Bad American

Of course it does.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. discriminates against blind people by printing paper money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish among the bills’ varying values, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling upholds a decision by a lower court in 2006. It could force the Treasury Department to redesign its money. Suggested changes have ranged from making bills different sizes to printing them with raised markings.

The American Council for the Blind sued for such changes but the Treasury Department has been fighting the case for about six years.

“I don’t think we should have to rely on people to tell us what our money is,” said Mitch Pomerantz, the council’s president.

The U.S. acknowledges the design hinders blind people but it argued that blind people have adapted. Some relied on store clerks to help them, some used credit cards and others folded certain corners to help distinguish between bills.

Why do so many people around the world think Americans are beyond stupid? This story is one such example.

Of course the usual right-wing gasbags will start pontificating about yet another “federal court mandate” to placate some disadvantaged group that should just get with the American program and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and suck it up.

If anyone ever goes to Canada and uses their paper money you’ll notice that all of it is printed with Braille dots across the top right hand corner. They’ve simply been doing it for years. No big deal. It’s what civilized countries do for their citizens like single payer national health insurance.

What stops the idiot American government from doing the same thing? Is it that perhaps they just don’t want to? We have all these gyrations on our ugly currency to supposedly thwart counterfeiters but to add a few imprinted dots to help the blind will require a veritable Act of Congress.

So no great redesign has to take place here. Just add the Braille dots.

But if the idiots in Washington do decide to restructure the money again, maybe they might again follow the lead of the Canadians and stop printing one dollar bills and have a vendable one dollar coin and perhaps a two dollar coin. Americans need to grow up about their money - printing dollar bills is an idiotic waste of money in of itself.

But I won’t hold my breath.

From Media Matters:

Let me state this unequivocally: if you listen to, enjoy and believe Rush Limbaugh you are simply a fucking idiot. And yes, I’d say it to your face.

Of course that also goes for anyone who also listens to Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, et. al. Fucking idiots and fascist enablers - all of you. Do the planet a favor and kill yourselves immediately.

Anyway:

LIMBAUGH: “Ike Skelton, Democrat from Lexington” — which is outside Kansas City — “is a Clinton supporter, sought to ease concerns from the Obama camp about his decision Friday to go public with his concerns about Obama’s electability.” You know, a lot of people have started to do this now. Well, not a lot, but there’s some starting to be concerned here about Obama’s electability.

“Richard Gephardt, another Clinton supporter, won the strongest ovation at the Missouri State Democrat [sic] Convention, when he said this: ‘George Bush is, by far, the worst person who’s ever been president of the United States. Gasoline is $4 a gallon, on its way to $8 a gallon, and this man sits there, clueless.’ “

Hey, Little Dick, all well and good, but these gas prices didn’t start going through the roof till your buddies took over the House in 2006. And remember, this is supposedly why we elected Democrats to the House of Representatives two years ago. They were going to fix this. They had a plan to bring gas prices down, and we haven’t seen the plan, Little Dick. Sit there and blame it on Bush. I mean, through six years of the Bush administration, oil was low, gas was low for the most part. Only when the Democrats got in there did the world markets panic and start going through the roof.

Complete fucking lie. I remember quite well what happened to has prices 1999-2000 and then a few years later when they went up again to a new plateau.

ALL IN GEORGE FUCKING W. BUSH’S PRESIDENCY.

HE’S BEEN PRESIDENT FOR 7 1/2 YEARS - THIS IS HIS ECONOMY! GOT THAT? HIS. NOT CLINTON’S. HIS.

DEAL WITH IT

I’m checking my online accounts periodically today to see if the money has been deposited into it.

And I hate it.

I hate the fact that business is so bad in my little town among other places, that this check will actually help me pay my bills for the upcoming month. Believe you me, I work hard at making my store a success despite the economy. It almost seems like a admission of failure to be counting on this money.

Sure, I have a business line of credit like many small businesses. But I hate the idea of having to depend on a credit line. I offer a good product at a great price with a sound business plan. And I strive to pay my debts off as much as possible every month.

But I can’t make people part with their disposable incomes in these times when it might be gas or food over a particularly interesting book. And believe me, I understand that completely.

Things are tight and getting tighter. I hear it and see it every day right in front of me.

Last week, in another blow to the local small business culture, the bakery attached to my store, literally at the hip, gave up the ghost after less than five months of operation.

