Showing posts with label economic collapse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic collapse. Show all posts
January 21, 2009
October 2, 2008
August 25, 2008
Freedom is Golden
Central Planning is sold to a hopeful people as a way to solve societal problems, to right wrongs, and bring about perfect justice and equality. Central Planning promises you everything you are entitled to. As a bonus, goods and services produced by others are added to the list of commodities that everyone has a "right" to. Suddenly everyone is entitled to healthcare, housing, education, food, et cetera. It might sound nice that the state will magically provide all these wonderful things, but these rosy promises mask a dehumanizing, ugly reality. The other side of these entitlements is that now the doctor, the builder, the teacher, the farmer are slaves to the all-powerful state. No longer do they serve patients, students, or customers. They work in complete obedience to the state, their only customer.
Central planning will tell you that you are entitled to many things. Liberty tells you that you are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; to whatever you earn, and nothing that you don't. While it may seem harsh to some, we must look to basic economic truths and to history to see which model is cruel and which model is kind.
The truth is that central planning cannot provide for economic success like freedom can. Central planning makes promises it cannot possibly keep. We live in a world of unlimited wants and limited resources. If you put a massive and powerful government in charge of distributing those resources, it is not a surprise that government and those in bed with government are first in line for those resources. The poor and the middle class – the most hopeful and trusting – are hurt the most, as the state always underestimates their needs and overestimates their ability to pay taxes and absorb inflation.
the rest
August 14, 2008
Facebook: Making Slavery Socially Acceptable
I'm surprised that myspace (read: Rupert Murdoch) didn't beat them to it.
thanks to FTL for the head up, and to blog of bile for making the connection available.
pound it up sideways, Faceplant. have fun with that lawsuit.
August 14, 2008 (New York, NY) – ServiceNation, a diverse new coalition of more than 100 organizations dedicated to expanding voluntary community and national service opportunities, today announced that it has selected Facebook as its lead social media partner.
The partnership with Facebook will support ServiceNation’s effort to build a national, grassroots movement of Americans who volunteer, share service experiences, and build community around the idea that citizen service can help transform our democracy. ServiceNation aims to elevate the ideal of voluntary service as a core element of citizenship, and the coalition is targeting specific social problems with proven service strategies (http://www.servicenation.org).
Facebook will support ServiceNation and the upcoming ServiceNation Summit with a number of key resources, including technical expertise and advertising. Facebook will help ServiceNation build its presence on Facebook, create awareness and community through the use of Facebook’s tools, and engage Facebook users in a number of critical ServiceNation campaign initiatives.
“Facebook is already a place where people are acting on their interests and ideals, connecting with each other and sharing information that can lead to meaningful change,” said Elliot Schrage, Vice President, Global Communications and Public Policy, Facebook. “Through this partnership with ServiceNation we can be part of an historic effort to inspire Americans to act together to get more directly involved in and connected to their real-life communities.”
“Facebook has itself made history by helping millions across the world to come together by connecting and communicating in an easy to use, state-of-the-art online environment,” said Michael Brown, CEO of City Year, one of four organizations (along with Be the Change, Inc., Civic Enterprises, and Points Of Light Institute) that did the initial work to lead non-profit organizers of the ServiceNation coalition together. “Using Facebook’s highly-regarded organizing tools, we hope to channel the idealism and energy of our citizens into real-world action that can promote the ideal of voluntary service.”
The ServiceNation campaign will kick-off with a September 11th Presidential Candidates Forum on citizenship and service, featuring Sen. John McCain (Sen. Obama has also been invited) and moderated by TIME Magazine Managing Editor Richard Stengel. The second day of the ServiceNation Summit will include distinguished leaders from American business, government, and leading non-profit institutions including New York Governor David Paterson, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Caroline Kennedy, Alma Powell of America’s Promise Alliance, Vartan Gregorian of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Bill Novelli, CEO of AARP, and Laysha Ward, President, Community Relations and Target Foundation.
The Summit is convened and underwritten by a grant from Carnegie Corporation, and presented by TIME, AARP and Target. The keynote address will be delivered by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who earlier this year became the first governor to create a cabinet post dedicated to service and volunteering.
The ultimate vision of ServiceNation is an America in which, by 2020, 100 million citizens will volunteer time in schools, workplaces, and faith-based and community institutions each and every year (up from 61 million today), and that increasing numbers of Americans annually will commit a year of their lives to national service.
To that end, the Summit will endorse a Declaration of Service that all Americans will be able to sign—in person or online—to declare their support for the idea that citizen service can strengthen our communities, unite and engage Americans in shared sacrifice, and help build a better future. And two weeks after the Summit, on Sept. 27, ServiceNation will stage a national Day of Action where tens of thousands of Americans will gather at hundreds of events across the country to celebrate the power and potential of citizen service. ServiceNation will use Facebook as a key tool to organize and drive both these initiatives.
