I mention all of this after reading this article, and hearing various talking heads refer to Madoff's Ponzi Scheme as the biggest in history. I know it is wrong to call things out for what they are, and it is noway to get ahead in life, but I use this as my outlet to say what I really think. Why are we all swallowing this tripe? To say this is the biggest Ponzi Scheme ever is to be just plain gullible. Those of you who want to read it are more than welcome, and those who don't agree with me will probably never care to read it.
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Ok, I believe we should spend money on education, but what happens when the government wants to tightly control what students learn? As for health, the best market is an open market. I imagine if we got rid of health insurance companies things would work even better. I recently was rear ended in a car wreck. The first thing the body shop asked me is, "Who is paying for this?" That single question alone let me immediately know that something is terribly wrong with the system in place. Now the quote to fix my car is probably going to be more than it would have been if I was paying. Why? Because who cares if the body shop is screwing over a faceless insurance company? I am not going to fight it because it is not my fight. The insurance company is just going to try to screw me directly, so the high estimate to fix my car stays, and the insurance company will just pass through the inflated cost to fix my car to all of their customers in the way of higher premiums.
If we just get rid of all of it then costs would go down, corruption would go down, the system would function more efficiently.
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from Urban Survival...
Unemployment Building
The expectation was that this week's un employment numbers would come in with just 640,000 jobless added to the rolls last week. We should be so lucky:
"In the week ending March 7, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 654,000, an increase of 9,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 645,000. The 4-week moving average was 650,000, an increase of 6,750 from the previous week's revised average of 643,250.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.0 percent for the week ending Feb. 28, an increase of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 3.8 percent.
The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Feb. 28 was 5,317,000, an increase of 193,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 5,124,000. The 4-week moving average was 5,139,750, an increase of 124,250 from the preceding week's revised average of 5,015,500.
The fiscal year-to-date average for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment for all programs is 4.533 million. "
Since I got the monthly unemployment dart right at 8.1% last month, I think this month's dart will hit about (hold on while I throw it...) there....8.4%...we'll see, huh?
Markets
Got my mid-session reversal on Wednesday, but the Dow still ended up a couple of points. Futures just a shade off this morning, but who knows how much is the PPT working the indices behind the scene? Most of Europe is in the red this morning...
Percentage Plays
I'm starting to see stories popping up all over the place about how governments at nearly all levels and planning to increase their percentages taken by taxes of this sort, or that. Not to start off the day on the wrong foot here, but WTF?
The Hamburg, NY Sun reports that the village of Hamburg is looking at a 2.5% property tax hike.
Philadelphia's mayor is floating a 17 percent property tax there. New Castle County, Delaware is looking at the same problem.
Care to make a bet that property taxes won't be going down as fast as property values? That's because things like time-on-the-market and houses in foreclosure don't figure in to how property taxes are figured.
But, it seems to me that if you had a half-million dollar home 3-years ago, that has dropped to being a $375,000 home in today's market, that your property taxes oughta go down accordingly.
of course, they won't: Governments are always fast to grow and slow to get their hand out of your pocket when times get rough. Even, arguably, going to far as to put their hand in deeper on the theory that 'more government' will fix things.
If a government wants a bigger percentage than they were getting at the height of World War II, when Tax Freedom Day was April 4, seems to me someone ought to stand up and say something about it. Especially when Tax Freedom Day was April 23 in 2008 and I wouldn't be surprised to see it move into May again in 2009...something that hasn't happened since 1999 and 2000.
Won't happen, of course. Frogs in constantly warming water tend not to jump out until it's too late.
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Speaking of which: You saw that foreclosures were up 30% in February? And there are tons and gobs more to come. For now, Banks don't have much incentive to clear those homes off their balance sheets that they've taken back. The thinking in most REO (real estate owned) departments seems to be "If we just hold out a while longer....maybe we can get higher prices..." Denial is such a fine thing, especially when bottom-picking has become a national sport and updated versions of "Good times are just ahead..." bombard us from the MSM.