And that hurts my traffic as well. In a small town business climate, everything rolls downhill or, perhaps, a better analogy, picture dominos falling — down a hill!

And yet, our local Chamber of Commerce, of which I am a part, is concentrating a new business retention program on larger employers. I have held my tongue on this, but as the little guys go, so goes the big guys. I guess there are people here who view the moms and pops as expendable. As the situation with food and fuel gets worse, it will be the local mom and pops that will service the community while the Wal-Marts abandon these towns and leave large hulks of empty building and parking lots in their wake.

Back to the ‘windfall,’ I also hate the fact that it’s merely an advance against next year’s tax liability any way. It’s not ‘free money’ falling like manna from the sky in any way.

But a lot of us need it and need it far worse than I do.

And that’s why I also hate it because I know this is putting a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound - the American economy - and will NOT have the overall stimulus effect the White House is advertising. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll take it, but ask the average person you know to put a figure on how much money it would take to really offer them some relief. Tell them to be reasonable, yet honest.

For me, that would be about $5,000. That would put me back on my feet and give me a sound shot at getting back on my feet and possibly expanding my small business while catching up on my credit debt load.

The $600 I will get will be thrown at the debt load, NOT on spending on any baubles.

But, of course, I hope that maybe some people will use their reimbursement check to buy a few books. But for most people, the best thing they could probably do with their money is to try and get back on top of managing their debt.

Click. Check. No, not yet.

Stan Cox in Alternet writes about the fallacy of believing that anything you buy labeled as “green” in our predatory market capitalistic system will be of ultimate good for you or the earth.

Cox does a pretty good job of laying out the previous scams and the big scam to come when “going green” will be ruthlessly packaged into one last great big speculative bubble for the only people in the world that count - the investor class. And, like locusts, once the bubble bursts, these insects will go back to the government to have the taxpayers bail them out, exactly what is happening now with the housing bubble.

Until these people do the lamppost swing, nothing will change. With the giant green scam, it’s like watching a train wreck about to happen from 50 miles away. You’ve got plenty of time to fix the problem before it explodes but the investor class already owns the trains, the tracks and the regulatory systems and they have a vested interest in making the trains eventually crash.

Cox talks about the biggest green scams we know about - Body Shop (whose energetic yet lying-through-her-teeth founder I interviewed once), Ben and Jerrys and Tom’s of Maine (my sons grew up using this product) among others.

Basically my view on this is it’s a folly for the American consumer to believe anything they’re being sold as green or organic. The only way you can count on what you eat being truly organic is to either grow or raise it yourself or buy locally and directly from someone who does.

Even so-called farmer’s markers aren’t immune. One popular market in Cedar Rapids featured produce imported from elsewhere, i.e. outside the state. Most people just shook their heads and bought it anyway.

Aside from that, the way conventional food prices are rising out of sight due to worldwide food shortages and the fuel expense of bringing produce to market, the whole idea of green/organic food is going to cease being an issue for people rather quickly. It will only be an issue for well-to-do do-gooders who view their purchases as a testament to their character and yet another thing to brag about to their friends.

What we really should be doing is encouraging the return of small-scale gardens like the ‘Victory Gardens’ of World War II. It makes perfect sense for people to start learning how to actually cultivate their own food and it’s a great way to get outside and get some exercise as well. And Monsanto won’t control your seeds either.

As far as companies like BP scamming people with green advertising, well, I can’t believe, even with my 45 years, that sentient beings believe ANYTHING corporate America tells them anyway. All of these claims of greening should be dismissed out of hand and if the information contained in the above referenced article isn’t enough, I don’t know what would be.

Cox’s final paragraph alludes to the lifelong cultural brainwashing Americans are subjected to:

Of all religions, the one to which Americans cling most tightly is the doctrine of the free market. No belief is more deeply held than the one that says markets will always satisfy people’s needs in the best and most efficient way. That belief persists, unaffected by the market economy’s repeated, spectacular failures to perform as advertised. If green energy and green consumption remain as they are — as sects within the religion of the market — they also are doomed to fail.

Truer words were never written. And they will fail - but not after the right people make money, our bought and paid for government allows them to get away with it, and the public are left weaker and more vulnerable than before - more victims of our rapacious predatory capitalism.

