Sunday, July 15, 2012

The case for maximum Lattitude "Iran"

     Revolution in Iran is probably not on the horizon. Although the students that led the revolution are a later generation, those who desire that are in a system that has acquired western intelligence skills. This makes organizing a revolution almost impossible. Those who survived the purge that the Khomeini have conducted through the decades are surrounded by people who are tied to the government.
     The mas sad has taught the need to keep things dark, so if Iran signals that it has nuclear capability it is because the Russians have allowed them to do so. A nuclear Iran can, only then, be on the horizon as Russia and Red China attempt to amass the power they wish to wield. The power to close down the oil lanes which will hold the west at their mercy.
      Iran and Iraq are the key to controlling the gulf. Once bitter enemies, Iran has gained an ally in Iraq because of the religious ties they hold in common. Little do they know of the sway that Russia and China will hold over them, Much as north Vietnam learned during the years the Vietnam War raged. They found China to be an unwelcome neighbor and Russia to be just as distasteful. Iran and Iraq would find that their oil would be the slave to Russian and China's whim and those whims would be, to control the world by withholding oil from the markets, creating another 1970 oil embargo that would never end, while they diverted oil and the profits of controlling it, to obtaining a stead fast grip on the flow of oil around the world, and there by forcing a show down over energy. One they think they can win with China's new Navy.
     This is only a very cursory assessment of the situation, but it demands consideration in respect to how to deal with Iran. Sanctions should be accompanied by the determination to use a wide latitude of responses to Iran's continued power expansion. Nothing should be off the table in respect to response, from covert  to military. Military doesn't mean all out war which would be stupidity, but a thought toward cooling off relations with Russia and China and more militaristic position by the U.S. toward them.

The County With No Mafia

Flag-map of New YorkFlag-map of New York (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Map of New York highlighting Oswego CountyMap of New York highlighting Oswego County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)TARAKHIL, AFGHANISTAN - SEPTEMBER 08:  America...TARAKHIL, AFGHANISTAN - SEPTEMBER 08: American project manager Gordan Timm looks over the U.S.-built 105MW Tarakhil Power Plant on September 8, 2011 in Tarakhil, Afghanistan, on the outskirts of Kabul. The $300 million USAID-funded plant has been criticized for the high price of the electricity it produces, mostly due to the exorbitant cost of transporting imported diesel fuel through Afghan war zones to operate the facility. Currently the plant runs at an average of 25 percent of capacity, only supplementing electricity for Kabul, which primarily uses cheaper imported power as well as hydroelectric power produced in Afghanistan. Proponents of the plant say that, although expensive, the Tarakhil plant helps provides energy independence for Afghanistan. Almost ten years after the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. government is spending some $2.5 billion in 2011 alone on development projects in Afghanistan. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)      When the second Nine mile Point plant was built there was an investigation of the cost over runs. The investigation was sparked by the opposition to the plant and the billions of dollars the actual cost of the plant was an the estimated cost. What I will call big power company meets Central New York corruption.
       One investigation discovered that many of the welds in the pipes of the plant were never xrayed as required by the nuclear regulatory required at the time. It derttermined that one xray had been done of one weld on one pipe and been submitted as the welds on all the pipes in the plant up to that point. This probably came out because someone was not payed off as is usually the case in these things.
     While doing the investigation it was reported that the mafia controlled the cement supply to the plant and that this had a huge impact on the cost of the cement and the availability of that cement. To this day no criminal investigation has publicly taken place in to those allegations and yet the nine mile plant stands and there is talk of building another in Oswego near it. Of course it should be stated that no county in Central New York has ever mentioned the mafia in the years before or since nine the nine mile plant was built, so perhaps organized crime hasn't found Central New york.
     Hopefuly, for the Company that is proposing the new plant, this was all just bluster, but one wonder where those billions of dollars in cost over runs went. We never got a real answer to that.
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Trying to be Switzerland

