We Don't Need No Stinkin Pensions

Corporations have not been putting appropriate funds into pension plans. Now, as the baby boomers come due to retire we have a problem coming and its going to be huge. The executives made them selves look good and got their bonuses (pronounced bone-us) by effectively stealing from the pension fund. The government, which insures these pensions, has no regulatory agency with teeth to prevent this from happening. So, soon its going to be the S&L crisis all over again.

"We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."
Leona Helmsley, criminal...

Let me a see a show of hands, who is tired of paying the rich with tax dollars that would be better spent rebuilding our infrastructure, teaching our children, providing research for new technologies, defending our nation or caring for the needy? When the executives steal, they eventually steal from us, the tax payers. Ah, and let us not forget that the richest American now have the least tax burden. When millions of working people suddenly discover they have been screwed by these firm, let us hope that they organize into a political movement so that we can start to roll back the time of two Americas.


- Human Toll of a Pension Default
- Is There a US Pension Crisis?
- Pension Pains

Tired of Grabbing Ankle for George W. Bush

What follows is an open letter that I sent to my elected officials.... Perhaps you might want to contact yours and send them a similar message?

Senate: 202-224-3121 http://www.senate.gov
House: 202-224-3121 http://www.house.gov

Dear Elected Official,

The budget continues to be a sweepstakes for the top %1 while the rest of us get screwed. We are cutting monies for research and development that could fill the pipe and create whole new industries or lead us toward energy independences so an CEO can have a HUMMER. It was better when the President was getting one of those and our fiscal policy wasn't so insane. The NEO cons must be stopped before they destroy our middle class and then our democracy. We don't live in a stratified society like Brazil yet, let's keep it that way.

I ask you to stand up and say no. I ask you to stand in front of the tank just like man outside of Tianamen Square. If you do, I'll be there beside you, and so will many other Americans. We do not want two Americas. We want a land of freedom and opportunity. Let us being to roll back the insanity and stupidity of the past five years.

Cartoon Violence

UNICEF used the cute, cuddly and annoying smurfs to raise money and awareness regarding the effects of war on children. The rational was that violence upon cartoon characters is more effective than real pictures of the devastation done to people.

In the nation, there was an article about how a porn site is now carrying explicit war footage shot by soldiers in Iraq. The visitors to the site enjoy the carnage which according to the article is quite graphic. So, cartoon children suffering is controversial and real children blown apart is titillating pornography.

Smurfs Bombed In UNICEF Ads
The Porn of War

Reading Is Dangerous

We are just hours away from the release of the sixth installment of the "Harry Potter" series. This book may seem harmless to you, but every time your child turns a page she is in grave danger. Potter is a what is known as a gateway book. This prince will surely lead your child to move on to hard books by Tolkien or Barbara Kingsolver (your child may refer to these by their street names: "Ice T" and "Special K"). "My child doesn't have a problem,” you say; will you still say that when her room is filled with books and she has hocked your television to feed that habit. She's got a monkey on her back, and its not Curious George.

According to a recent study, by the American Association of Broadcasters, states that 65% of all children who read just one Harry Potter book become addicted to short fiction within a year. Page after page, novella after story, they wind up endless seeking to get high on reading. Never satisfied for long they hang around bookstores or spend hours trolling the dusty shelves of the library looking for a fix.

Reading is Fundamental, it is fundamentally dangerous. Treatment is available, but it all has to start with you being the parent saying, "No, you'll watch television and by god you will like it!"

Brought to you by the Partnership for a Thought Free America

No one ever regretted that they had but one life to give for KBR

What follows is an open letter that I have sent to a gaggle of Senators and my rep in the house. If you find the subject matter shocking, I urge that you visit the Frontline site and then contact your elected officials. It is our government and we have the power to shape how it will behave. That is what democracy is all about.

I just saw an episode of FRONTLINE on the use of contractors in Iraq. I heard Marine Col. John Toolan, the Marine commander in charge of an area of Iraq that included Fallujah, explain how the deaths of four contractors forced him to move from a rebuilding effort that could have won hearts and minds to policy of full onslaught and massive retaliation. It was clear that the Colonel saw this as a missed opportunity in our attempt to bring stability to Iraq. In addition, the attack on the four contractors in Fallujah and upon the KBR convoys led to many contractors leaving Iraq. This resulted in a logistical nightmare, which limited our troops effectiveness and put them in harm'’s way due to shortages and supply chain problems. It matters not whether we invasion was a good idea or a bad idea, it happened and we can only go forward at this point. As Colon Powell stated, we broke the pottery and now we have to fix it.