Mike Whitney in ICH

In a nutshell:

But Bernanke won’t raise rates because he doesn’t really give a hoot about the people in Cameroon who have to scavenge through garbage-dumps for a few morsels to keep their families alive. Nor does he care about the average American working-stiff who gets cardiac-arrest every time he pulls up to the gas pump. What matters to Bernanke is making sure that his fat-cat buddies in the banking establishment get a steady stream of low interest loot so they can paper-over their bad investments and ward off bankruptcy for another day or two. Its a joke; it was the investment banks that started this downward spiral with their rotten mortgage-backed securities and other debt-exotica. Still, in Bernanke’s mind, they are the only ones who really count.

And don’t expect Bush to step in and save the day either. The “Decider” still believes in the unrestricted activity of the free market; especially when his crooked friends can make a buck on the deal.

From the Washington Times:

The Bush administration knows there’s hanky-panky going on, but they just look the other way. It’s Enron redux, where Ken Lay Inc. scalped the public with utter impunity while regulators sat on the sidelines applauding. Great. Now its the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) turn; they’re taking a hands-off approach so Wall Street sharpies make a fortune jacking up the price of everything from soda crackers to toilet bowls.

snip

The US has been gaming the system for decades; sucking up two-thirds of the world’s capital to expand its cache of Cadillac Escalades and flat-screen TVs; giving nothing back in return except mortgage-backed junk, cluster bombs, and crummy green paper. Nothing changes; it only gets worse. But this is different. The world is now facing the very real prospect of ”completely avoidable” famine because twelve doddering old banksters at the Federal Reserve would rather bailout their sketchy friends and preserve their spot at the top of the economic food-chain then save the lives of  starving women and children. Bernanke now has an opportunity to do more damage than Bush with one swipe of the pen. If he cut rates; the dollar will fall, commodities will spike, and people will starve. It’s as simple as that.

In America, as long as the right people make money, everything is OK.

But this is glimpse into the future where such divisions will be sharper and harder as fuel prices and global climate change put the hits on food production and distribution. Right now, Americans are grumbling about prices and starting to hoard. One should point out that Americans still have the luxury of hoarding - they’re not reduced to going through dumps to feed their families - yet. But when that happens (and it did early in the 20th century and we have the photos to prove it) then we’ll see how long before Americans go for their guns and say ‘enough.’

First they’ll have do undo generations of brainwashing about the glories of ‘free market’ capitalism.

“. . . do you hear that sound Mr. Anderson. . . that is the sound of . . . inevitability.”

Food riots - coming here soon?

Wall Street Journal

Associated Press - UN Secy Gen’l says its an emergency

To paraphrase Charlie Daniels - didja ever think it could happen in America again? This time, no World War II as an excuse either.

As Brett Arends writes:

I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

Here’s the solid economic rationale:

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.

And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

These are trends that have been in place for some time.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here’s the bad news: They may actually accelerate.

The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years.

And the suggestions on what to buy:

You can’t easily stock up on perishables like eggs or milk. But other products will keep. Among them: Dried pasta, rice, cereals, and cans of everything from tuna fish to fruit and vegetables. The kicker: You should also save money by buying them in bulk.

If this seems a stretch, ponder this: The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it’s the rosy memory of a bygone age.

The rosy memory of a bygone age.

If you have children, now would be a good time to sit them down and give them “the talk.”

No, not the talk about sex although you need to give them that too so they don’t make the mistake of having children that will grow up in want the likes of which we can only dimly imagine but will become very real in the near future.

No you need to have the talk about how our generation and the two behind it, screwed their world into a death spiral through greed and predatory market capitalism.

And now, we’re all going to pay a dear price for that greed and the world they enjoyed as a child will not resemble the world they will know as adults. For our kids, still ensconced in the merry world of violent video games and facebook rituals, this shock will only be psychologically greater if we don’t prepare them NOW.

Perhaps, as a hard gift, you might want to give them James Howard Kunstler’s new book A World Made By Hand and tell them there’s perhaps more truth than fiction inside it.

I know this will be hard, but you owe it to them.

And I’ll see you at Sam’s Club.

If you read nothing else today, read these two stories:

New York Sun:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing. Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”

snip

An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled.

The curbs and shortages are being tracked with concern by survivalists who view the phenomenon as a harbinger of more serious trouble to come.

