% on $8,000 and went as high as 91% on $200,000, $400,000 joint filers.  See http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/federalindividualratehistory-20080107.pdf for historical rates.

Reagan fixed inflation and brought us trickle down economics, which did not work, by the way. (It just brought a lot of drooling)

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Bush jr brought us cheap efficient wars, which do not end, by the way. (Cheap and efficient?  Fred, I believe your stabbing at humor here.)

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Unions built America after their military service fighting to preserve it.

Mandatory arbitration is a part of every credit card and cell phone contract that you sign.  In so signing you agree to not take the card company or cell phone company to court.  Did you know that?   Tort reform makes it so companies are not found liable for harm.  They use the term frivolous but includes third degree burns and death.  An example of State mandated caps–> in West Virginia  miners are often killed in mining accidents their families can ask for and win millions, but the cap is about $10.000.   Susan Saladoff’s film “Hot Coffee” is effective and makes these confusing terms easy to understand.   Who would think the US government would allow this kind of abuse to happen to citizens of the USA?

This prompted some inquiry into lobbying groups who support arbitration, caps and tort reform.  Then you look up the politicians those lobby groups support and you realize why the government has allowed this abuse.

Two lobbying groups were made the focus–>Americans for Prosperity supported by Charles and David Koch and the US Chamber of Commerce which was created by US president William Howard Taft as a counterbalance to organized labor in  1912.  You may not realize that the US Chamber of Commerce is not a government agency it is a private astroturf  lobby.  (I’m not talking about football fields)

The term astroturf is the billionaire version of grassroots.   Astroturf coalitions are created and funded by corporations and industry trade associations.  They fund lobbying groups who’s job is to win over the middle class and manipulate facts.   Many describe (or disguise) themselves as public relations groups like Bonner and Associates.

In 2009, Jack Bonner and his Associates were working for the  American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) and were caught forging letters to Representative Tom Perriello. The letters were supposedly from true grassroots groups, like the  NAACP — urging him to oppose the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill.  Perriello is one of the co-sponsors of the Clean Water Protection Act. The Coal industry didn’t want this Act signed because it would slow the practice of Mountaintop removal.

Jack Bonner had his company design a fictitious web calculator.  This calculator convinced users the cost of fuel would rise exponentially if legislators signed the Kyoto treaty; while accusing real scientists of being eco-wacko.  They have pulled off the same brilliant shenanigans for pharmaceutical companies, Mobile oil, US tobacco, Citicorp and so forth. The Kochs love these guys and have them working for them through “Americans for Prosperity” and probably many others.

The US Chamber of Commerce seems to have morphed into a completely self-serving machine.  It is a private lobbying group funded by 45 billionaires.  Their common denominator is a dislike for public education and healthcare reform.  These billionaires love funding tort reform and judicial races.  The US Chamber of Commerce helped to shield AIG from liability lawsuits, funded the Tea-party in the 2010 midterm elections, distributed books on energy to children, funded the fight against SCHIP (healthcare for poor kids),  and so forth.  They are drooling over social security money and wanting to legally manipulate it by lobbying for social security, medicare and medicaid to be privatized.  They are funding politicians who get behind this agenda with their pens.  Rick Scott has quickly signed legislation to privatize medicaid in Florida.

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They are the conductor, we are the band.  If you don’t like the music, make your own.  Look up stuff and find out the truth.

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We’ll exile ourselves to places like  Costa Rica, Italy, Germany and Norway for the same reasons our forefathers came to America.  Us worker bees will leave the tyrannical hedge fund managers and their big oil buddies to play with their –  own 401k’s.

It might be a good thing — no one left to fight their wars.  Perhaps they’ll stop booting out the illegal aliens;  who may be needed to clean their mansions and perform CPR on their stressed out hearts?

I knew we weren’t going to get much out of him re: the environment, it wasn’t high on his agenda.  I didn’t like his plan to expand oil drilling but I liked him getting our troops out of Iraq and providing health care.  I didn’t think he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, but, I do like that the rest of the world seems to have a better view of us, because of him.  I guess when you get placed too high on a pedestal you fall hard and fast.  What has he done, or not done to make you so angry?

