brainiac conspiracy

Saturday Night Music Blogging

Because we can never achieve our destiny unless we are constantly picking fights with people.

---Baron V

The Company We Keep

In our quest to spread American values 'round the world, it never helps our cause when we denounce corrupt and despotic governments at the same time we cozy up to some of the world's worst offenders. I mean, these were the people behind the 9/11 assassins and whom we should have rightly bombed on September 12. Yeah, I know, we need their oil, they're a bulwark against the expansion of Iranian influence, and all the usual Machiavellian crap. But it shoots our credibility to hell all the same.

---Baron V

Salt in The Wound

It's ironic---isn't it?---that the current gang at the White House came into office having effectively repudiated trickle-down economics, but once ensconced in power, though, they embarked upon the biggest and most audacious trickle-down program in the history of the Republic. It's still going on today, and as with other trickle-down experiments, it has failed spectacularly to achieve its stated goals.

---Baron V

Can't Keep Going Down This Road Forever

We are running out of water, and overheating the planet, so the people who govern us can have their wars. More to the point, besides diverting money away from necessary improvements---health care, infrastructure, poverty relief---it's hideously wasteful and destructive of our environment. Unfortunately, so many of our job creators have got their tentacles in the Pentagon gravy boat at this point, it's hard to imagine how we will ever reverse the growth of these institutions that not only threaten our liberty but also our viability as a species. Guess the best thing we can do for now is elect leaders who understand that major systemic changes need to be made in the way we run our society, and that will require equally far-reaching changes in the collective consciousness of America's leadership class. All great military empires eventually crumble under their own weight. This time around, though, our collapse could possibly take the rest of the world down with it.

---Baron V

No Money for Mass Transit or Street Repairs

But plenty of money for sports franchises.

More to the point, devoting public funds to stadium-building is a dubious use of resources for a city that's thriving. For one that's just emerging from bankruptcy, it's insane. These things almost never make money, and it's kinda hard to believe that the hockey fans---mostly white, ahem, and suburban---are going to spend much time and money in Downtown/Midtown---mostly poor and blah---before or after the games. Anything's possible, but I wouldn't bet the kids' tuition money on it.

---Baron V

Goldberg Redux

I suppose there's a good reason why we should have a health-care system that's predicated on transferring billions of dollars from patients to enterprises that don't provide any actual health care, i.e., insurance companies, but I can think of one right now. Sure, the Goldberg Act makes this system a bit more equitable---and more affordable, if you're poor---but the fact that they've had to tinker with it so many times over the past four years seems indicative to me of the inefficiencies that are deliberately engineered into our needlessly complex and confusing system of heath-care delivery, and the Goldberg Act doesn't really solve this problem. It simply shifts the costs around.

---Baron V

Earthquakes

They're strange and illogical things. We had a little 4.4 shaker here a couple of weeks ago that rattled the windows and buckled the walls, yet we had a much bigger tremor last night, and I didn't feel a thing. Haven't felt any aftershocks, either, so I guess it's safe to go out and play, so, later.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Ron Fournier.

Because celebrating the pointless slaughter of thousands with a stage-managed victory speech is just like getting access to health care that can save people's lives.

Somebody please explain to me again why so many people in the Washington policy and media establishments have such a warped and sociopathic worldview. Is there something in the D.C. municipal water supply that triggers the part of the brain that generates false equivalencies? You would think that the Goldberg Act could, and should, be judged on its own merits without having to be compared to the greatest foreign-policy disaster in the history of the Republic. But I guess that wouldn't be "objective" reporting, now, would it.

---Baron V

Out of Control

I'm not 100-percent certain how future historians will assess the Obama administration, but I am starting to suspect that they will judge it to have been a weak and ineffectual regime that lost all control over its security-surveillance agencies. Either that, or it's one of the most paranoid gangs to have ruled in Washington. The President really doesn't seem to be that kind of person, though, so I vote incompetent.

---Baron V

Friday Night Music Blogging

Because the Evil Empire is always evil. Pretty good music, though!

---Baron V

It's Still a Fake Recovery

Don't believe the hype.

If my little corner of the Marxist dystopia---where tear-down McMansion mania is close to spiraling out of control---is any example, whatever increases in consumer spending there have been are only because rich people are spending more. Not surprising, considering how well their stock portfolios have recovered! For the rest of us, however, it's nothing but fabricated happy talk coming from a political leadership class that has utterly abandoned us. Wish it weren't so, but . . .