Switzerland has a great economy and it's banking sector is the key to that. Other countries have tried to be Switzerland, but it has always resulted in a train wreck. The most recent train wrecks have been Iceland and the U.S., but Europe is about to follow.
     People envy the Swiss economy, but they don't understand that it can't be translated to bigger countries who have large numbers of immigrants and natives, who don't have highly technical skills. The reason that everyone has to have that kind of expertise is that Switzerland's population is mainly that type of people and they simply don't allow people who don't have those kinds of skills to live there. Of coarse there are a small number of people there who are not, but Switzerland is expensive, so they have to be employed by the wealthy or supported by the needs of the wealthy. For instance, farming can be a lower skilled industry, because the wealthy don't really worry about food prices. They pay what it costs. But anyone who doesn't have demand for their skills simply can't afford to live in Switzerland. Still that doesn't stop people in other countries from the delusional belief that it can be done every where.
     For 4 decades the Republicans have tried to make the U.S. into Switzerland and it has resulted in worse and worse depressions. There is no such things as a bad recession. A bad recession is a depression and that is what we have now. If every economist was not owned by the government we would hear the truth about the state of the economy. Nevertheless. Republicans are deluded into thinking that people will do what is in their own interests economically and that simply isn't true. The drive to be top dog always causes people too take short cuts or take more risk than is prudent to get ahead. That is human nature and the reason why big corporations had boards of directors that answered to stock holders. Absent that accountability, corporations always crash and burn. The best example of this is Chase's latest fiasco. No CEO should survive losing 7 Billion dollars unless they are related to Jesus Christ. CEO's are not particularly bright they simply have good decision making skills and get good advice. They also get the inside scoop from their buddies when it counts and have deal making abilities. Most are anal retentive too.
     Still Bush 1 and Bush 2 the sequel both listened to some dumb ass who told them that the U.S. could be Switzerland if only we let people off their leashes. We see how that has worked. Thirty million have lost their Jobs. Mitt Romney's answer to that is that they will leave the country if we simply cut them off. Yes sir! You too can get ready to give up your citizenship if he wins, because he wants people with no money to leave. How do you like Paraguay?
    Too Hispanic for you. Well get your passport ready because the rich can buy their own services and that means you will be unemployed.
     The idea of having an economy based on Switzerland has been kicked around for decades and that is the political fight we are involved in. Do we whittle down our economy to the point that only the rich and their chosen can have opportunity in the U.S. and kick everyone else to the curb after they are no longer useful. That is how it was before Social Security and pensions. When you are no longer able to work, you get nothing and are left to die. Millions died that way, in the poor house, isolated,  without any life, or meaningful activities. This is no exaggeration either. Before unions people worked as many hours as the boss said and for no living wage. Vacations were for the rich. Their lives had meaning watching the rest of us work ourselves to death while they played. It's also the reason they went to hell, so if aunt Molly had millions don't expect to meet her in heaven, "just saying". You can't enslave people and go to heaven as Ebenezer discovered that. That is an aside.
     The question is, whether to shrink the population to the degree that a million people can be served by the rest of the population while they play and pretend to be royalty. The answer to most is hell no, but most don't know that they are voting away their citizenship yet. People are already retiring to Mexico to live a better life. The south has almost finished purging itself of the poorer people. Jobs are few there and people there simply can't afford to stay there. The kids there see no future at all and they have fallen in to hopelessness.
     That is the way you get to a Swiss economy. Unfortunately where do the rest of the U.S. citizens go. No where. Even the ghettos in the cities can't sustain themselves.
     The real question will be, when will the people no longer accept this as a given and turn on those who are trying to take away their lives. Americans have never gone down without a fight and even the rich can't afford to keep people in prison. That would especially be the case if they had to hire private armies to protect themselves from the rest of society and how would you stop IED's. The rich would be captive to their houses unable to use the roads. Is that the America they want. I think we lived those days when Dillinger and others were heroes. Of course in these days they are portrayed as cold and callous killers, but to the poor they were fighting against the wealthy who enslaved and kept others impoverished just like the Swiss economy would do here.
     There are a lot of guns out there too and when it's your choice to go to the poor house will you just give yours up? Americans are fighters. Is it back to the 30"s or the beginning of a revolution. We are at the tipping point. The aristocracy in France never saw it coming.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Dooms Day The Political Game

