Monthly Archives: October 2016

Spirit-Driven Profit

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The last post about a nail driven by spirit likely was an odd one to the reader. Mariner hopes it loosened the brain a bit to conjure new and unexplored ways of thinking about mundane things. Remember we are in the musing category; practicality is not a requisite.

To clarify nailing with the spirit, mariner attempted to present an economy not pushed along by the motive of personal cash profit but by the motive of ‘passing it along.’ Using only the will or spirit looking to generate ‘profit’ on a benefit passed to you, you look for a way to contribute to the wellbeing of others. In a convoluted way, this generates productivity.

A readily available example is Habitat for Humanity International (HH). HH has built over 2 million homes! Talk about a spirit-driven economy! That’s 2 million homes without personal cash profit as a motive. Still, the resources brought to HH came from cash profits given to the volunteers. It’s as though HH built one link in the chain of economy. How do we, using only empathy to perceive need, spirit and desire, attach the next link of productivity not driven by profit?

This is not something mariner has mastered. However, from deep within Guru, it seems that a cash-driven economy – especially a profit-driven or capitalist-driven economy – will not suffice as human population grows rapidly and the world approaches the year 2100 and twelve billion people will be present and accounted for. And the global neighborhood grows trashier and trashier, eventually contaminating every habitat with one chemical or another. And completing the Sixth Global Extinction (already begun in the 1700’s), which will include Homo sapiens.

Economic examples like the Netherlands and Belgium and another dozen or so similar to Canada have accepted socialist solutions to replace some capitalist solutions. What is lacking in even the most socialist economies is displacement of accrued profit as the underlying vehicle for measurement. In the simplified prototype of ‘Pass it forward,’ the motivation is not personal profit or even the personal stability promoted by socialism. Rather, it operates more like the command “Everyone in the pool!” where each person is out to provide the loudest splash in the pool.

Mariner believes the definition of profit must be altered for survival of Homo sapiens (and other species as well). So far in our history, profit has shown to be intensely destructive to people, environment, natural balance in sensitive biomes, disruptive to oceans, land masses and left alone shows an imbalance among humans that leaves the fortunate more wealthy than they should be while many more starve to death. Add to this worrisome profile nearly half again as many humans and a throttling distribution system that blocks fair distribution of profit, and the human manner of surviving as the world diminishes in its ability to produce in behalf of humans, and we are left with extinction.

In a few days, the mariner will open a forum where everyone can comment and respond to comments. Current economic authors are not much help; their vision remains well entrenched in personal profit motivation. Further, economists don’t often study philosophy as a solution for economic issues.

If readers are aware of futuristic economists already expressing concern about the collapse of human economy due to self-serving priorities, please share your sources.

COMMENTARY SECTION

Reader Ben, in a reply to “If a Nail were driven by Spirit,” suggested if he were a lumberjack, he would rather have a chainsaw than a two-man hand saw. This was in response to the mariner pondering whether it was better to enjoy living a simpler life within the constraints of one’s biological environment or, as we have done at every opportunity in history, used any invention to make life easier. The mariner believes that consumption of technology may be moral but on balance, humans must reduce the number of humans allowed to exist to prevent overconsumption of the Earth’s environment far beyond that expected of the hairless ape.

– – – –

As to Donald, this latest round of rants does not try to camouflage his similarity to Nazi fascism. The reader need only swap a few words and his ideals are too close to Mein Kampf[1].

Switch ‘Jews’ for ‘Latinos;” Switch “ICE deportation camps to load immigrants onto busses” for “trains to Auschwitz.” The method is identical as well: families are forcibly pulled from their homes with no regard for rights, status, or family situation. They are branded like cattle just as Donald wants those deported to be branded with physical identifiers like finger prints and eye patterns. There are more parallels but mariner chooses not to go on. Mariner understands there is not a lot to choose from in 2016 but vote to defeat Nazism. Don’t vote for Donald. The election exposes a lot of interesting change in the US. However, first things first.

Ancient Mariner

[1] Mein Kampf is an autobiography by the National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler, in which he outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926. The book was edited by Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess.

If a Nail were driven by Spirit

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This is a test. Have you ever had empathy for a small stone? When Mariner was in his pubescent years, he once replaced a stone atop a pile of dirt from which it became dislodged. He admits to a weird moment. How can the stone feel empathy? How will empathy interact or act in behalf of a stone? Will the stone pass it forward?

