There should be no such thing as a billionaire

The richest 400 Americans, all of whom are billionaires, are hoarding as much concentrated wealth as 150 million Americans combined. Here is the list:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/

Let's take a closer look at the top ten:

1. Bill Gates: think about all of the people working in all of the industries that helped make Bill Gates rich, all of the people who built, shipped, and sold the products that made him rich, think about how many of those people were underpaid while Bill Gates amassed his outrageous fortune. It's wrong.

2. Warren Buffet: this guy never created anything, never had an idea, never contributed anything to the world, he has just played Monopoly his entire life.

3. Larry Ellison: same argument as Bill Gates, distribute the wealth more fairly by paying people fair wages.

4 & 5. Charles and David Koch: took over Daddy's business, underpay their employees and exploit their wealth and influence to rig the system in their favor. Despicable people who earned nothing, ever.

6. Christy Walton: inherited an inheritance when her husband crashed his own plane, ludicrous wealth gained off of the backs of all the underpaid employees, not only employees of Walmart but all of the various industries that contribute to Walmart's operations. Earned nothing, ever.

7. George Soros: same as Buffet, never created anything, contributes nothing, plays Monopoly.

8. Sheldon Adelson: this rich fuck owns casinos, contributes nothing worthwhile to society, essentially a parasite.

9. Jim Walton: ludicrous wealth gained off of the backs of all the underpaid employees, not only employees of Walmart but all of the various industries that contribute to Walmart operations. Earned nothing, ever.

10. Alice Walton: ludicrous wealth gained off of the backs of all the underpaid employees, not only employees of Walmart but all of the various industries that contribute to Walmart operations. Earned nothing, ever.

These people are money hoarders. Half of them inherited the businesses that keep them ludicrously wealthy. Together they are hoarding 291 billion dollars.

NEVER ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG

There is clearly a Republican edict to NEVER admit you were wrong. We all enjoyed watching Palin insist that she was right, Paul Revere really was warning the British, and now we get to watch Michelle Bachmann refuse to admit that the founding fathers in fact DID NOT work tirelessly to END SLAVERY. The obstacle she faced was that she cleary was wrong, what she said was bewilderingly ignorant. So how do you avoid admitting you were wrong when you couldn't have been more wrong? Bachmann chose the "robotically deliver whatever your deflection team came up with" route. First she praised the Constitution, the same document that originally upheld slavery and eventually declared that slaves were 3/5 of a person, then she craftily babbled about John QUINCY Adams. The fact that he was not a founding father but rather the son of a founding father doesn't matter, what matters is that he sounds like he was a founding father...close enough for government work. How could any thoughtful, honest person watch this exchange between Bachmann and Stephanapoulos and still consider voting for Bachmann? They couldn't.

Why Capitalism is Evil Part I

Capitalist businesses always want more, no matter what. It is never enough. Therefore even if they are raking in billions of dollars in profits they will find an excuse (it is less than last year, less than a competitor, etc) to cut costs in order to make even more. Cutting costs usually means one of two things, 1) taking more away from the workforce (pay/benefits/work environment) in order to throw the extra wrung-out loot on the ever-growing pile of loot, or 2) finding cheaper means of production, i.e. inferior ingredients/parts or less safety in the workplace. In Capitalism there is no room for the concept of ENOUGH. Every parent teaches every child to share and to play fair, but under capitalism these concepts do not exist, yet these same parents who teach these important values to their children, to share and to play fair, are fine with the Capitalist ethos of never sharing, never playing fair, but rather taking and keeping more and more and more and never ever stopping the taking and the keeping and the owning and the hoarding and the looting.

Waiting for Jor-El

In the recent documentary Waiting for Superman David Guggenhiem attempts to explain why our nation's public school system is failing. He reserves most of the blame for bad teachers, immune from discipline thanks to tyrannical teacher's unions. Guggenheim fails to recognize that America's parents deserve a good portion of the blame for why their children are not learning. Quite the opposite, Guggenheim casts the parents as the heroes of his film. Of course there are many wonderful parents who work hard to create opportunity for their children and help their children succeed, but in my opinion one of the major contributing factors to the problems in our schools are the many parents in this country who pay little or no attention to what their children might or might not be learning in school. It is easier for them to let their kids watch TV or play video games all night than to help them with their homework. If children are not read to and do not see their parents reading they will not grow up to be readers. These parents break their children, then send them to the schools to be fixed. It is much easier to educate a nurtured child than to fix a broken one. Guggenheim also fails to address the fact that the public at large seem to value their own bank accounts more than the educational system. The problem is PRIORITIES: the priorities of the citizens, the priorities of the parents. Selfish people. And then there are the teachers, many of whom sacrifice a great deal in order to devote themselves to a noble cause. These are well-educated people who are woefully underpaid, despite what your politicians will have you believe. They work long hours and endure a great deal of stress, despite what your politicians will have you believe. Many, fuck it, MOST teachers are devoted people, and the opposite of selfish. Guggenheim's film does them a great disservice.