united states currency eye- IMG_7364_webunited states currency eye- IMG_7364_web (Photo credit: kevindean)Today I begin to reveal the real nature of U.S. politics and how the two parties conspired to drive the American economy off the cliff.
 Part I sets the stage for the manipulation of the economy by reducing competition to the point that it only existed on paper.
     Economists work for the government and they are taught by government economists, so they all follow the pack like sheep. When Clinton signed the NAFTA Treaty, collective bargaining in the U.S. began a spiral of death. That piece of legislation began the mass exodus of American jobs over seas and it was applauded by economists. In the decades that followed businesses were raped and union workers turned out the doors. That was preceded by the termination of usury laws that allowed banks unlimited power to charge higher and higher interest rates on houses, cars, and credit cards. Both parties supported these laws and conspired to keep the SEC from having enough staff to rein in Wall Street.
     The whole system was built on borrowed money and housing and using credit card debt as collateral. Republicans aided in the demise of production in the U.S. by allowing China to gain leverage over U.S. borrowing. They then aided companies in out sourcing by giving them deals. Further, Congress past laws that allowed the rich to avoid paying taxes, which reduced the motivations for companies and people to bring dollars into the U.S.
     Both parties took turns lobbying businesses to move over seas and it worked. American jobs went off a cliff in 2008 and continued to follow that trend through 2009.

     During the time the U.S. should have been building clean rooms, business and government decried free trade. Free Trade is just a euphemism for outsourcing.
     Other countries force car makers to pay 25% tariffs on our products, while we charge 2%.
     A total sell out. The pay off to congress is billions of dollars in work after they leave Political Office. In return they allow whole markets to go to other countries such as China. Congress knew about the problem and flooded china with trade deals, even as China's Government used U.S. dollars to build it's military might.
     Congress ignored the price fixing by the oil companies and continues to allow them to act like they are independent nations. A trillion dollar market is owned and controlled by 6 or 7 major companies who buy each others oil at inflated prices to jack up the price of oil simply, because they can. They export U.S. oil and buy more expensive crude and import it to the U.S. simply because they can. In the 50's they would have been taken over by the government, but ours has no teeth. It cowers and whimpers while our resources get sent out of our country, leaving us to pay more for foreign oil we don't need to import.
     Both parties take turns screwing the American public economically. Democrat or Republican nothing changes, because big money has bought them at day one. Jobs that would be here remain in other countries that won't buy our goods or in China's case pay for it to build a military capable of controlling the far east and making a war with China almost certain. It goal to do what Japan could not do, rule the Pacific and drive a wedge between the U.S. and it's pacific allies. The end game to spread its form of Communism throughout Asia and snapping up countries as the U.S. watches powerlessly.
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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Refs Throw Syracuse Game to Ohio State