If the reader has a lifelong knack for easily evoking anthropomorphic sensitivity toward Earth’s inhabitants, animate or inanimate, the reader may have the ability to envelope themselves in a spiritual world of immense dimension and empathy, traveling to distant universes or conjuring different societies. Sometimes, for just an instant, a spiritual experience may reveal not only righteousness and salvation but empirical validation. Abraham had such a moment when he decided not to sacrifice his son Isaac.[1]

Spiritualism played a greater role in religious and cultural life six millennia ago. Homo sapiens existed within the realm of an environment they had not mastered through science and technology, socialized behavior, or specie dominance over the environment. It is true today that the seed for new plateaus of existence do not come from spiritual insights but from that which detracts from spiritual value – science and technology, socialized behavior (economics, government, prejudice) and human dominance over Earth’s rightful domain.

Recognition is given here to those who respond empathetically to others, to the environment and to the strange universe that operates around us – nothing more than a collection of giant stones.

Mariner has casually discussed what might be the very source of new anything – new inventions, new ideas, new feelings, perhaps new space and matter. What causes ‘new’? A pleasing ‘new’ has been the emergence of the phrase and gesture ‘pass it forward.’ The gesture of acting out a small benevolence to a stranger simply because one chooses to do so generates a longer lasting response for both than if they had to do without the benevolence. Is this lingering remembrance a created value?

Having received a hand, is the stranger primed to replicate benevolence to stranger #2? If so, could that benevolence to #2 be more than the benefit the stranger received in the first place? For those with superior empathetic skills: If money was benevolence, and benevolence can so easily be enlarged, that is, pay interest, what would the purpose of money be in society? In other words, mariner drives your son to college as a favor. Subsequently and perhaps causatively, you build a new basement storm door for an elderly person. How does the mariner’s drive to a college measure against you building a new storm door? Can that be dollar-added interest? Could that be economic creativity? The Universe suddenly has a new basement storm door in the Milky Way’s Solar System on Earth.

This post isn’t in the religion section; it’s in the musings section. The mariner simply muses about the power of spirit in general – how things may be different if the world, indeed the universe, may function with a different ‘transmission’. It isn’t difficult to see that mammalian dominance of our age has shaped its dynamics. We mammals are born to protect, defend and secure our surroundings. Non-mammalians like fish just spread their young like grass seed; turtles plant them like lily bulbs; birds raise their young as an instinctive gesture inherited from the dinosaurs but just as well may drop them on your head while in flight.

Mammals have within them the desire to own and secure their own space, their own property. A good model is the Silverback Gorilla. The male’s job is to defend his family and eating grounds even to deathly combat. So it is that Homo sapiens does the same thing but with far more intelligence and a more sophisticated desire to have the ‘largest family’. Even Elk want the largest herd. Seems like conflict is part of being a mammal.

What evolves is a pragmatic society. What works best, ten men having a good time being productive or a back hoe and a bulldozer? Best to stop here, mariner thinks.

Ancient Mariner

[1] Holy Bible, Genesis 22

Follow the Money

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This famous quote from the film Deep Throat about the Nixon Watergate Scandal holds truer today than ever. The danger is that we have become accustomed to it. We no longer take umbrage at the misuse of money – it’s how all the games are played. Worse, while inflation remains idle, the ante to play with real money rises rapidly. Thought about differently, real money (starting around one mil) is an artificial inflation: the rest of us don’t have ‘real’ money. Citizens United couldn’t exist in Nixon’s day. Which is worse, breaking a door lock to get some records or pulling billions of dollars out of the economy to be distributed to slush funds and kickbacks?

The mariner noticed the hubbub about “rigged” elections. Boy, are they ever! But not in the simple-minded manner trumped up by the Trump campaign. The pundits are correct (this time): the manner by which we engage both parties and today control sham voting with automation makes it very difficult to overtake a precinct election site…. if one has one, Alabama.[1]

In a post on February 10, 2016, mariner covered a lead article from the Atlantic magazine for that month. It is important to briefly review the article at this moment when vote rigging is in the limelight but hardly the true threat that a tide of cash infusion can be. The article was about a small group of billionaires taking over the election of Governor for a democratic state: Illinois.

“The richest man in Illinois does not often give speeches. But on a warm spring day two years ago, Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire founder of one of the world’s largest hedge funds, rose before a black-tie dinner of the Economic Club of Chicago to deliver an urgent plea to the city’s elite.

They had stood silently, Mr. Griffin told them, as politicians spent too much and drove businesses and jobs from the state. They had refused to help those who would take on the reigning powers in the Illinois Capitol. “It is time for us to do something,” he implored.

