http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
Dead civilians never seen. No profit in it.
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
It’s no use pretending that what has happened has not happened.
humans must be friends
I was reading min- ami- soma while hoping max- ami- soma:
Kyohei Takahashi, the 72-year-old head doctor at a hospital in Minamisoma, a mostly abandoned city some 25 kilometers north of the plant is still at his post though fewer than 10 of his 25 staff remain, and many of his patients were evacuated to reduce their potential exposure to radiation.
The hospital now relies on donations of instant noodles and curry from volunteers and Japanese soldiers to serve those who come looking for care.
Some of them feel panicked; others have stopped talking, he says, with all of them worrying about friends and family, including some who were likely swept away by Japan’s March 11 tsunami.
“What kind of doctor would I be if I fled over something like this?”
empire tears
Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko of Japan
The US has ‘utterly failed’ to address risk of spent fuel.
A relatively small amount of used-up fuel was sitting in Fukushima’s seven spent-fuel pools when disaster occurred. By contrast, nuclear utilities in the US have over decades accumulated some 71,862 tons of spent fuel in more than 30 states – the vast majority of it sitting today in pools that are mostly full… It’s a huge quantity of highly radioactive material equal to a great many Chernobyls.
were froth be true
Oh yes, our society is worthy of celebration, our policies are thoughtful…
Americans, constituting only 4.6% of the world’s population, have been consuming 80% of the global opioid supply, and 99% of the global hydrocodone supply, as well as two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs. [link]
Don’t reply to your first thought. It’s likely opinionated and wrong. If we had a clue, these statistics wouldn’t reveal our errors. We know too little about this challenge.
invader of brains
In the competition for space in our brains and in the culture, the effective combatants are the messages.
The biosphere: an entity, composed of all the earth’s life-forms, simple and complex, teeming with information, replicating and evolving, coding from one level of abstraction to the next.
Memes emerge in brains and travel outward, establishing beachheads on paper and celluloid and silicon and anywhere else information can go.
They are not to be thought of as elementary particles but as organisms.
The number three is not a meme; nor is the color blue, nor any simple thought, any more than a single nucleotide can be a gene. Memes are complex units, distinct and memorable — units with staying power.
dowmerica
A new radio spot by the Koch Brothers extols the spirit of cooperation that led unionized workers at Harley-Davidson to take a pay cut for the good of the company.
What it doesn’t mention is the $6.5 million paycheck the company’s CEO handed himself.
Comment snippet:
“Here in Europe we have a word for the things going on in the US right now. We call it fascism. Do you know why we call it fascism? Cause we own dictionaries. Fascism has nothing to do with oligarchy, fascism is when the government and big business cooperate in order to keep the working classes out of power.
“Look it up.”
More comment snippets: “I wish this was a surprise.”
“Good riddance. Harley Davidson is a marketing firm which happens to make motorcycles.
“All the ‘rebels’ in their little pirate costumes who think they’re riding the great freedom machine are simply whores for the HD pimp.”
“HD doesn’t make money from bikes. HD makes money from financing — bikes being the token that’s financed.”
“Employees are assets, then kiss our asses, Koch suckers.”
Devin Martin reports:
A friend of mine who works for Koch Industries recently forwarded me some corporate propaganda from his boss, Charles Koch. First, I have to say that based on what has been forwarded to me over the years, Koch Industries has to be the most blatantly propagandist corporation I’ve ever seen. For anybody who sympathizes with Koch’s Tea Party organization and libertarian views in general, any accusations of left-wing agendas on the part of NPR or any other organization would seem to be simply the pot calling the kettle black.
It’s really quite remarkable what tens of thousands of Koch employees put up with on a regular basis. But, then, I guess the old adage about how easy it is to make somebody believe something when his paycheck depends on it still applies.
neural epicenters
For fifty years, we have bombarded our children with commercials disguised as programs and with endless displays of violence and sexual exploitation. We are nearly alone in the democratic world in not providing our candidates with public-service television time. Instead we make them buy it—and so money consumes and corrupts our political discourse.
reasons to not buy a home
James Altucher:
“I want to fill a bathtub with all the dollar bills I would’ve used as a downpayment on a house.
“I want to bathe in that bathtub. I’m going to do that later today in fact.”
Why buy a house?
Lets spell out very clearly why the myth of homeownership became religion in the United States. Its because corporations didn’t want their employees to have many job choices. So they encouraged them to own homes. So they can’t move away and get new jobs.
Job salaries is a function of supply and demand. If you can’t move, then your supply of jobs is low. You can’t argue the reverse, since new adults are always competing with you.
the cosmonaut will die
As low-level employees crawl through waves of radiation, the execs and shareholders escape as usual. What would be different if our class system required personal consequences?
They are contract workers getting about 9,000 yen per day [$13.90 per hour]. They move from one nuclear plant to other in medium term contracts. They had probably looked upon assignment to the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant as another routine job.
The 180 workers deployed in 2-hour shifts to get control over truant radioactivity in Fukushima’s 6 nuclear reactors have been battling for a week.
Combined with their previous work, they may well have become exposed to high radiation by now. Five have died so far from explosions, two are missing and 22 have been injured.
There are times when radiation soars, as on Tuesday, and the workers retreat into safe zones. Then they are back again.
The story begins around 1967, when Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, decided to stage a spectacular midspace rendezvous between two Soviet spaceships.
It would be, Brezhnev hoped, a Soviet triumph on the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution. Brezhnev made it very clear he wanted this to happen.