ServiceNation’s bipartisan Summit Leadership Council includes mayors, governors, former senators and leaders from every sector of American society (full list is available at http://tinyurl.com/617vju). Major supporters of ServiceNation, in addition to AARP, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Target, and TIME, include the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, The Home Depot Foundation, Bank of America, Case Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, and James J. Jensen, the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, and Goldman Sachs.
thanks to FTL for the head up, and to blog of bile for making the connection available.
pound it up sideways, Faceplant. have fun with that lawsuit.
Facebook and its advertising partners are facing a federal class action lawsuit targeting its Beacon program launched last fall, which alleges that Facebook violated federal wiretap law when it began monitoring and publishing what Facebook users were doing on sites like Blockbuster.com and Zappos.com.
August 3, 2008
The Bogus Intel Game - Rated: PG
as explained by Philip Giraldi,
more lies for more war. who's your messiah now...
Some intel types are beginning to express concerns that the Israelis might do something completely crazy to get the US involved. There are a number of possible “false flag” scenarios in which the Israelis could insert a commando team in the Persian Gulf or use some of their people inside Iraq to stage an incident that they will make to look Iranian, either by employing Iranian weapons or by leaving a communications footprint that points to Tehran’s involvement.
The unstated premise for Morris's rant is the assumption that only Israel can be trusted to have nuclear weapons in the Middle East and that Israel has the right to act preemptively if any other country has the temerity to seek to obtain weapons of its own. While this is a formula that would guarantee Israeli regional supremacy it is a policy that is far from reassuring for Tel Aviv's neighbors, most of whom have been on the receiving end of Israel's conceit that it can strike whenever and wherever it wishes. Being victimized by a paranoid Israeli regime is a virtual guarantee that the country that has been assaulted will seek a "weapon of mass destruction" to deter such attacks, ironically providing less security for the Israelis rather than more.
more lies for more war. who's your messiah now...
July 31, 2008
Another federal government shutdown threat
one promise you can be sure they will never keep.
the fantasy continues at The Hill
The prospect of a September government shutdown loomed over the Capitol on Wednesday as the two parties fought over rising energy prices.
It’s a fight some members of either party are willing to have, but others worry about who will get blamed for a repeat of the 1995 shutdown that President Clinton pinned on a Republican Congress.
the fantasy continues at The Hill
July 22, 2008
the coming globalized meltdown?
even though there are countless indicators, of which there are even more speculations heaped on top of even more tales of nigh espousing the perils of the empire's fraudulent dollar and it's potential to drag the entire global economic fractional reserve banking scam down with it, the federal poster boys of dutiful servitude continue to attempt to pacify the pliant public with their magic tricks.
what to do... what to do? tried the game show giveaway twice and the results speak for themselves. maybe someone will call in the fixers?
wouldn't hold my breath on that one, as there are far too many that, continually ignoring the most crippling effectuate in the form of two illegal nation-building occupations and the accompanying sabre rattling for more of the same, have no realistic idea of who threatens them the most.
It feels like the summer of 1931. The world's two biggest financial institutions have had a heart attack. The global currency system is breaking down. The policy doctrines that got us into this mess are bankrupt. No world leader seems able to discern the problem, let alone forge a solution.
The International Monetary Fund has abdicated into schizophrenia. It has upgraded its 2008 world forecast from 3.7pc to 4.1pc growth, whilst warning of a "chance of a global recession". Plainly, the IMF cannot or will not offer any useful insights.
Its "mean-reversion" model misses the entire point of this crisis, which is that central banks have pushed debt to fatal levels by holding interest too low for a generation, and now the chickens have come home to roost. True "mean-reversion" would imply debt deflation on such a scale that would, if abrupt, threaten democracy.
The risk is that these same central banks will commit a fresh error, this time overreacting to the oil spike. The European Central Bank has raised rates, warning of a 1970s wage-price spiral. Fixated on the rear-view mirror, it is not looking through the windscreen.
what to do... what to do? tried the game show giveaway twice and the results speak for themselves. maybe someone will call in the fixers?
If there's something weird in the financial world, who you gonna call? Goldman Sachs.
The US government, involved in a firefight against the conflagration in the credit markets, is calling in another crisis-buster from the illustrious investment bank, this time Goldman's most senior banker to finance industry clients, Ken Wilson.
And so with this appointment, the Goldman Sachs diaspora grows a little bit more influential. It is an old-boy network that has created a revolving door between the firm and public office, greased by the mountains of money the company is generating even today, as its peers buckle and fall.
Almost whatever the country, you can find Goldman Sachs veterans in positions of pivotal power.
wouldn't hold my breath on that one, as there are far too many that, continually ignoring the most crippling effectuate in the form of two illegal nation-building occupations and the accompanying sabre rattling for more of the same, have no realistic idea of who threatens them the most.
Nukes or no nukes, Iran threatens me less than the Fed, Congress, the US media or the president.
When the history of the late, great nation known as America is written, our own homegrown jackals will be rightly blamed for the destruction. Forgotten will be the nineteen G-string jihadists with their Korans and boxcutters. If the history books are honest and the historians adroit, the blame will lie less with the Taliban and more with the Ivy League educated in their tailored suits and power ties.
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