Their response came quickly. In the months since, Mr. Griffin and a small group of rich supporters — not just from Chicago, but also from New York City and Los Angeles, southern Florida and Texas — have poured tens of millions of dollars into the state, a concentration of political money without precedent in Illinois history.

Their wealth has forcefully shifted the state’s balance of power. Last year, the families helped elect as governor Bruce Rauner, a Griffin friend and former private equity executive from the Chicago suburbs, who estimates his own fortune at more than $500 million. Now they are rallying behind Mr. Rauner’s agenda: to cut spending and overhaul the state’s pension system, impose term limits and weaken public employee unions.”

If the reader follows Illinois news, they know Rauner has stalled passage of a democratic budget even to today. Schools and colleges across the state are laying off staff; public schools and private ones have begun shortening school years, some are forced to cut sports programs (a few are in violation of Title Nine). Public Works has dropped their state-wide schedule.

In particular, the Griffin group is after Unions; Rauner has pushed hard to eliminate them, prohibit participation in elections, and limit dues. The confrontation over schools and unions has soured Rauner’s Governorship. Illinois is too long a blue state, too many union members, too many city dwellers. The legislature is democratic in both houses. Even five determined billionaires can’t make a bought Governorship become permanent. It isn’t over yet; Rauner is contributing significant amounts to all Republican officeholders, including conservative democrats. Will money buy a more conservative government next election?

– – – –

There is a second source that rigs elections: the news media. News media really do know the truth of campaigns; they just avoid low viewership approaches to political coverage; dull stuff like facts, policy, government expense and specific changes to entitlement, insurance, taxes, and banking regulations – a simple example: do you know the minimum wage endorsed by any Presidential candidate?

Also avoided is unaltered factual analysis by experts (pundits specifically cannot be experts except on Fareed Zacharia’s Global Public Square, CSPAN, and a few Bloomberg and PBS specials). What makes a pundit an expert is the ability to simultaneously speak and comprehend four other pundits speaking at the same time to the dismay our comprehension. A viewer never heard two people talk at the same time on Bill Moyer’s show. But then you never watched, did you! It is best to subscribe to a few good printed sources like Atlantic, Economist, Washington Post, New York Times and other quality printed sources. Don’t try to cover the rainbow of opinions; you don’t have the intellectual stamina to read Mother Earth, The Washington Inquirer, The Nation, and the American Conservative in the same day. Choose quality, centrist sources.

Instead of providing good, balanced news and informational analysis, news media hired on as Donald’s campaign team. On the cable channels, it evolved into an 18 hour blitz of South Park.

The solution to this rip-off by the press is to relieve the news department of the responsibility to be a profit center (follow the money). Then newscasters won’t be forced to choose between news and entertainment (profit). Or you could get your news from elite sources that already exist and are mentioned above.

Ancient Mariner

[1] The last large scale vote intrusion may have been the Chicago Teamsters ‘assuring’ Joe Kennedy that Jack would win Chicago. Computers prevent bullish, physical intrusions. However, as evidenced in the hacking of the current election, computers have other weaknesses. One has often wondered whether the Teamsters were the original source for the assassinations of Jack and Bobby to pay back Joe for the boys coming after the Teamsters when they assumed office. What doesn’t fit this theory is the assassination of Martin Luther King. The common victim was progressivism.

The Art of the (Double) Deal

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Thanks to Donald for having written an appropriate book title to parody.

Thanks to a thirty year political career by the Clintons which is a crystal clear example of double dealing.

This post is in the form of a treatise about simultaneous public negotiation on an issue while at the same time having a private negotiation on the same issue. A clearly defined example is the manner in which Barak achieved passage of ObamaCare. The public negotiation was a political campaign heard by the public in terms the public appreciated, which in turn put pressure on legislators to yield a bit to populist opinion. In the private negotiation not known by most citizens was a deal with big pharma they couldn’t refuse. This private negotiation took the lid off prescription prices for a number of years. This deal broke the collusion tactics of the medical industry just enough to attack legislators in their own interest to raise personal funds. By the slimmest of margin, the birth of social medicine was passed.

Unfortunately, typically, private negotiation costs a lot of money to the public negotiation. Who paid for the creation of ObamaCare? You and the mariner did through outrageous profits to big pharma – more than enough to offset future capped costs.

Mariner will reflect on five well known political figures in an attempt to find a way to measure advocacy and public commitment as a behavior that justifies the impact of the private deal:

Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Clintons, and Elizabeth Warren.