“It’s sporadic. It’s not every store, but it’s becoming more commonplace,” the editor of SurvivalBlog.com, James Rawles, said. “The number of reports I’ve been getting from readers who have seen signs posted with limits has increased almost exponentially, I’d say in the last three to five weeks.”

snip

Spiking food prices have led to riots in recent weeks in Haiti, Indonesia, and several African nations. India recently banned export of all but the highest quality rice, and Vietnam blocked the signing of a new contract for foreign rice sales.

“I’m surprised the Bush administration hasn’t slapped export controls on wheat,” Mr. Rawles said. “The Asian countries are here buying every kind of wheat.” Mr. Rawles said it is hard to know how much of the shortages are due to lagging supply and how much is caused by consumers hedging against future price hikes or a total lack of product.

“There have been so many stories about worldwide shortages that it encourages people to stock up. What most people don’t realize is that supply chains have changed, so inventories are very short,” Mr. Rawles, a former Army intelligence officer, said. “Even if people increased their purchasing by 20%, all the store shelves would be wiped out.”

Saudis Finally Fess Up (sort of)

Financial Times

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer, has put on hold plans to increase long-term production capacity from its vast oil fields beyond existing proposals, its most powerful policymakers have said.

In a series of statements, including one by the king himself, the kingdom has warned consumers it does not reckon there is a need for further expansion beyond 12.5m barrels a day, an assumption disputed by the world’s biggest developed countries.

The realisation Saudi Arabia will not increase production to 15m barrels a day as quickly as important consumers and the markets had assumed could put further pressure on oil prices, which touched fresh records last week.

snip

Abdullah Jum’ah, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s oil company, said in a closed door meeting with oil ministers and executives in Rome on Sunday that market signals were ’imperfect’ and that there were uncertainties created by the move away from oil, the world’s worsening economic outlook and the recent turbulance in the financial markets, according to one person who took notes at the discussions. This has impacted Saudi Arabia’s view on the profitability of investing billions of additional dollars into its industry at this point, Gulf sources said.

In a recent interview with Argus, an industry newsletter, Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, made clear Saudi Arabia had “no plans” to embark on its next phase of expansion. “We are idling at around 9m bpd and we will reach capacity of 12.5m bpd by 2009.”

He added: “That is substantial spare capacity. As far as I know, all the latest projections, at least up to 2020, do not require anything higher than that.”

Forecasts by the International Energy Agency, the watchdog of the main consuming countries and an important participant in the forum, reach a different conclusion.

Most recently the group calculated that, even if all the policies to increase renewable fuels and to use oil more efficiently were to be enacted on Tuesday, the world would still need Opec’s daily production to increase by 11.5m barrels by 2030, the bulk of which would have to come from its biggest members, such as Saudi Arabia.

That is a tall order. It is more than 50 per cent more than Opec has managed to increase output during 1980 to 2006.

Recent announcements will harden the view of those sceptics who argue the kingdom is unable to boost production because of the high decline rates at its fields – a view that is still in the minority among those in the industry and one Riyadh emphatically rejects.

Sorry, it’s the truth and I’ve been saying and writing it for several years now. If you’ve been watching what the Saudis SAY they’re going to do in terms of boosting production and what they have ACTUALLY DONE you see the disconnect.

And now this - a virtual admission, cloaked in bullshit-speak, that the Saudis won’t increase their capacity.

BECAUSE THEY CAN’T.

And if THEY can’t neither can anyone else.

Peak Oil is real, it is here and it is starting to eat our collective lunch.

And the Bush administration AND the current crop of candidates AND the government in general WILL NOT admit it to the American people.

But people seem to be starting to understand the age of oil is coming to a close.

The war in Iraq was all about access to what was left of the world’s largest reserves of crude. It didn’t work out the way Washington had hoped for and neither will bellicosity with Iran.

I have written about all of this until my fingers figuratively bled and I’m tired of reciting this. This story should end all doubts.

Coming next for the American consumer - spot shortages of gasoline, probably by the end of the year if not sooner. And over $4 a gallon gas - easily.

The Bush administration and the American establishment have always been playing for time on this issue, but time is now running out. Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy summit in 2001 was all about this issue and that’s what led eventually to the invasion of Iraq. You can’t keep lying about things and talking about ‘energy independence,’ ‘biofuels’ and other pie in the sky lies for too much longer.