Corporations make money; that is what they do and that is all they do. It is not a good thing or a bad thing, merely a fact like gravity or the next sunrise. Asking a corporation to serve our national interests in terms of sacrificing profits does not work. Forcing a corporation to do so through a well-enforced regulatory regime provides some success, but it is far from perfect. What has happened in Iraq is to give contracting firms free reign and it has resulted and will continue to result in our soldiers' efforts being squandered. We cannot let this continue.

Wars cost money and wars cost lives, it is not possible for us to fight one on the cheap and win. The shielding of the American people from the true costs of this war through the use of contractors and other slight-of-hand methods may win an election, but it will result in all of us being less safe. We cannot win this thing if we are outsourcing key military tasks. I call on you to raise your voice and start to fix this problem. All outsource conducted by the Pentagon must stop. We need to have military roles fulfilled by military personnel. If this means that my taxes will go up, so be it. I'’d rather have that money going to hard working soldiers than a well-paid executive of KBR any day of the week. Also, we all know that taxes will have to go up anyway because wars cost money and nation building is not cheap.

Please do something to help support the troops by getting the contractors out of there. We need well-trained professional soldiers, not fly-by-night organizations that are arming bouncers and setting them loose. Stop the contracting firms before they get more of our soldiers killed and fowl up more of our policies and efforts.

Get Information: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/
Contact your Senator: http://www.senate.gov
Contact your Representative: http://www.house.gov

Evolution and Religion, where is the overlap?

I do not understand the ruckus about how evolution threatens faith (or visa verse). Evolution is based on the following axioms:

• Organisms have offspring.
• Offspring share some traits from the parents and differ from one and other.
• Some differences help the offspring to have more of their own offspring.
• Over generations some traits spread throughout a population while others do not.

Religion seems to operate on these axioms:

• Some entity, that is usually called god, created the universe and all that is in it.
• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• You are here for a reason.

The first set of axioms means that if I mate a dachshund and a Great Dane, I may wind up a Great Dane mother with a bunch of very short puppies who will produce very short prodgeny of their own. I can test this first set. I can test it by making high yield varieties of wheat and corn. I can test it by accidentally making drug resistant bacteria if I misuse antibiotics. I can test it by looking over the history in the fossil record since humans domesticated animals, and I can test it much further back. As for the second set, it I cannot test. I can choose to believe in god or not, but I cannot prove it one way or the other. This seems to be prime reason why the belief in god is a matter of faith.

When I look at natural selection and evolution I see a mountain range of evidence both in the historical record and in the lab and field today. What I do not see is any information about the existence or lack of a god. Because god is not described by the system cannot be taken to mean that god doesn't exist or is uninvolved. If I study how a faucet works by the washer being squeezed into place to stop the water flow, I may not talk about the municipal water authority. There may be one and it may deliver water to that faucet. There may not be one and the faucet may be attached to a bucket full of rain water. Its outside of my focus.

Science tends to be pragmatic and focus on what can be proved even if it may take some effort. When science leaves god out of it, it is not an attack, it is recognition that science isn't the right tool to explore this aspect of the human experience. Evolution describes a mechanism nothing more. If there is randomness or a god behind it, it is outside of the realm to which the natural selection is focused.

Given this situation, why and how could science threaten faith? It would seems akin to addition or subtraction threatening faith?

Operation Close Wal-Mart:

Wal-Mart is a massive store that is changing America.

• workers encouraged to use public assistance a company policy
• workers forced to clock out and continue working
• workers locked in the stores
• jobs exported to China

Communities have been largely unsuccessful at stopping Wal-Mart in the courts. The problem was that they choice to fight against corporate giant. Why not have Wal-Mart fight itself? Wal-Mart fears unions so much that when a union was close to being formed in its store in conquer, Quebec the corporate giant closed the store. Wal-Mart claims that the closure had to do with the economics of the store and not the union vote. Could Wal-Mart executives be lying? Lets conduct and experiment to find out.

Hypothesis:

Wal-Mart is a big piece of antibiotic laden low priced poultry when it comes to unions.

Experiment:

1. Apply for a position at Wal-Mart
2. Get a spiffy smock
3. Agitate your co-workers and try to start a union

Results:
If you get close to a union vote and Wal-Mart closes the store, the hypothesis is valid. You will have succeeded in chasing Wal-Mart away from your community. If you get fired, the hypothesis might still be valid and now you can sue.

Let's make that little yellow smiley face run away to somewhere else....

It’s not to late to speculate

Bill O’Reilly is a man who understands truth and fairness. He is a man who knows what integrity is all about. He uses his keen understanding to avoid all of these things. More importantly, he is a man whose every public word is written down where I can find it…

So, if Bill were to be hypocritical or inaccurate (in my language we call this lying) Bill would get “busted.” I’d just like to thank Bill for being a lazy lying sanctimonious blow hard, it makes me smile when I think about it.

- Were he not lazy, he wouldn’t make big mistakes (a.k.a. lies).

