The Volunteer Opinion Collector
-------------------------
3/14/2002


Original text and editing by:
A G Kaiser
email to
agkaiser1@gmail,com
"A good slave works for food alone."

Q of the week:
Q: Is the greed of politicians, and those who own them, a deliberate conspiracy to cause the extinction of higher animals, perhaps including humans?
A: I must answer that with another question. Do you care whether your killer acted maliciously or stupidly?



Volume II Issue 4:
Distractions:
       ©Copyright 1998 Greg Kaiser
   A downsizing is in progress. Costs must be cut. It's the way to attract wall street attention and get the stock price up. That's what the owners pay the CEO to do; what makes his stock options so valuable. But who should be marked for culling. It can't be one of the fraternity brothers. It doesn't matter which fraternity they're all good old boys. Even if many of them are alcoholics, incompetents and non-contributors to the corporation, they will be protected. They are dead weight but born lucky.
   You on the other hand are a social drinker, hard working, never sick and a skilled producer. But you don't have good connections. You'll be the last to know. That's how it starts. The word leaks out from the top. People start treating you differently. You may not know what's going on. You'll start feeling depressed and won't be able to work as efficiently. Maybe you'll start drinking more than usual. Now they've started to get a real case on you. If you confront them they'll tell you you're paranoid and have one more reason to get rid of you. Maybe you'll believe them and give them some hard evidence by visiting a company psychologist. By the time you get to the soup kitchen you'll be convinced of your utter worthlessness. But you needn't worry about that for too long a time.
   The average homeless person survives three to five years on the street. Shelters provide exposure to athlete's foot, body lice, drug resistant TB, AIDS and peers who will teach you the benefits of substance abuse, violence and other life shortening occupations. I used to wonder what happened to people after their Workmen's Comp. ran out and they dropped from the count of the unemployed. Is this corporate amerika's solution to over population?


   I wrote that four years ago and it was briefly exposed at this web site. What has changed since 1998?
   CEOs are still getting rich by reducing our real incomes, forcing us to go deeper and deeper into debt to maintain our lifestyles. They have undoubtedly invented some new betrayals and frauds to expand their repertoire but, as Enron is the rule not the exception, we know they are still fattening on our life's blood.
   Some of you, no doubt, think the service economy is beneficial to you. How much credit card debt do you carry? Do you have second and maybe third mortgages? How much of your vehicle(s) do you actually own? Most of you should realize that abstract economy is making something from nothing. Nothing but imagination is what it starts with and nothing is what you'll have in the end.

Politics:
Environment:
   Eric Schaefer, of the Environmental Protection Agency, resigned to protest the Bush Administration's interference, on the behalf of polluters, in Clean Air Act court cases brought by the government. Eric indicated that the attempt to stop the poisoning of the atmosphere is being undermined. He reported that he was being told: W's Clear Skies Proposal will deal with the toxins later and in a less costly way. Eric reflected that we need to stop SO2 and particulate pollution now to save billions in medical expenses for bronchitis and asthma etc. He didn't mention lung cancer.
   No one wants to admit that the rising rates of killer lung and skin ailments are due to lax enforcement of existing laws exacerbated by lengthy litigation deliberately prolonged by corporate bio/eco-terrorists. The Bush regime harbors, supports, aids and abets the eco, bio and chemical poisoning [of Americans] by their evil corporate masters.
   Christina Todd Whitman, head of the EPA, responded by attacking Eric's motivation. He told us over a month ago he was leaving. It's not sudden. The Clear Skies Proposal will do a better job and be less costly. We'll spend the money directly on cleaning the environment instead of wasting it on court cases. When challenged that the proposal, which is not yet in place, must delay the process, she "double-speaked". We'll continue to pursue cases under the CAA. She denied undermining existing cases.
   The ironically named [because it obscures the issue] Clear Skies Proposal will cause billions of dollars of our money to be spent both publicly and privately to clean up the poisons spread by corporate killers and to treat our pollution related diseases. If enacted, the new law will save millions or more for the environmental/economic terrorists. This isn't a novel form of corporate welfare, designed to give tax money to the elite who pay no taxes. It's merely a variation on a theme. But what purpose does the Bush Administration serve in all things?
   To answer my own rhetorical question, W. serves the satisfaction of the insatiable greed of the masters. From the "Clear Skies" will come a rain of our tax money in the form of public clean up of private pollution. The corporate gangsters dump poisons in order to increase the profits of their foul businesses. If we ask why should we pay, we will be told it is our responsibility because we succumbed to brain numbing advertising and bought the products they irresponsibly make. This will be true even when the product, such as energy, is one that has become a literal necessity of survival.
   Aiding and abetting the poisonous polluters of the environment in which our children must grow, is only one battle in Mr. Bush's war against life... and for the further enrichment of the elite. The privatization of social security investment is another. It will be so much easier for the rich to get their claws on our retirement investments when they can simply harvest that money during the cyclic market downturns. No one has caught on to this trick in 150 years. It's a sure thing.