Of course, Bush would have had the full throated support of the American people had he told them we were invading Iraq to preserve our way of life vis a vis oil. But Wall Street would have tanked. He tried to have it both ways by lying and now the chickens are about to come home to roost.

Surprise - Food Rationing!

In a spectacular one-two punch the New York Sun now talks about the rationing of rice (and soon other staples like corn) in the USA. It’s sporadic and here and there now, but just wait. I wrote about the rice riots on this blog earlier and now, thanks to the global economy, Americans are now discovering that what happens in Indonesia can affect us as well. Foreign countries are now cutting back on food exports to feed their own people and we will feel the effects of that.

And now we’re cashiering our food crop of corn to put it in our gas tanks causing the price of that staple to start soaring not just here but all over the world.

Are you beginning to get the picture America?

Have you notice the skyrocketing price of food to go with those gas prices?

Worried a little? You should be.

It’s that other little time bomb that the right doesn’t want you to believe in called global climate change AND ecological catastrophe.

By the way, the bees are still dying.

You may say they’ll pry my non-negotiable American lifestyle from my cold dead hands but rest assured - that’s exactly what mother Earth is doing right now. You could have sacrificed before the deluge and changed your ways but now change will be thrust upon you and it will not care whether you are a conservative or liberal, Christian or no.

And as long as Obama, Clinton and the media keep their eyes on who wears the fucking flag lapel pin or puts their hand over their heart for the anthem, we will get exactly what we deserve - and good and hard.

But there’s more to this. . .

James Howard Kunstler, in his latest missive, cries to high heaven for the restoration of America’s passenger rail system:

Now get this: we are sleepwalking into a transportation crisis. As I already said, the airline industry is dying. The price of petroleum-based aviation fuel is killing it. And forget the fantasies about running it on bio-diesel or used french-fry oil. Driving cars will not be an adequate substitute, either. It’s imperative that this country gets serious about restoring the passenger rail system. We can’t not talk about it for another year. We must demand that the candidates for president speak to this issue. If you who are reading this are active reporters or editors in the news media, you’ve got to raise your voices behind this issue.

I like Kunstler: he’s one of my heroes. But he’s missing something here. There is a very good reason why no one in government or politics is discussing revitalizing the American passenger rail system.

To understand that, let me ask a dark little question:

If you are going to have to control a population where oil and gas as well as food and even water are going to have to be rationed, how are you going to do it?

Will you facilitate the transport of the hungry masses of say, New York City, to the sylvan haunts, of, oh, I don’t know, Saratoga Springs, New York?

Or would it be best to be able to keep that population right where it is by any means necessary?

Think about it.

If the shit is truly going to hit the fan in the coming years, the LAST thing the government in charge is going to want is a mobile population. It’s why cutting off transportation of ordinary people is part of the plot line of every futuristic, apocalyptic and sci-fi movie dealing with the issue.

You know you can call me insane or a fear monger. But the writing is now clearly on the wall for all who have eyes to see. In fact, both the food and the oil stories were linked to The Drudge Report.

If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it. But I’ll also, in the future, will be the one to say I told you so. And as far as I’m concerned, if I’m going to blog about important things, I have to say what I have to say. Someone has to.

So if you think there’s any truth behind what I’ve said to the above links and stories you might, just might, want to start preparing you and your loved ones for the future NOW.

Well here we are.

Yesterday, thanks to the George W. Bush Economic Miracle, the general state of the local and national economy and the fact that Americans are reading less and less, I canceled my health insurance.

With that, I joined the 45 million who are well and truly fucked in the Land of the Free should something medically happen to us.

Of course Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the ‘bootstrap’ crowd could care less. The mere fact that you haven’t gamed the system for enough money is proof positive you lack enough moral gumption to be entitled to health care.

To those people I say: fuck you.

Here I am, a small business owner, having given my town something most of them said they desperately wanted: offered a great product selection for a great price, advertised, got involved in my community and, in general, made my store a welcoming and attractive asset to my community.

And one year later, I have to drop my health insurance.

And why not? I pay $150 every month for a policy which pays nothing for drugs and doctor visits but has a $10,000 ( you read that right) yearly deductible.

I love this post from Big Ass Belle

Seriously, our health care system is totally fucked. The “self administered medication” in question? Two 2.5 mg Percocets I took in recovery, post-surgery. How could it possibly cost $72.63 for a nurse to shake two pills from her bottle, walk five steps, hand me a cup of water and two tablets.