- Were he not a sanctimonious, they wouldn’t be funny

- Were he not a blow hard, we hear about them

This is why I blog.

On June 9, Bill O’Reilly mentioned:
"As you may know, we do not speculate here on 'The Factor.' We have no idea what happened to Natalee or why she left the bar with some Aruban men. I've heard some irresponsible media speculate about that, and it makes me angry."

Grrr. It make me angry too. Rampant speculation and opinion expressed as fact is a real problem in today's media. News seems to have very little to do with fact these days. Here are a few particularly annoying examples:

Bill O’Reily 6/6/05 regarding Natalee Holloway:
"Looks like she's dead because the five people, two arrested, three interviewed, are all shady characters."

Bill O’Reilly 6/6/05 regarding Natalee Holloway:
"But to me, I mean, a woman like this, 18 years old, we know her background, doesn't have sex with three guys she doesn't know. I mean, that doesn't happen."

Bill O’Reilly 4/29/05 regarding the runaway bride:
"It's got to be a crime. A woman like that with a long history of responsibility. She had a steady job.... She just wouldn't bolt and not tell anybody."

Damn, it seems like Bill O’Reilly really could stop the irresponsible media. He could stop talking. Yeah, that’d probably help.

Profiles in Courage

I would like to commend Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace for admitting that they do not know how to read. It takes a real man to expose that kind of weakness and to face it head on. To you two, I say bravo and I wish you luck getting hooked on phonics.

Back Story:

The two men where holding a press conference and recieved this question:

Human rights groups continue to criticize what they've described as systematic abuses in the interrogation process... And I wonder if you would just respond to the suggestion that there is a systematic problem rather than the kinds of individual abuses we've heard of before.

Their answers were as follows:

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't believe there's been a single one of the investigations that have been conducted, which has got to be six, seven, eight or nine --

GEN. PACE: Ten major reviews and 300 individual investigations of one kind of another.

SEC. RUMSFELD: And have you seen one that characterized it as systematic or systemic?

GEN. PACE: No, sir.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I haven't, either.

For them to have not seen any report that described the Abugrabe and Gunatanamo abuses as "systemic" must mean that they actually do not know how to read. I say this because the report by General Antonio Taguba states:

Article 15-16 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade, 5(S):

(S) That between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force (372nd Military Police Company, 320th Military Police Battalion, 800th MP Brigade), in Tier (section) 1-A of the Abu Ghraib Prison (BCCF). The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness statements (ANNEX 26) and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.

I hope that in expressing their adult literacy issue that Don and Peter are able to helped by First Lady Laura Bush's literacy program. If I am wrong and it is in the area pf morality where they are deficient, then perhaps there is an adult honesty program that can help them.

WalMart carries Klantastic (now with extra whitening power)

According to Customer Service at Walmart:
"Our pharmacists may decline to fill a prescription based on personal convictions. However, they must find another pharmacist, either at Wal-Mart or another pharmacy, who can assist you by filling your prescription."

Hmmm. So, if I'm the Grand Dragon of the Illinois Klu Klux Klan (it could happen; they could move jews to the Okkk list and I could sustain a head injury) and a black man comes up and wants his prescription filled. My personal convictions regarding racial superiority and all that crap could lead me to decide to not serve the black man. He must now wait at the back of the bus for someone willing to serve him. This looks like a policy that supports separate but equal service. A little breach of basic civil rights seems to be Ok for Walmart.

Way to go Walmart!
You bring us all together (in bankruptcy by using our tax dollars to export our jobs to China. Hell, we'd have just wasted them something stupid like education and training anyway) and then you pull us apart by making it Ok for us to discriminate against each other. Its like an anti-American hoki-poki, perhaps that's what its all about.

If I weren't already boycotting the store for the job exportation thing, the locking in of workers, the deliberate use of welfare as part of the employee compensation package, the destruction of community businesses and the forcing of employees to clock out and continue working then I'd start boycotting Walmart for this one.

If Walmart annoys you, boycott them. You can probably get the same stuff at Target (which isn't great, but it ain't Walmart either). If you do boycott them, please be sure to let them know at help@walmart.com

The End of Days is brought to you by our sponser...

I recently saw a television commercial for a new show called "Revelations." I gather it is another in a long line of books and programs about the end of days. I wonder which advertiser is chomping at the bit to have their ad shown just after Americans see the Beast. My money is on depends or Volvo. Both help people deal with fear.