---Baron V

The Epitaph Of Our Species

All Of The Above.

---Baron V

Foot-Dragging

This:

The White House on Friday opened the way to cutting emissions of methane from the oil and gas industry, saying it would study the magnitude of leaks of the powerful greenhouse gas [...]

[T]he White House said the EPA would undertake a series of studies to determine the magnitude and prevalence of methane leaks from fracking sites, compressors, and gas pipelines.

The agency would decide by the autumn of 2014 whether to propose new controls on the industry. “In the fall, we will determine the best path forward to get reductions,” a White House official told a conference call with reporters.

But they can't mandate any methane reductions without disavowing their existing energy policy---which, you know, is a big part of the problem.

---Baron V

Reclaiming The Dream

It may be true that American labor doesn't wield as much clout as it did, say, forty years ago, and that a broader-based organizational effort will be needed in the coming (hopelessly nonviolent) class war. But unions do provide the kind of infrastructure that's going to be essential for mass mobilizations and general strikes: Meeting halls, phone banks, strike funds, food banks, etc. Personally, I'm a little disappointed that the major union bosses haven't already held a summit to discuss the possibility of this, but I still think unions will need to be a major player if we're ever to raise people's class-consciousness to the point where they're ready to take a week, or more, off work to man the barricades.

(Via.)

---Baron V

Got an Easy Answer For That

Odds of an impeachment vote approach 100 percent.

Too bad we didn't make better use of those supermajorities when we had them. Oh well!

---Baron V

In the Rear-View Mirror

Strange how none of the major dailies or TV news networks covered this little confab, considering that the subject at hand cost us in excess of a trillion dollars, many thousands of pointless deaths, and our nation's moral standing around the world. But it's easy to see why our leading media outlets would choose to embrace the "look forward, never back" ethos---because if they were to undertake a thorough examination of the war in Iraq, they'd have to examine their complicity in waging it. War crimes had many willing enablers back then!

---Baron V

Priorities

The people who govern us have some strange ones:

The United States is ready to step up covert aid to Syrian rebels under a plan being discussed with regional allies including Saudi Arabia, according to a Washington Post report.

The plan includes CIA training of about 600 Syrian opposition forces per month in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar, foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius wrote on Thursday. That would double the forces currently being trained in the region.

I've got another idea: Instead of providing covert aid to some Syrians, how about offering to provide some overt aid to some Americans instead? The Western half of the country is running out of water, yet the only thing that seems to stir our leaders from their torpor is the prospect of MOOOOOOAR WARRRRRRR. What awful sin did we ever commit to deserve such horrible leadership?

To be fair, yes, the Syrian civil war is a terrible tragedy, and we should doing our part to help---by providing humanitarian assistance to refugees, not adding to the body count.

---Baron V

We Are the 80 Percent

Present company included:

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

The things people have needed for the last five years---jobs, and money, and mortgage relief---are the same exact things that they still need now. Why do our leaders treat us so shabbily, and how much longer do we wait before mobilizing for general strikes?

---Baron V

No Free Parking

Owning a car is cool, it enhances social mobility, etc. But it's also environmentally destructive, and because of that, there should be no free lunches for cars. Pay to park, either by meter or annual permit, and use the revenues for road repair and bike lanes. Now that's cool.

---Baron V

Break Them Up

And do it now:

Bank executives and investors lashed out at the Federal Reserve on Thursday, attacking its stress tests as “opaque” after the results battered Citigroup’s share price and rattled banks around the world [...]

Some shareholders expressed anger at Citi executives. Mike Corbat, who replaced the ousted Vikram Pandit as chief executive in 2012, was charged with improving relations with regulators after a previous failure on the Fed’s annual capital assessment.

A senior Citi executive said Mr. Corbat was facing “unhappy staff, shareholders and some people who are both---like myself”.

Mr. Corbat held a call with senior executives at the bank on Thursday to say “we will fix this and keep doing what we have been doing to build profits at the bank”. But it is clear that “the board is pretty pissed off”, the executive said.

He added the view within the bank was that “every year the Fed has to pick on someone and this year it was us---it seems because of our global complexity”.

They failed spectacularly at their jobs, we saved their asses with tens of billions of dollars, and they are still bitching about being held accountable for their incompetence. They deserve to be destitute and unemployed, these people. Maybe someone in Washington should make it happen.

---Baron V