People who support our cool, private and formal President are up against a loud unified “tea-party”  Conservatives vs Liberals — one accusing the other of not staying on top of the facts. I’m glad our Liberal forefathers fought for our National Parks System, Medicare, Federal Highways, banning nuclear testing,  clean air and water, public schools, religious freedom, and being able to sit anywhere on the bus we want regardless of our skin color.  I am very grateful they stood up and fought the hard fight to provide these wonderful American ways of life for us.

Who were they fighting?  Who didn’t want these things?  Most people simply hate and fear the unknown.  There is no evil motivation. If you show them a plan for a better way they fight it, dealing with what they know is easier then figuring out a better way.   That thinking was manipulated by the powerful money handlers who were profiting from the unregulated timber industry or cheap child labor in factories.  Factory owners lobbied against mandatory education and the timber industry didn’t want National Parks.

Just like now, Corporate interests don’t want public healthcare available to all Americans and have convinced many Americans that the government is going to kill grandma and infiltrate their personal lives with this crazy healthcare for all scheme.  If healthcare was to become available to all Americans then  some  innovative Americans would go out and open a small business not needing corporate insurance benefits anymore. They don’t want that.

What did out conservative forefathers achieve for us?

Ronald Reagan played a big part in the USSR breaking apart and losing it’s power.  George HW Bush had a short successful war.  Nixon brought our troops home from Vietnam and re-opened trade with China — some may say China trade wasn’t such a good thing, because before that we made our own toasters and jeans.   Conservatives are pro-life and Christian.  They don’t like government intervention, they prefer corporate rule.  They refer to Liberals as elitists, I’m not sure where that came from.

As for me, I was raised in a Republican, military, Methodist, household.  My father hated “All in the Family” and he loved Nixon.  I remember sadness and tears in my household when Nixon resigned.  He said the presidency always involves covert happenings that the public has no business knowing.  In my mind, that, is big government and from that time on I silently went my own direction to find truths.  Nixon was big government and I think we should be much more afraid of his kind than of Obama.

Conservatives don’t like “Obamanomics” stimulus and infrastructure and all Americans having health insurance;  too costly. I say we need to work together to get jobs back in America.  Small business needs to prosper.  Corporate growth needs to stop being the impetus.  “Improving stockholder profits” needs to stop being our battle cry.  Americans need to move back into main street and open their hardware stores and butcher shops and make glassware in their small factories on the edge of town.  Stop hating and start coming up with solutions.  Yelling, table pounding, hate-filled accusations are  just counter productive exchanges of air

Stuff made in China is cheaper than American made stuff (for the most part) because the Chinese have little kids making it.  They don’t have rules.  No 40 hour work week with overtime.  No  clean air and water rules,  their factories pollute at will.  They don’t have a strong liberal front fighting for them.

We need to change our buying habits away from Target and Wal-Mart (unless they start stocking the shelves with American made products) and go back to main street.  Obama didn’t create this mess, I’m not sure he is doing everything right to fix it, but, I am sure it can’t be fixed without our participation.

I asked many of my co-workers and friends what they know about the Federal Reserve. Some never heard of it and others just “stay out of politics”.  Congress either understands the Federal Reserve about as well as me and the people I work with or they understand it very well and use it for their own purposes.  My guess is there is a little of both.

Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law in 1913 with hopes of  keeping the American economy stable.  The great depression happened after the stock market crashed in 1929 so apparently it didn’t work.  Conspiracy theories portray that It worked out nicely for the guys funding the Federal Reserve.

By the way did you know Woodrow Wilson’s second wife Edith was a descendant of Pocahontas and he was instrumental in women gaining the right to vote as well as creating the IRS and involving us in WWI.