Americans seem preoccupied with the Armageddon. We have TV shows depicting biblical and secular ends with Satan, Meteors, Super Volcanoes and Aliens providing the final blow. We have cult groups and religious sects eagerly awaiting the end of days. Some of these groups are trying to hasten our approach to this supposedly inevitable end. Certain sects seek to derail the Arab/Israeli peace process because they claim that the book of Revelations indicates that the Jews will control all of biblical Israel prior to the end. For the secular folks, this lust for the apocalypse expresses itself in doom and gloom predictions regarding the environment, global political instability or tales of freakish acts. The talk goes beyond identifying a problem and seeking remedies, there seems to be a twisted hope that these nightmares will come to pass.

Could is be that we look forward to Jesus, the space rock, the terrorists, global warming or the aliens ending life as we know so we don't have to face something far more difficult than these phantoms? If the world is not going to end, then we must remedy all the problems in our
lives. Osama is not going to blow up my house, so my mortgage will still be due. The beast will not come and therefore, each day of my life I will wake up and be faced with the chore or the opportunity to begin to repair the damage done to me and by me. I will have to take
responsibility for my actions and for those done in my name. I will need to face my fears and accept my limits. That is scarier than comic book apocalyptic climaxes and so enthrall us. Perhaps it is also more empowering. I can't beat Satan, but I'm pretty sure I can learn to
live more fully and to treat others as I would like to be treated.

Top 10 Reasons Why Michael Bolton Would Make a Better Ambassador to the UN

1. Doesn't have a silly mustache
2. Never Claimed the that UN doesn't exist
3. Is much more "fabulicious"
4. likes to collaborate with others, while John is advocates a go-it-alone foreign policy.
5. Never referred to by Jessie Helms as "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon"
6. Sold 52 million albums and singles worldwide (more global appeal than Johnny)
7. Kenny G will be made Secretary General, sax solos for Peace.
8. awarded the Martin Luther King Award by the Congress of Racial Equality.
9. Never accused of bullying analysts in an attempt to obtain "intelligence" of Cuba's biological weapons program.*
10. Will be so busy with diplomacy that he will not have time to produce more music.

Irony

King James Bible - Exodus 20:4
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

Funny, a 5,300-pound granite monument sure looks like an idol to me....

If the meek shall inherit the earth, the mighty need protection

Big government in towns like Scottsburg, Indiana (population 14,066) are in danger of bringing down small struggling businesses like Verizon and Qwest, companies who are just trying to get $29.99 a month per customer. These small town fat cats have decided that they can offer internet access to their citizens at a fraction of the cost of what these hard working telecom companies charge.

In the case of Scottsburg, the government "claims" that the big telecom firms wouldn't provide internet service because it wasn't economically viable and that local businesses were suffering. These communists decided that the town had the right to offer municipal wireless internet service to the community. An unparalleled intrusion in the lives of we-the-people never before seen in my America*.
( *except for municipal water, sewer, sanitation, and garbage collection)

In Philadelphia, the town decided to offer low cost internet service to close the technology gap faced by the working poor and to provide more economic development to the city. We all know that not tacking on an additional 500% for glutinous profits makes this welfare and welfare should go to large corporation who buy (I mean contribute to the campaigns of) politicians, not to the people who vote for them.

Verizon and Quest aren't taking this lying down. They are fighting for your right to not have the the right to vote. In state legislatures across the country Goliath is urging that the politicians help it prevent David from getting his hands on any rocks. The argument is pretty persuasive, it goes something like this: "We gave you {insert a number with many zeros after it here} for you last campaign. Small towns are cutting into our market. If you can't help us, we can give somebody else this nice big check."

So, to protect you from the dangers of democracy, your state legislature may be considering a bill to make it illegal for you to have your town set up a municipal internet service. Lets face it, giving citizens the right to vote on how their money is spent is like giving a child a loaded gun, a bad idea.

Just stop and think, if telecom giants can't continue to over charge for their services, how will they continue to pay the 7 digit salaries of their executives? How will they continue to export jobs to other countries? Limos and private jets cost money folks, these companies need your help.

For just $1000 a legislator, you can make a difference. You can help keep the corporate jets flying and help under-inebriated directors get to their three martini lunches. If you don't help, we could be faces with a world of low cost reliable internet service, a future to nightmarish to contemplate.

A regular guy's attempt to have a movement

I often come across things which I find absurd, funny and troubling (usually, all at the same time). As these things happen, it seems to me that the entire country shrugs it's shoulders and says "so."

• Our elected official on both sides of the aisle serve those who write checks instead of those who cast ballots.
• Our funds destined to go to Iraq never make it there.
• Our soldier's must write home to their mothers asking not for cookies, but for body armor because the Pentagon didn't see fit to provide it.

I have a hard time saying "so" to any of that. I have longed for a place where I could, like my hero Howard Beale, shout that "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore." Well, this little corner of the internet is my space for doing just that.

I hope you will like what I have to contribute. I can assure you that even if you do not find my rantings to be humorous and thought provoking, that you will at least find them to be rife with gramatical mistakes.