My insurance company will undoubtedly bargain this down significantly. But what of those who have no insurance? How can any single uninsured working person possibly afford to pay $8,900 for the facility fee

George Bush’s solution is “health care savings accounts,” whereby American can surely pay for . . . I don’t know, maybe a typical prescription which, without insurance, generally runs at least $100 and often as much as $400-500. With the US savings rate in the negative, can anyone besides the ultra rich save money at a pace which could easily cover an unexpected health event like this one? only for a 90 minute outpatient surgery? That’s not even counting the pathologist’s fee, the anesthesiologist, the surgeon’s hefty pound of flesh, or any of the assorted radiology or lab fees that always fill the mailbox after an encounter with a hospital. Ninety minutes in the hospital. Ninety. Minutes. Two. Pills. $8,900 and more to come. It’s madness.

George W. Bush could CARE LESS about the people who can’t afford it. He’s the president of the “have mores” you understand. If you can’t afford health insurance or medical care, it’s probably your own moral failing and you deserve to die so the ‘winners’ can access the resources they deserve.

Well, I don’t know how much longer I can run my bookstore in this environment. I talked today with the lady who runs the bakery next door. She hasn’t had health insurance in years. And my friend who brought his fossil collection to display in my store for the local kids - who drives a bus for Geauga County and plows snow in the winter, doesn’t have health insurance and neither does his wife.

If I get another surprise medical condition, like my January 2006 gall bladder surgery, I’d lose my store to the $25,000 medical cost anyway.

I worked for the Federal government for 11 years. I have re-employment eligible rights. Which means if I work at it enough, I can probably get back into the US civil service which I left BECAUSE I didn’t feel it was fair to get paid $35,000 yearly of taxpayer’s money to lightly shuffle paper for 8 hours a day. And get all that paid annual and sick leave and health insurance and job security and, and, and. . .

I can’t believe what 11 years in the private sector have done to my attitude. Now if I could get back into the civil service I would feel no compunction whatsoever when I get my paycheck and bennies. None. The little guy, minus the rich family, cannot make it in the current economic climate. And a progressive who speaks his mind can’t make it in the so-called ‘liberal’ media.

Work somewhere else? I’m 45 with the dreaded “gaps” in my resume. Good luck with that. At least the Federal civil service forgives and I’d get credited back my previous 11 years.

So give me my back my little cubicle and computer and I’ll get back to it. I’ll massage my dashed dreams with wondering what I’ll do again with all that paid time off, affordable health insurance, and job security.

And Chardon loses the bookstore and another light goes out in the American heartland. Another bookstore, another small business (among many hanging by a hair in my town), another dream dies.

And a few miles away, blissfully unaware consumers wander aimlessly through the aisles at Wal-Mart.

The American Dream is ending - for all of us.

I don’t know whether to believe Mayhill Flower’s post in Huffpo but if the direct quote is true, Obama may have given himself a fatal wound. You can bet the right wing talkers will jump all over this on Monday and understandably so. Talk about having a field day with a political quote! This is how Obama described Pennsylvanians to rich Californians:

These qualities of hospitality, patriotism and endurance are exactly what Californians need to hear about Pennsylvanians. And when he spoke to a group of his wealthier Golden State backers at a San Francisco fund-raiser last Sunday, Barack Obama took a shot at explaining the yawning cultural gap that separates a Turkeyfoot from a Marin County.

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said. “And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Obama made a problematic judgment call in trying to explain working class culture to a much wealthier audience. He described blue collar Pennsylvanians with a series of what in the eyes of creamy Californians might be considered pure negatives: guns, clinging to religion, antipathy, xenophobia.

Oh yeah. I bet all of us in ‘flyover country’ must appear the same way to the wine and brie crowd in Marin County. I own a gun because the economy sucks. Right. You know what Barack? My family were hunters and gun owners even when it was flush. And we have them not only because some of us still like hunting but for our own personal protection. I know that makes you kinda nervous but then again, you have a small army of SS to protect you so what do you care?

The religion thing. Brilliant. After making one of the best political speeches in decades after the Rev. Wright flap, now you say people are clinging to religion because the times are hard. What an insult. Yes, in many cases people DO look to their faiths when times are tough but that also includes PERSONAL times - not just economic times. People lose loved ones and suffer other problems not connected to personal income.