The good news is that if they did clear their accounts, there'd be way more homes on the market. The bad news is, there's tons and gobs in the pipeline yet to come.
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This portion is a little out there, and the Urban Survival author is clearly getting on a rant, but I believe he is probably not too far off if you just look at the cronological order of events. I am not saying all of this will happen in our life times I am just saying this is what happens next.
Coping: And the Next Shortage Is...
Since we were able to tell you about the impending ammunition shortage about three years ahead of its arrival, you'll no doubt have noticed that I am really ragging on folks to get - plant - and begin harvesting their own seed supplies for future food crops from open-pollinated, heritage (non-genetically modified) vegetable seeds.
So it was very much on point that this email arrived today:
"If you and your family plan to start growing vegetables and fruit for your consumption or for sale to your neighbors as the food supply available at the supermarkets begins to dwindle and prices increase in the days and years ago, it would be prudent to buy a large supply of open pollinated seed now, before these seeds become is short supply.
The reader was kind enough to send a link to a story headlined "The Multiple Ways Monsanto is putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach."
The linked story is doubly important because of two stories which are making MSM headlines headlines this morning: The first deals with how scientists think they will be able to create artificial life in the laboratory within five years, while the second advises us that yet one-more-worry for the year 2012 is that the world's population will click over to 7-billion. Both stories deserve special emphasis and a little head-space.
In the case of the genetically modified seed story, my problem with those companies which presently hold 'patents' on particular seeds is that they have no sense of morality and there has been woefully inadequate study of the environmental impacts of such seed. I'm sure you're aware of the Canadian farmer who had to pay damages to a chemical farming outfit because some genetically modified canola seeds from a neighboring farm blew into his field. The chemmie-company wanted dough, while the farmer took the position that it was pollution, not a lottery ticket to give the chemmie-boyz a piece of the action. But the farmer lost. It took from 1999 to 2008 and a battle in the Canadian Supreme Court before Percy Schmeiser won on appeal.
On the other hand, the UN Convention of Biodiversity has been pushing toward a ban of so-called 'terminator seed technology' and at the core of that monstrosity are seeds which would only live once and yield nothing edible in future crops. Sort of like fields of eunuchs.
Nevertheless, the seed companies are continuing to work both sides of the street. On tyhe one hand they are working on technologies which really can increase productivity under certain conditions for this veggie or that gain. The problem is that Ma Nature knows one hell of a lot more about running the world than does any number of PhD's the profit-driven boards of such outfits can hire.
In my recent readings of such books as Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)
The bottom line here? Just like I told you a couple of years ago that few things would have 'collector' or 'investment value' like ammunition and guns, and you see what's happening to price and availability on this front? So too, I expect that heritage/open pollinated seeds will be of increasingly high value.
Not that it will stop ThePowersThatBe from trying to put a stranglehold on the very food you eat, of course: It won't.
The problem which always faces those at the top of the socioeconomic heap is that they always maintain control of society through some pretty basic tools: They steal control of the money supply (a slow-motion process that started with the takeover via the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, or they try to control the availability of food, and as we know from the recent Iraqi experience, if people don't use government-issued seeds there these days, they can be jailed.
And worse, of course is the presently pending disaster called HR 875 and S 425 which would essentially end farmer's markets and small farming completely. Go watch this video if you have the bandwidth - less than 2-minutes worth. It's how the chemmie-food lobby is making sure that just in case some upstart like me actually puts together a case that GMO-food is really a form of pollution more dangerous than, say, fluorocarbons (which is well may be) they will have another way to control the food supply: By making all but their own sources illegal.
Of course, the design pattern in this has been around for years. That's why the liquor lobbies have been so down on the growing and sale of pot. While a lot of science says that someone who's partly baked can drive a car better than someone who blows a 'two-oh' on the Breathalyzer, the problem for the PTB is that they may not be getting their pound of flesh on pot which has about zero in the ways of barriers to entry for competition.