In what seemed to be an obvious gambling scheme the refs took over the Syracuse Ohio State Game and made strategic calls to give Ohio State the game. Syracuse was helpless as they fouls were called more than two to one against them. Will an investigation follow, will the NCAA have the balls to look into their conduct.
      The refs neutered Syracuse's offense by decimating them with fouls early and often hitting 5 Syracuse players with 4 fouls and turning a blind eye to foul after foul by Ohio State. With no Offense left Syracuse did its best but the odds were to stiff to overcome and so the fix was in from the starting tap to the final whistle even as the Commissioner of the NCAA sat and watched mum, as Syracuse's coach pleaded to him for one call.
     Perhaps this was the NCAA's punishment for Syracuse's coach rebuking the press for questioning his coaching abilities. In any case, tonight basketball suffered a black eye no less significant than the Black Sox scandal in Chicago. This time it was not the players but the referees who shaped the NCAA tournament brackets. CBS soft sold the result, as always, knowing that the tournament has sway over their coverage rights. All in all a very disappointing display. College Basketball needs a a new Governing body, because the one they have has created a system that is biased against the athletes and the coaches, who do not garner as much respect as others.
      An example of this is making an obviously mediocre team like Duke a 2 seed in the NCAA after being blown out twice in one season by teams that didn't make the tournament or were bounced themselves. The ACC has become a dead zone for talented teams due too the bias referees show Duke and North Carolina. They should be paying Syracuse to join so they can gain at least a shadow of competitiveness in their league. Other conferences have been decimated by the same problems. Student athletes no longer want to play on, what is a predetermined loser team.
     Basketball has now gone the way of college football which is a farce. Predetermined teams are ranked and and the outcome  follows the rankings unless a tragic injury occurs. The facts is that colleges probably collude to recruit some kids and not others. March Madness is just about the gambling now and the billions of dollars it brings. Teams get home court advantage in the ACC since Raleigh has become what seems to be a permanent site. It would be highly unlikely to see a city like Cincinnati get to be a NCAA site much less the city of a mid major. With the weakness of the PAC 10 the furthest the NCAA goes now is the Midwest.
     As for the athletes, they are the pawns in big a money Ponzie scheme that forbids them to live above the poverty level. God forbid they should get a cut of the millions, that the schools are splitting and advertisers are sucking in, based on their ability to play a sport.
     I went away from football because of the inevitability of the results of the season and the lack of a real National Champion. I guess I will go away from college basketball now, as it has become a farce too. When hype means more than  the game it is time to turn the game off.
     Regardless of the scandals that hit Syracuse, the players on Syracuse should not haved suffered. The school should be fined if it found to have violated rules. The athletes shouldn't suffer.
     As for the cover ups, I have no doubt they exist in every college or University since the economics of sports is so crucial to those institutions. The win at all costs attitude pervades big time college sports. The NCAA rules seem to exist now to keep the athletes from sharing in the prophets, and not to keep them as amatures for the purpose of keeping money from influencing the high dollar sports. It is a laugh that colleges and Universities have decided to raise standards for the athletes educationally when they themselves have turned into intuitions of prostitution, profiting from student loans and rising tuition that bars kids access to a secondary education or robs them of the ability to pay to finish it. It is more sad that it turns kids into indentured servants to the banks and the government and prevents them from living debt free.
     I realize I have extrapolated from a basketball game to a much larger and broader area, but it is really the whole system that is corrupt and the basketball game is just the overtly public corruption that can be observed. Its just a very sad state of affairs in a big picture that has become even sadder.
     My advice to those stuck in that system is simply to not participate in it.
       What if every student in the whole country said I am taking next year off. What do you think would happen to the tuition rates and the interest on loans and the institutional power? It would fall that's what. Instead of students begging to get in, those institutions would be begging them to come back,. much as the credit card companies beg you to get a card if people cut theirs up and stop charging. Banks would beg if people pulled their money out and refused to participate in their system.
      Some uneducated people might think that I propose communism, but what i propose is simply being a good consumer. People should know if what they are buying has the value that it is priced at and if it doesn't they should simply decide not to purchase it. We wait for things to go on sale, but we don't wait for everything to go on sale. We need to wait for a sale on everything we use and buy. If you can't pay for it in your life time a thing has no value unless your kids will benefit. You can't leave an education to your kids, its impractical for them to wait til their 50 to get it and it doesn't work that way. In your life you'll pay more fees to the bank than you'll ever get in services. I suggest a post office box and postal orders instead. It doesn't pay interest but neither does the bank and you can probably trust the post office more than the bank.
                                            Think about it, why pay some one to hold your money for the month. Hell I would hold it for free. Would you hold someones money for free if you could use it for a while and give it to them when they want it? Why pay someone to save your money. True story a friend put 50 dollars in a savings account for a rainy day. When that rainy day came a few months later she went to the bank to get it. The account was empty. Why? Guess! The bank had charged a fee every month til it was cleaned out. Poof it was gone. It would have been safer buried in a box in the ground. People used to do that ya know. Just saying.


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Saturday, March 3, 2012

Medicare Fraud

     Is medicare fraud a problem that can be solved. I don't think Medicare Fraud can be eliminated because people with Medicare are trusting individuals. They don't think their doctor could be committing Medicare fraud because they don't have a problem with their doctor.
     Perhaps this is the biggest problem with Medicare fraud. Doctors who commit it are good at covering up their activities. They don't do it to everyone. They do it to people who, they believe, will not know, or those who have no voice. People who's relatives are likely to say that they are glad their relative is not suffering any more or those who's will say they lived a good long life and accept the persons passing.
     The targets for Medicare fraud are usually the disabled the infirm or the very old, much as it is for medicaid fraud. Usually the doctor is the one who gets charged, but make no mistake, there are many others who benefit from it knowingly who walk away Scott Free. Medicare and Medicaid fraud can not exist without people turnig a blind eye to it. They use it like an ATM and they are either letting people's conditions deteriorate so they can charge more for the conditions that develop or they are medicating people for things that are not necessary. Still some others are given pain killers rather than doing a simple surgery to solve a problem.
     Fraud could not exist if these people had people to go to the doctor with them and ask questions and refuse to accept a first opinion. These days everyone should get a second opinion: if the doctor doesn't explain the results of any tests they or their relatives have; if the symptoms persist after they are told that there symptoms are due to something they were never told about; If they don't have symptoms but are told they have a problem; or if they still have questions after they see their doctor.
     A big indicator of fraud is a being given a diagnosis and being refused a referral for a second opinion or failure to do routine follow up tests.
     If at any time you are refused treatment under Medicaid or Medicare you should report it to those agencies in writing. Don't assume a phone call is enough. In many cases corruption exists within the system itself. Legal aide exists in many areas for free to help you file a complaint. We all need to be vigilant about this issue, to keep our disabled and elderly relatives safe and to save the tax payers huge bill because of fraud.
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Friday, March 2, 2012