It seems that Wilson’s purpose, which was passed by congress, was to establish a system of banking that would remain independent but overseen by congress to protect the American economy.   My smart friend Fred says… ‘ There is evidence that no one in government or banking has been properly taught recently. At least they don’t seem to be interested in financial stability as much as in how to flip securities and create new “products” to flim-flam investors, other banks and foreign governments. ”

Oversight of the Federal Reserve is quite obviously an important issue that we need to understand and pay attention to.  As Fred stated “Money is a debt of the government with no interest rate. When you have a hundred dollar bill it means the government owes you a hundred dollars. You can take it to any bank and exchange it for another or a combination of smaller  currency or coin equal to $100.  You used to be able to get gold or silver but that was eliminated in 1933. Can you imagine trying to keep track of a $5 gold fleck?”

So, we can’t run around with little gold flecks in our pockets or chickens or buckets of oil or items of value so money is printed.  A loan from the government covered by the value of the US treasury which is manipulated by the individuals at the Federal Reserve.  We vote for congressmen to keep an eye on the Fed, AKA oversight.

In 1895, the Federal Treasury was nearly out of gold. President Grover Cleveland arranged for J.P. Morgan to create a private syndicate on Wall Street to supply the U.S. Treasury with $65 million in gold. JP Morgan pretty much owned the US treasury, as a consequence Cleveland, a democrat, angered his democratic constituents, and lost the presidency to Republican William McKinley.  Mckinley established gold as the only standard for redeeming paper money with the Gold Standard Act in 1900.  He was assassinated in 1901.

Another panic in 1907 was a financial crisis that almost crippled the American economy, yet again. Major New York banks were on the verge of bankruptcy and there was no mechanism to rescue them until Morgan stepped in, yet again and personally took charge, resolving the crisis.

Morgan organized a team of bank and trust executives which redirected money between banks.  A delicate political issue arose regarding the brokerage firm of Moore and Schley, which was deeply involved in a speculative pool in the stock of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. Moore and Schley had pledged over six million of the Tennessee Coal and Iron (TCI) stock for loans among the Wall Street banks. The banks had called the loans, and the firm could not pay.  If Moore and Schley should fail, a hundred more failures would follow and then all Wall Street might go to pieces.  Too big to fail was going on back in 1907. Morgan decided they had to save Moore and Schley.

Vowing to never let it happen again, and realizing that in a future crisis there was not likely to be another Morgan, banking and political leaders, led by Senator Nelson Aldrich devised a plan that became the Federal Reserve System in 1913. The crisis underscored the need for a powerful mechanism, and Morgan supported the move to create the Federal Reserve System.  Yay!! it’ll never happen again and we don’t have to pay attention.  Then you may ask “Why did the great depression happen if the Federal Reserve System was established to protect the American economy”?  Well, either something evil was going on or just plain stupidity (on our part) and greed.

President Lincoln didn’t like the idea of a Central Bank and stated…

“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe. Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.”

Shortly after he said this, he was assassinated.

Banks store our money for us so we don’t have to walk around with our wad in our boots.  It isn’t sitting in a vault waiting for us to come and get it.  The bank has devised ways to turn our little wad into a bigger wad for themselves through speculation and manipulation of fractional reserves (watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYZM58dulPE to understand it better). They also extend credit to us based on our wad and make money off the interest.

We all need to treat our credit cards like a 30 day note, you borrow to get things you want in the immediate sense rather than having to wait for your next paycheck.  If you pay it back before the 30 days is up, you don’t have to pay interest, you just pay back what you borrowed. So we can live happily ever after surrounded by the ones we love.  Isn’t that the ultimate goal? for our money to buy our happiness? Like a patient said to me once “you never see a hearse pulling a U-haul”.

I ran across a website that visually represented how much money BP lost due to the oil spill.   I was incredulous.  That much money exists?  It is a loss they plan to recoup.  How do you suppose they will make up the loss?

They have convinced us to drive bigger cars, drink our water from a bottle, use more plastic and carry on with war, any war.  Oil men love war.  War is what truly feeds Seymour.  You remember the insatiable plant from “Little Shop of Horrors”.  I liken the oil (and coal) industry to Seymour’s need to keep his plant alive.  In the beginning it was a nice fun little plant.  Harmless, at least relatively.  The plant like the oil industry has gotten so big it is devouring the planet through wars and plastic and large ships and cruise liners that carry us and our crap across oceans.