Senior technicians had inspected the Soyuz 1 and had found 203 structural problems — serious problems that would make this machine dangerous to navigate in space.
credulity alert
Reactor updates here. I think this wide-eyed little fella asks the right questions.
front-line neurology
Our society has age.
Stats from one embedded non-profit say:
There are nearly 15 million Alzheimer’s and dementia caregivers.
That’s 17 billion hours of unpaid care valued at $202 billion.
Alzheimer’s and dementia caregivers had $7.9 billion in additional health care costs in 2010.
More than 60 percent of family caregivers report high levels of stress because of the prolonged duration of caregiving and 33 percent report symptoms of depression. Try Caregiver.com
tip bending
The Tokyo Tower broadcasts radio and television. [wiki]
250 miles from the epicenter, the extreme sway bent its tip !
cat food economics
In Our Plutocracy, the discussion turns to Social Security and Teachers. “You’ve got to cut back government spending and the Republicans will run on this platform….”
dozens accused
One city. Grand jury names dozens of clergymen accused of paedophilia.
Bribes of billions uncounted. City after city, country after country, blood of abuse.
I shrink to my soul.
bell not lost we
the right is winning on wrong
1) Tax cuts would have to generate an unrealistic amount of economic growth to boost revenues enough to fully offset their cost.
2) Tax cuts might produce very little – if any – economic growth and, consequently, little to no additional revenues.
3) Revenues lost due to tax cuts would eventually require spending reductions, which would pull dollars out of the economy, reducing the benefits to the economy from tax cuts. [pdf link]
Full-time Budgeteer Jean Ross also points out:
1) State and local taxes are not key factors in determining where companies do business.
2) All state and local taxes combined represent a tiny share of business costs.
3) Most USA business pay little or no state income tax.
Please linger a moment on Jean’s portrait. Missouri has its straw, but when is the last time you’ve seen a better askance?
horizonomics
Ah ha, food inflation’s distant cure?
“With proper investment in agriculture, technical innovation and infrastructure for food processing, India could well become the food basket of the world in the next two decades.”
Very strong set of words, no?
Not a statement you will likely see again. Is it true?
reconciling cheese
1) Across the board humanity is at risk of losing the fruits of hard fought battles for human advancement. Over the past 300 years progressive and liberal thought and action have largely ended monarchy, slavery, and achieved equality, human rights and voting rights for much of the world.
2) Globally we are all witnessing political and social implications of collapsing ecosystems, resource scarcity and economic inequities.
3) In the United States some 400 individuals possess more wealth than the 155 million Americans in the bottom half.
the we party
The powers-that-be (in both parties) should see a rainbow force coming together:
…organized workers, business leaders, veterans, students and youth, faith leaders, civil rights fighters, women’s rights champions, immigrant rights defenders, LGBTQ stalwarts, environmentalists, academics, artists, celebrities, community activists, elected officials and more—all standing up for what’s right.
Defending—and Defining—the American Dream
knee-deep in chest-high
Utility bills got you down? Empathize a few moments with these off-grid kids in Alaska:
Last fall we put up several piles of firewood for the winter.
This system worked fairly well when 1) the snow on the trail wasn’t past the truck running boards, 2) we still had birch in the pile, and 3) the piles weren’t buried beneath 4 feet of snow and ice.
…chucking frozen 50 lb logs when it’s below freezing and… they honestly did not burn.
Seriously, we’re talking completely fire retardant wood. Even when we split it down into almost kindling size they never really made flame or produced any heat… leaving us cold and waiting 3+ hours for the kettle to boil…
to govern torture and spying
On MetaFilter, users share alarm:
Protestors have found torture devices that confirm the stories of Egyptians tortured by the security services, evidence of massive state surveillance, and even a room full of sex tapes for blackmailing famous people…
Among the secret papers published thus far, there is software and training to hack into Yahoo, GoogleMail and Hotmail mailboxes, record Skype calls, and spy on people through their laptops’ built-in microphone and camera…
sick vomit puke nuts
“He was always talking about how much power he had,” she said, “how he liked being able to write someone a ticket just for looking at him funny.” Then, one day, he raped her.
Our prisons !
Incidents of sexual abuse may be as high as 25 per hour !
standing in the way
The best investment a company can make?
Try lobbying. Returns can exceed 20,000 percent.
What’s standing in the way of democracy might just be politics — parties, Congress, lobbyists, the whole glad-handing, schmoozeful K-street shebang, which seems to exist mostly to subvert the will of human people, and replace it with the wishes of corporate ‘people’.
Is prosperity being restricted by sluggish dinosaur institutions?
“It’s a world where yesterday’s tired industrial age assumptions and practices have been thoroughly challenged, and found wanting — and yet they live on, like weeds”
the starting point
Or consider Steve From Virginia at his blog Economic Undertow:
Be ready for the long haul. Times will be tough… then they will get worse.
Ours is a generational challenge, then a human existential challenge.
Nothing is amenable to five-year plans. Start thinking 500 year plans. We won’t escape our tragic limitations until we start making realistic 5,000 year plans.
we always restrain power
The Guardian is admittedly a liberal news organization, but in no way is it to be considered politically radical in its opinions.
It’s front page lede:
Manning ‘forced to sleep naked’
WikiLeaks suspect made to relinquish boxer shorts for about seven hours due to ‘situationally driven’ event’.
It’s comment:
Bradley Manning and the stench of US hypocrisy
The US condemns human rights abuses abroad yet appears to be allowing the psychological torture of Bradley Manning.
I assert that the civilian is an order of magnitude more powerful than the militian but we do not live in a time of these.