And the anti-immigrant and anti-trade stuff. Right. You know, you might just want to climb off that Ivy league perch of yours and see just how it is out here in the rust belt. Where real people live and have dreams not connected to pricey law firms and real estate wheeling and dealing. And when they see, as in my small town, a procession of illegal immigrants taking jobs that should be held by own kids as summer jobs, what are we supposed to think? God bless the USA - ain’t capitalism great?

Yes Barack, its all because we’ve been so screwed over by capitalism out here that we’re bitter. And you know what? Why not? We’ve got a right to be angry. We’ve got people who played the game their entire life - worked hard, obeyed the law, provided for their families - and are now being thrown on the scrap heap in their 50s or even earlier - sacrificed on the altar of ‘globalism.’ You know Barack, we aren’t all cut out to be attorneys or Harvard MBAs. But dammit, we do work out here and all we ask of our government, our elected representatives, is that they pass laws and policies that help us not hurt us. But when you’re part of the best Congress money can buy, what do you care about us out here? We’re just the punch line for a cocktail party in Marin County.

I am hoping against hope that this quote is wrong and this did not happen. If it did, I have no one to vote for in November. Maybe that’s the whole point.

The London Independent

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.

Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.

Isn’t it ironic that it takes a British newspaper to tell the truth to the American people? You don’t have to look to the British press to know how bad it is on Main Street. I see the pain around here every day and it’s getting worse. And I’m in a small town that is still fairly flush by comparison with similar small towns in adjacent counties.

Let no one look down their nose in the checkout lines at people using food stamp cards anymore. There are a growing number of people who never in a million years thought they would need the food assistance program - but here they are.

I’m going to be blunt here - George Carlin once said: “we’re all Nixon’s ni**ers now.” Well guess what - We’re all George W. Bush’s ni**ers now.

More from the story:

Richard Enright, the manager at this Morgan Williams, says the numbers of customers on food stamps has been steady but he expects that to rise soon. “In this location, it’s still mostly old people and people who have retired from city jobs on stamps,” he says. Food stamp money was designed to supplement what people could buy rather than covering all the costs of a family’s groceries. But the problem now, Mr Enright says, is that soaring prices are squeezing the value of the benefits.

“Last St Patrick’s Day, we were selling Irish soda bread for $1.99. This year it was $2.99. Prices are just spiralling up, because of the cost of gas trucking the food into the city and because of commodity prices. People complain, but I tell them it’s not my fault everything is more expensive.”

The US Department of Agriculture says the cost of feeding a low-income family of four has risen 6 per cent in 12 months. “The amount of food stamps per household hasn’t gone up with the food costs,” says Dayna Ballantyne, who runs a food bank in Des Moines, Iowa. “Our clients are finding they aren’t able to purchase food like they used to.”

Ladies and gentlemen, what we are seeing is just the beginning of what will be PERMANENTLY VERY BAD TIMES. The price of most foodstuffs are spiraling out of control for a number of reasons, chief of which are the rising fuel costs (costs to bring to market), and corn, especially, is being grown for ethanol production rather than food. Also, global climate change is starting to hurt certainly growing areas.

In fact there are now rice riots in several Southeast Asian countries as governments are putting an end to exporting rice since its needed for domestic consumption. This is going to happen in countries all over the world and, even in the United States, we’re going to have to shelve all the ‘global marketplace’ crap and start thinking about what we can do to feed ourselves more efficiently in the age of rising oil prices which also affect fertilizer products which make mass agriculture possible.

The most obscene part of all of this is that neither Bush, nor the three remaining candidates are being straight with the American people on what we face and will face in the near future. There is no room for any Churchillian “blood, sweat, toil and tears” speeches. They wouldn’t play well in focus groups.

But there will come a time in which no lies will be sufficient. The people will KNOW that things are very bad and, hopefully, will not tolerate being fed any more bullshit by their elected leaders. Someday soon, they will be forced, kicking and screaming, to tell the truth. Oil, water, food - its all in peril over the long run. We need to get real and start thinking about the world we’ll leave our children, before it’s too late.

In the meantime, if Americans want to read the truth about their own country, sadly, they will have to go to the foreign press. American journalism is dead - bought, paid for and ruthlessly controlled by corporate America.