We are convinced that if we all pile on a giant boat together life will be more fun.  We are convinced that the stuff we have is not good enough.  It all needs to be replaced by better stuff.  Most of the stuff is plastic and plastic is made from oil and the plastic is brought to us on giant boats that require massive amounts of oil.  This insatiable need has been brought to you by the oil industry.

We can’t blame oil entirely.  Coal is what fuels this nations heat and air and lights.  The current grid was set up by the coal industry and subsidized by the US government.  It was harmless and useful in its beginnings.  What a blessing to have heat and air and light due to the fabulous grid work that traverses the nation.  Except, now it too is like Seymour’s plant.  Dividing and devouring and convincing us that nothing else will do.

So let me share the website that prompted this blog…

http://www.visualeconomics.com/what-bp-could-have-bought-with-all-the-money-they-lost/

I wrote to my smart friend Fred who gave me this reply…

So you see in the world of business BP’s loss isn’t so much. Don’t feel sorry for them. Don’t think how much good this money could have done because it pales in comparison to the money we waste on wars. Iraq I believe was $1,000 billion. That’s 112 times what BP wasted.

When you look at it this way — it isn’t oil and coal that feeds Seymour’s plant.  Economics feeds the plant.  How often does economic advantage take precedence over doing good?  Goodness faces doom when it gets in the way of the economy.

What truly amazed me is that 3.4 billion dollars would buy an ice cream sandwich for everyone in the world and yahoo is worth 20 billion.  Wouldn’t it be cool if yahoo bought an ice cream sandwich for everyone in the world?  There is probably a soy version for the lactose intolerant.

When did this happen?  The rich paying for the poor?  Define poor.  Do you think the richest Indian was the one with the fanciest horse?  Or was the bravest Indian the one with the fanciest horse?

I was extremely impressed with a Missouri gentleman that built our kayak from strips of wood.  He explained the procedure and that his boats would withstand some of the wildest rivers in Missouri and Arkansas.  It took about 4 months for it to be completed and now it is a gorgeous lightweight kayak that is durable, usable art .  I suppose some of the glues, and paints may have had Chinese roots or came from a factory owned by a wealthy corporation, but, for the most part our beloved vessel was handmade by an American. He had a home, a car, a workshop, diabetes and a smoking habit.   He made his own way in his own shop living a free American life that many of us might envy.

Insurance would have been impossible for him to obtain if it hadn’t been for medicare.  He qualified for socialized medicine because he lived long enough too.  Prior to that I think he plucked chickens in a factory or something like that so he would be insured. Why is our society set up like this? Because the guys that own the chicken factories don’t want us to be free.  If we are free and don’t need the insurance they provide, we may leave and start an organic chicken farm that would compete with them.  We would be poor, but, we would be free and insured.

“Another word for freedom is nothing left to lose”  I so miss the days when everything I owned fit in my car and I traveled about, working at random restaurants, taking ballet classes and teaching ballet classes.  I never broke a body part or had a kidney stone or appendicitis.  I never thought about healthcare or health insurance.  If I had needed healthcare back in those days I would have been financially screwed.  I guess I was poor, but, I didn’t feel poor, I felt  free.

Life happened.  Husband, kids, and a job that provided health insurance for us all.  There went my freedom.  I don’t think it should have to be that way.  I think we should be able to make things, grow things, be brave and ride a fine horse.  I think we should have the choice to be free and at the same time be responsible.  I don’t think providing healthcare for all is the rich paying for the poor.  I think it is all of us pitching in for all of us.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post wrote…

In opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.

It was unnecessary for the court to go so far when there were several less-radical grounds available. It was audacious to seize the opportunity to overrule precedents when the parties had not pressed this issue and the lower courts had not considered it. It was the height of activism to usurp the judgments of Congress and state legislatures about how best to prevent corruption of the political process.

Nina Totenberg of NPR wrote…

“It will undoubtedly help Republican candidates since corporations have generally supported Republican candidates more.”

Freedom of Speech