So that's why this morning's warning about the collector/investor value of GMO seeds is so important: In order to have a society which has a high level of resilience to catastrophes other than the man-made variety, having things like GMO seeds, many bricks of .22 ammo, maybe even some 7.62 X 39 and a set of good hand tools are all so important to glom onto for the PTB.
A population that is well-fed, well-armed, and Constitution following is just not the easiest thing to rule if you're trying to transition to a socialist-centrally governed model of the world. It's like the PTN (and their shadow government minions) want all the power/authority benefits of a workable UN, but when the UN comes up on the side of smaller carbon footprints, or bio-diversity, well those things clearly need to be co-opted, which is how we come full-circle to beating the global warming drum loudly enough to kick off carbon-credit trading schemes and the like.
Think control and monetize...and you'll do just find if you ever get around the PTB. Thinking like them can also put you ahead of the game a fair bit.
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And that's the governance problem in a nutshell. As the old paradigm (cannibal corporatist globalism) collides with what Lessinger labels "responsible capitalists" and other call sustainable capitalism, we seem destined to see all kinds of frantic power-grabbing/control-freak kinds of thrashing about. Which is why banker bailouts and all manner of misnamed "patriot Acts" get slammed through CONgress without debate. Which means without dissent.
A few patriotic types (who actually read and live the Constitutional framework of the Founders) might ask: "Say, if no one reads the bills, isn't this 'taxation without representation'? And to carry the point one step further along, If a bill was passed by a previous generation, none of whom is alive today, shouldn't we have to reauthorize things like the Federal Reserve Act so that governance under our beloved Constitution is continuously renewed like it's supposed to be?
Well of course! But it's not likely to happen, even though it would make a dandy class-action lawsuit: Especially with recent, crystal-clear and undeniable, examples like passing the Bankster Bailout Bills or the Emergency Stimulus Bills without so much as anyone reading them. Sounds like taxation without representation to me. Oh, and what do you think those tea parties in places like Pennsylvania, Chicago, and California have been all about?
Of course, if you don't hear about them, or see them on teevee, it's not because they didn't happen: It's because the media is another tool of control used extremely effectively by the PTB and it's lobbyist cadre that pulls the strings of 'nominal government' on behalf of the real seat of power - the 'shadow government'.
Presumably, you know all this stuff, but it doesn't hurt now and then to slap ourselves smack in the face and wonder "What's to be done?"
Damn little, it turns out. You don't make progress by stepping on the 'tail of the beast' and getting all uppity about planning a "Second Revolution". We don't need to. It'll come along on it's own account without anyone firing a shot or doing anything else.
Because while folks like Kurzweil right about a dreamlike "Singularity" where invention will be instantaneous and we'll all be able to take the time to evolve into more spiritual beings" the track record of humans argues for the opposite. Kurzweil and other 'singularists' ignore that someone's gonna own those work-saving, instant-inventing machines. And they're going to exploit those who would seek to use them to they very limits of their power and authority, which need to be limited.
A much clearer vision of the "Singularity" comes from contemplating a world with an infinite number of lawyers, auditors, and police, enforcing an infinitely large set of rules, with worthless money at stake, and increasing less nutritious food.
History teaches us, if we take the time to read books like Joseph Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies" that complex systems eventually fail on their own when the marginal rate of return falls below zero for any particular group. Which is why we no longer bow down to the descendants of Genghis Khan, why we don't speak Mayan, and we don't write ancient Egyptian.
Militia? Paramilitary? No thanks. I'll just buy more seeds and put up more fencing, and watching the systemic instability from here in the East Texas outback. Guess I'm just a meat & potatoes kinda guy. But ya'll have fun. I'll be back later to pick up the pieces in, say, 2013.
Mine: Your Own Business?
Folks in the mining industry are all worked up over new legislation which, if adopted as proposed, would shut down "All mining in the US'. Yup, geniuses back in DC - and no need to read this one, either, huh?
So I will add a couple of gold pans to my stores here...
If we just get rid of all of it then costs would go down, corruption would go down, the system would function more efficiently.
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