Inside Jobama

I just watched Inside Job and found myself face to face with a very harsh reality. The film does an excellent job of exposing who the "financial crisis" culprits were and how they perpetrated massive, widespread fraud, and then, at the end, we get to see Obama appoint half of them to official or advisory positions in his hoax of an administration. No one could watch this film and not realize that we were duped and Obama never was who we naively thought he was. I am shocked and saddened and never expected this harsh reality to unfold, I cried real tears the night the impostor was elected, but at this point it is undeniable--he is not on our side. Our only hope lies in a viable alternative candidate, one that can either defeat him in the Democratic primary or one that can run against the Republicrat conspiracy entirely, I hate to call it a "third party" because the whole party system must go. The battle to break the "two party" stranglehold may be the most significant battle this country will ever face. America exists because of the American Revolution, but America will no longer exist unless we win the battle to end the two party farce. Watch Inside Job--these greedbots were more than willing to destroy the companies they were running in order to enrich themselves and their cronies...why wouldn't they treat the country the same way? They will destroy America in their insatiable quest for unquantifiable wealth. They don't want simply to be wealthy, they want everything, they want imaginary supernatural wealth. The world is their board game and they want to win at any cost. What drives them? Who are these people? I cannot answer these questions. But they want to write the rules then win win win. They want to burn us all and snort our ashes or just swallow us whole. No scraps.

Homeless Children

How could anyone be proud to live in a country where the phrase "homeless children" is even part of the lexicon? According to 60 Minutes the poverty rate for children in this country will soon reach 25 percent, and many of these children are finding themselves living in cars or cheap motels.

In this country "poverty" means a family of four with a combined income of LESS THAN $22,000/year. That means a family of four could be bringing in less than 2000 dollars a month and still be considered ABOVE the poverty line.

Contrast the concept of "homeless children" with the concept of "heir to the fortune." Fortunes are being inherited for the third and fourth time, fortunes that can be traced back to slavery or an era when people worked 12 hour days for pennies. Fortunes that should never have been amassed and are undeserved by those inheriting them.

The more the middle class shrinks the less customers there will be for all of these companies motivated only by greed and shareholder dividends. Eventually, lacking an adequate customer base, the economy will collapse, and finally the wealth will have to be redistributed. I believe that this eventual redistribution was about to take place, the free market was actually working, and then the government handed out billions of dollars, free money, no strings attached, to the vampires and parasites. And so, our undead zombie of an economy will lumber along for awhile, but eventually the head will fall off and the "heirs to the fortune" may find themselves rebranded "homeless children."

A National Disgrace

I keep hearing people complaining that teachers only work nine months out of the year. It is true that the average school year is 180 days. 180 school days. Remember weekends? In actuality the average school year begins in late August and ends in mid-late June. That's closer to ten months. So teachers have two months off, not three.

In every country in Europe workers get at least 20 paid vacation days. In France and Finland, they get 30. In most of these countries it is required by law that workers are granted this vacation. In other words, Americans are suckers, and those American suckers are just jealous that teachers get the time off they would all get if they just had the balls to stand up for themselves and not be duped and taken advantage of.

A ten month work year is simply the nature of the teaching job, and if we want to attract quality people to the job we have to accept the reality of the job. We all hear about how CEOs have to be paid tens of millions of dollars per year because that's the only way to attract quality people to the job (granted, it's hard to find a person devoid of conscience and empathy, willing to give non-stop rimjobs to Wall Street). No one seems concerned that we attract quality people to the teaching profession. At this point anyone who pursues teaching is making a conscious sacrifice. These are people who have rejected other professions in favor of a job that is less rewarding financially and in terms of respect given, but more rewarding in terms of conscience and self-respect. Teachers become teachers because they want a job that means something and is a positive force in the world. Many jobs are just the opposite, and many Americans who pursue those jobs are complicit in evil and should be ashamed of themselves. It pains me that they are not.

The Daily Show recently pitted Fox News shitmouths against themselves and exposed them as the corporate shill Wall Street rimjobbers they actually are. "One point of comparison was the matter of salaries. As Jon Stewart showed via clips from Fox, when a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for those making $250,000 and more was proposed, the Fox pundits asserted that people who make $250,000 a year are not rich. They even made the odd claim that if a family in that income bracket had four kids in college, then they would be close to poverty." They were also defending the scandalous bonuses that the banks and Wall Street were handing out to the scum that just crashed the economy, bonuses funded with money taken from the American suckers, the taxpayers, in the bullshit bailout. What happened to the FREE MARKET? Bank of America and Citibank should no longer exist. They crashed and burned and the taxpayers built them a time machine.

In contrast, "when the same pundits considered the average salary of $51,000 for Wisconsin teachers, they regarded it as a rather excessive amount of pay. This seems rather an odd claim from the same folks who claimed that $250,000 could be regarded as being close to poverty. It seems to be a matter of basic math: $250,000 per year (plus) falls into the “not rich” and “close to poverty” zone, then $51,000 per year should certainly not be rich and should probably be in the poverty zone. After all, $51,000 is a lot less than $250,000."

Americans don't seem to respect teachers or the profession, but of course what they are most concerned about is that money coming out of their paycheck. After all they need that money to buy their children video games and DVDs so the little bastards will leave them alone. Then they send those kids to school but who gives a shit if they learn anything.

FYI: the stuff in quotes was purloined from The Philosopher's Blog...http://aphilosopher.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/fox-news-war-on-teachers/