Republcans Believe Women Are Sluts

Republicans support Rush limbaugh even after he said that 99% of women are sluts and he will had out aspirin to college students. Repuiblicans also agree that college students should post themselves having sex online so they can watch. Obviously they are sex offenders in their private lives. Maybe they even molest their kids. All republicans should be immediately investigated by family services to see if they are fit to retain their children.
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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Higgins Takes Down The Orange

Notre Dame Fighting Irish logoImage via WikipediaTim Higgins has been Syracuse's Bane forever. I bet statistics would show that he has been at the bottom of most of the oranges losses over time. In a game that was poorly officiated the Orange lost again. What a coincidence that it was an the Fighting Irish that they lost to and Tim Higgins was once again the ref.
                                                                         Good Job Tim Hope Brey bought you dinner for it.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The KKK Rides In South Carolina

Newt and the rest of the KKK (Republicans) debated last night. We got more references about how blacks need to get jobs and get off food stamps. He also seems to think that black kids should be school janitors. Watch out school Janitors the Republicans want to put you out of work. They want cheap black labor.
     In this day and age racism is totally unacceptable. We should annex states that have problems like this and move the ignorant white people to Guantanamo. Maybe they would appreciate the fact that we have a free society. All people have rights in this country. Any one who opposes this should lose their freedom until they understand that their freedom doesn't over rule any one elses' Maybe it's time to put a bounty on their scalps, the same way people have done to others in the past.
     Republicans put 10 million people out of work by sending their jobs to China. Newt and Romney just loved doing that. Romney actually personally sent 10's of thousands of jobs out of the country single-handedly. He also create thousands of jobs there. Romney should be running for President of China. He did more to make them a power than any other Republican politician except maybe Newt Gingrich. He who be Prime Minister in China.
     Republicans call it free trade but it was really a plot to take American jobs and send them out of the country. The idea being that only the rich would have money in the United States and they would have slave labor to mow their lawns and clean their homes. Back to the days of Hazel the maid.
     The only people who are envious are the rich. They got tired of seeing people who could afford houses like theirs and big ticket items. Their lives lost meaning because they couldn't have any one to look down on. They paid politicians to sell out the American people, so that the rich could feel good about themselves. Its no wonder that people are fed up with the elites. They may however find that their plan worked to well. Now the criminals have only one place to go to steal and its the Rich people's places and businesses. At this rate they might not be safe driving anything but a 10 year old Hyundai, so they don't attract attention. Hell in Ten year they may have to move out of the United States to remain safe. The days of kidnapping could come back. We already see it in Mexico. How far off can it be here.
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Monday, January 16, 2012

Coming Soon; Assault Weapons and Drugs from Texas

     As people scream about immigration, Texas imports Drugs from Mexico and exports assault weapons to Mexico in record numbers. It would seem that law enforcement in Texas has turned it's back on gun stores that sell thousands of guns to Mexican Mafia figures yearly, which reenter the U.S. to kill cops in other states. Yay for Texas gun dealers. The ATF knows this is going on and has yet to charge gun dealers for this practice. Maybe they don't want to get shot with those guns either.
     Texas businesses store drugs for cartel members and ship them to our neighborhoods. Thank you Texas, but would you mind stopping, of course you would, because this is what the Republicans call capitalism and free trade.
     I would say that it might be done unwittingly, but when they back a tractor trailer up to the guys business that is highly unlikely. Everything is bigger in Texas including the greed, which adds to the earning of the drug cartels. Wonder who in politics is getting their cut of that money. Next time your politician says he supports the NRA ask if gets a cut of this money.
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