Economy:
   What is the reality of the economy?
   The economy was and is the means by which groups of humans survive on the Planet Earth. In America, prior to the service economy, there was sufficient production to supply the needs of all, including a growing number of non-producing managers, bankers, brokers, lawyers and the most purely parasitic of all: capitalist plutocrats, who have lived by money alone and have done no real or even abstract [imaginary] work.
   The capitalist plutocracy has evolved from the free market economy and has ultimately choked its predecessor to death. Ironically, the process has given rebirth to a kind of feudal aristocracy that was the antecedent of all European cultures of the past 1000 years. They are no longer a landed gentry but their spirit lives on in the corpus of capitalism... a kind of possession.
   The service economy began with the abstraction, the thought, the description in words of a system. When completely realized, it will have replaced an economy in which material goods were produced at home and purchased with the wages paid to the producers. Twenty years ago, there was still sufficient production to supply the needs of all. But the supplanting theory has failed to keep its promise of plenty, except to a fortunate few plutocrats and their most trusted lackeys, the CEOs and politicians. I can't but believe such to have been the intention with which they started this inhuman experiment.
   As a result of the realization of a theoretical mechanism of plundering, the remainder of us have only mounting debt or losses of livelihood, home and ultimately life... to look toward. The medical service we can afford is declining for most of us. So it is with the quality of all that we buy, even the most basic commodity, the food that keeps us alive. This is the world of humanity we have allowed to be created by the unbridled greed of a few. Divining just how the service economy has served to further this treasonous betrayal of America and how it will play out from here, could be left as an exercise for the student of reality. But I'll give you a hint: think about how the masters might live, after those of us who make [and are] their tools, grow their food and fight their wars have starved to death... Are they really so short sighted?

Editorial Column:
   The Clear Skies Proposal should be called the Clear Sailing Act. It is so typical of conservatives to offer words, lying, obfuscating words at that, instead of real solutions for serious problems, that comment beyond this simple mention hardly seems necessary. But if polls and media reporting still reflect a little of reality, there are many among us who are taken in by the fraudulent words and acts of the con men we call leaders...
   W.'s trash talk about nuclear weapons use and an axis of evil may not be founded in stupidity as I've believed all this time. Perhaps it is deliberate distraction from the economic and bio terror being committed against the American people by his malignant masters. Is George really as dumb as he appears to be?

   Not many of us could live if the systems on which we've become dependent in the past 150 years, suddenly went away. Few of us will live anyway, if we allow our livelihood to remain in the control of the greedy, irresponsible economic elite. In any case, a vote of confidence for politicians and businessmen is tantamount to freely choosing mass suicide. Sound paranoid?
   The facts are: their environmental, economic and foreign policies threaten our existence. It only remains to be determined whether they are acting from blind, stupid greed alone, towards destruction, or working with cynical insensitivity to eliminate us and save themselves. Ultimately the dead have no preferences, so why am I bothering with this.
   I don't know why it easier to ask people to save their own lives when it can be shown their potential killer is acting with deliberate malice. And the truth is: I don't know whether the elite act stupidly from greed alone, unaware of the hazards, or if they have a plan to save themselves. I only know for sure that capitalism is no longer viable. It has become a failed strategy for the survival of the human race. Even the capitalists will die if they keep to their course. So let's look to where we're going. Then we can try decide the innocence or guilt of our killers.
   The horrible irony is: the money that the elite are killing us to have for themselves will have no value if there is no one to produce material goods. If the people who make things, grow food and transport commodities all die, there will be nothing for money to buy.
   OK, so the products are being produced out of the country. Does that then mean that the service economy is a transition to a cheaper labor force? Will we still be needed for anything in a few years? Can our managerial services be replaced by computers? Can transportation of goods be handled more efficiently by robot vehicles? Is any such technology under development or evolving in that direction? Will the elite be able to clone a few scientists, engineers and technicians to tend their utopian machines? How will they dispense with the rest of us?
   There is no hope in philosophy and morality. They have been reduced to self serving rationalization by the wealthy elite. No amount of words can change the material reality of economic terrorism. If we replace this system with a sicker one, its ills will be more obvious and easier to heal. The only relevant symptom of our cultural disease is the material reality of economic servitude.
   The price to be paid for the continued maintenance of the abstract economy of the ruling elite is the impoverishment and probable death of many humans, including most Americans. That is true with or without the paranoid nightmare scenario of automatic production envisioned above. The middle class think they share in the illusory profits of the service economy but all they really have is a mountain of enslaving debt and the gut eating, life shortening stress of worry that they will fail to please the masters and so lose their positions. Wake up, suckers!

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Greg Kaiser

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