Abraham Lincoln was a champion double dealer. His private government deals withabraham-lincoln legislators were for them lucrative and opportunistic and swung enough votes to pass the emancipation and several lesser regulations easing the transition for African Americans in the south. Yet he was assassinated; he helped provoke the Civil War; more American soldiers died in the Civil War than any other American war. Yet Lincoln is one of the most elevated moralists among all presidents. Why is that? Today’s racists still don’t like African Americans but it is highly likely that African Americans will never be chattel again. Not that slavery doesn’t exist; many Asian women who work in manicure shops are locked into a dependency with those who brought them into the US at virtually starvation wages and no benefits.

fdrFranklin Delano Roosevelt rescued the US from a bankruptcy known as the Great Depression. FDR was fortunate to have democratic majorities in Congress and a majority of states; He created many Government job programs; FDR created the “alphabet Job Corps” to improve infrastructures and parks (CCC), WPA, FERA, PWA, Entertainment, construction, and had its own financing organization. All paid for by a broken government. FDR raised taxes to 100% of income for anyone making more than $38,000 annually (1930’s dollars – not US profits) and devalued the dollar by 25%.

An important piece of legislation that passed in FDR’s administration was the Glass/Steagall Act in 1933 which would prevent banks from taking over the US economy and prevent savings/mortgage banks from investing savings on the stock markets. It was collusion among investment and banking interests that crashed the US economy. Most of FDR’s private deals came with international relations during the Second World War. Whether public or private, FDR wore his policy on his sleeve: The nation and its citizens had to come first and did come first – even if he made an occasional private deal. FDR is considered one of the most successful Presidents. Why is that?

bill-and-hillaryIn 1999, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan among many investment types colluded in a private deal with the giant banks to repeal the Glass/Steagall Act. The banking industry, investment industry, housing industry and lending companies were free to collude again essentially stealing trillions of dollars from the American economy to create an oligarchy beyond imagination and a national debt in the trillions because of multitudinous tax loopholes for big corporations and the oligarchy- leading to the same economic recession for the same reasons that occurred during the FDR administration. Bill’s show business/salesman talents have made him a powerful President during public negotiations. Yet there is skepticism about his private deals. Why is that?

It is sensed, over the years, that Hillary is the Administrator of Clinton politics. Some pundits have said that Hillary saved Bill’s political career more than once. Rather than moralistic, the pair is clearly pragmatic in nature. The citizenry has become aware of these separate characteristics over thirty years of Clinton politics. Why is Hillary affected by the Presidential campaign? Why is that?

elizabeth-warrenTry doing today what FDR did in 1933 during this capitalist age of million dollar bonuses and Strumpf’s $200 million fraudulent increase in stock value over a base salary of $17 million. Is it worth watching Elizabeth Warren butcher Strumph at a Senate hearing about the Wells Fargo Scam with Strumph? Absolutely.

See video at

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=elizabeth+warren+hearing+with+strumph&qs=n&form=QBVLPG&pq=elizabeth+warren+hearing+with+strumph&sc=0-27&sp=-1&sk=

Not only entertaining, her behavior demonstrates that Elizabeth deals only in public negotiation. Large double dealing corporations and politicians definitely dislike her because she won’t engage in private deals. Through her efforts alone, a new Federal agency was created: The Consumer Protection Bureau. Since its creation, the Bureau has represented only the public side of the art of double dealing: reference the NYT article.

REFERENCE SECTION

The Consumer Protection Bureau needs your attention and support to prevent its demise. Every day the banking and investment world launches a new legal and Congressional attack on Senator Warren’s watchdog. The New York Times tells the story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/opinion/a-consumer-watchdog-lives-for-another-day.html?_r=0   One paragraph from the NYT:

In the past five years, the bureau has generated nearly $12 billion in financial relief and restitution for more than 27 million consumers who were wronged in the course of routine financial dealings with banks and nonbank lenders. That is $12 billion that otherwise would have enriched executives and shareholders. It is also a measure of the extent to which unfair, deceptive and predatory financial practices still pervade the financial system, giving rise to the need for a strong cop on the consumer beat.

COMMENTARY

All Presidents and elected officials are in themselves one player in the history of the US with its unique idiosyncrasies. It seems, however, that one characteristic stands above all others: Does the citizenry believe that the politician is a genuine representative of the will of the people? The President does not, within his power, have the right to negotiate private negotiations unless those negotiations represent in their entirety, public need.

Both parties duck this responsibility. Today, the elected official’s role is to get rich. Few, very few, will represent the public. It is not every citizen that will feel the protection of their economic nation against private interests. Until the citizenry insists on moral, public negotiation without fail, statesmen like Elizabeth can only go so far in public negotiation. The mariner recommends beware of private negotiations.

Ancient Mariner

Hades

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The mariner is reminded of the harsh apocalyptic and horrific movies popular today. Similar is his life wandering among fire pits and unexpected explosions caused by politics; ghoulish realities of extinct creatures and vacant deserts with burnt and smoking ruins where forests and clean water used to be; billions of hollow, starving humans sitting everywhere with swollen bellies; millions of fat, selfish billionaires and millionaires perched like vultures watching humans everywhere in case a profit pops up to be taken from the disadvantaged.

But all’s well – we will elect a new president on November 8, 2016.

But that is false hope. The mariner knows governments and class culture and disrespect for the planet are no more than scenery on the set – props. Reality will remain a fearful, deadly, poisoned place; it is likely that reality will not end nicely.

Times past could have been better but humans are not smart, orderly, or responsible. Humans will not be able to share the planet much longer.

The planet will take us to task. It’s called the Day of Reckoning.

Ancient Mariner

 

Analysis after the Debate

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We are tracking which candidate is gaining on the other (Donald or Hillary) by scoring different elements of the election process rather than trying to guess amid the cacophony generated by media. The elements are called ‘vectors’ in that our analysis uses vector analysis – foregoing having to listen to every useless word the candidates say.

538.com (Nate Silver) – The betting odds for today are Hillary over Donald 74.4% to 25.6% – more than a trend – leaping in Hillary’s favor by 14.9%.

Electoral Vote – The latest analysis of the fifty states shows Hillary leaping ahead of Donald by 81.4 additional votes: (309.5 to 228.1 (270 to win).

Battleground States – measure is points in polls.

Arizona – Donald +2.4 trending stronger

Colorado – Hillary +3.5 trending weaker

Florida – Hillary +1.0 trending stronger

Georgia – Donald +4.6 trending stronger

Iowa – Donald +1.8 trending stronger

Michigan – Hillary +5.0 trending weaker

Missouri – Donald +7.8 trending stronger

New Hampshire – Hillary +4.3 trending weaker

Nevada – Hillary +1.0 trending stronger

North Carolina – TIED

Ohio – Donald +0.6 trending stronger

Pennsylvania – Hillary +3.9 trending weaker

Virginia – Hillary +5.7 trending stronger

Wisconsin – Hillary +4.9 steady

Down Ballot Races – The score tightened by 5 points (54.2 – 45.8) with the democrats ahead. Statistically, the democrats must win three states from the republicans: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Illinois along with a few potential swaps:

New Hampshire R to D

Indiana R to D

The Senate race probably is more important than the President’s race.

Local Paper and Magazines – reader’s choice. Perhaps readers noticed a few odd statistics: two very conservative newspapers have recommended Hillary; no CEOs in the Forbes top 100 will vote for Donald; only 2% of African Americans will vote for Donald; only 20% of Latinos will vote for Donald; the millennial generation is drifting to the libertarian and green parties or not voting at all – Hillary has not inspired them; Senator Mitch McConnell, at a meeting of republicans, asked for a show of hands from those who think Donald will win – no one raised their hands.

The mariner has the opinion that this campaign has not measured up to the issues the nation has at hand. The campaign is nothing more than two eight-year-olds trying to put the blame on anyone else. Has the electorate heard any solutions to climate change, fixing the TPP agreement, specifically restructuring taxes, redefining each discretionary funding category or Social Security or Federal mandates for minimum wage or bank regulations or….

Then there are global issues like global warming, environmental destruction, and limiting the social powers of corporatism.

Finally, an entirely new philosophy for international economies must be invented before automation and shifting population collapse our current ideals.

Sympathy notwithstanding, what does Donald’s narcissism do to help? What does Hillary’s preoccupation with children’s rights do to help? Neither candidate will bring back the golden age of industrialism; a labor-led economy is in the past. The US economy has been a service sector economy for twenty years.

Other major issues are within Government: How will all private money be removed from all elections? How will regulations be rewritten to minimize lobbyist ownership of politicians? How will gerrymandering be eliminated? The media hasn’t helped shape the dialogue – it is too easy to watch two eight-year-olds cast blame.

Oh well, only 38 days until it’s over and Hillary wins. Then what?

Ancient Mariner