I had a couple of emails on Wednesday that were very grim in their implications. One, just for example, sent along a fine commentary by a writer who posed the correct issue of “545 versus 300,000,000″ and connected a fair number of dots that explains why the federal government is so anxious to table some kind of success in damn near anything so that they’ll be able to get back to the old way of doing things; the ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ that prevails now that the bloodless checkbook coup d’ tat of the special interests has been pulled off in Washington with the complicity of those in the ‘shadow government’ who pretend (by day) to be looking after the public’s needs, interests, and concerns, but as soon as many leave office, they turn into (by night) what we lovingly refer to as the minions of the PowersThatBe. They’re called ‘captive regulators’ by kindlier folks than me.
While it’s true that some members of congress have felt a bit of heat lately, the hope among hopes is that enough people will be swindled into giving up their paid-for cars and saddled with new car payments in the Cash-for-Clunkers (C4C) hoax that not only will old cars be taken off the road, the coffers of the banksters refilled on interest, but another new tool for command and control will be in place; the ability to turn off automobiles with the flip on a star (if’n you follow my drift) assuming you’ve read about those ‘experiments’ that have been carried out in a few places over the past couple of years, including rural Colorado by one report a while back.
People are not conditioned to thinking for themselves, and yet on my checklist of features on any new automobile we might buy there is a very important one: No satellite connection.
While it’s true that satellite for entertainment purposes is a nice thing to have, or an XM subscription if you want a moving map display in your Lear Jet is nice, I’ve heard enough ‘buzz’ about satellites being able to ‘turn off’ cars (down to idle only) such that I have made a conscious decision not to buy such a beast.
By the same token, we now watch only ‘free to air’; channels using an FTA satellite system because the satellite providers kept wanting me to hook up a phone cord to my satellite receiver. While it’s true that’s how they transmit the information on PPV movies back to their billing office, I have nothing in writing that either bans them from tracking my other viewing habits, hours, and so on, and besides, there’s no way for me to audit their information. No, I don’t take that ‘they have cameras inside them’ seriously. Video takes more bandwidth.
That said, however, no satellite connection to the car, a whole bunch of disc ceramic capacitors on critical wiring in the car (to bypass stray or intentional RF energy) and a couple of ZapStop high speed diodes in the alternator/battery line to ground and I figure like that battery bunny on TeeVee…I’ll maybe be …still going….
“Lord o’ Goshen, George, however does this relate to economics or pitchforks?” you’re aptly wondering about now.
Ah… I bet you were going to wonder how it is that us taxpayers can pay for a whole space program and then have monthly satellite bills off transponders where we paid for the program development, probably the rocket launching and so forth? Well, no, my complaint is with things a bit more earthly: For example the headline that “About half of U.S. mortgages seen underwater by 2011.“
Not following me yet? Try this headline on for size: “Regions to make $43.7M TARP payment.” Which means that (if the coffee is working) the federal government is getting 5% on its preferred stock investment ala TARP while regular investors who can’t throw $3.5 billion around have been getting 5% if I am penciling this out correctly. But says over here that (if I have the coffee working) that regular investors are looking at a forward yield of 0.90% – nine-tenth’s of one percent.
Not to pick on Regions – a good operation – but seems to me it’s symptomatic of how government operates lately. No, it’s not an Obama administration deal, either. It was started by Hank Paulson and that Alan deity knight fellow before him…Easy Al the Bubble Pal.
You & I may have the concept that ‘government is of the people, by the people and for the people’ but here lately, I’m getting a lot of email from folks wondering how come government (and those we elect) have been ignoring the will of the people so much. Seems to be a building trend ever since the Johnson administration came up with it’s laundry list of ‘entitlements’ which, though it may have seemed like a good idea at the time, we ought to remember has to be paid for, and guess who gets stuck with that?
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We’re in a very curious time now when the right wingers are whipping up anger at congressional town hall meetings (although not without reason) and the only course left congress is to try and paper things over just long enough to hand it back to the republicorps.
But when you get right (as in directionally) down to it, the problems of America are not right versus left, democons versus republicorps at all.
It’s that we the people let government get out of control and let special interests start buying their way (voters be damned) in Washington.
It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, but it brings me to this morning’s point: If you look at who pays for government and who gets a return on that investment, it’s mostly we pay and some ‘they’ reaps the benefit. Which explains why satellite rates for home TV are so high, why government can turn off cars, get 5% of its money, and fix things so that insiders and Gold in Sacks kind of outfits make out like bandits, while half of all U.S. mortgages will be underwater by 2011.
Not too much to be done about it, but it at least lays out the playing field so as I do the play-by-play on what’s ahead, you’ll know why one team is grumbling down in the locker room about sharpening up pitchforks.
Imitation and Theft
We keep seeing outfits pop up that are giving away free (modified) copies of the predictive linguistics reports out of www.halfpasthuman.com. All kinds of modifications it seems being promoted by the minions of the PTB who don’t want the originals of the work out there.
Just a reminder: If the so-called report you got was free, it’s probably been modified in some way – a slimy (not to mention illegal) thing at best and an attempt to memeer (induce various thought viruses) to influence your otherwise clear thinking on things. So if you’re planning to rip us off, sorry, but if you can’t afford the lousy $10 bucks, I suppose you deserve whatever modified/cocked up crap you get. Does play nicely into the PTB’s efforts though. But, if you want to be part of the PTB’s minion class, go for it. We’re keeping track of who the sold-out folks are and there are at least half a dozen marked up/changed versions out and about now…
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Got a real kick out of one such PTB-rip-off site that portrays me as CFO of the web bot project. Just so you know: Cliff owns the project outright and I have no financial interest in it at all and don’t make a dime off it. That said, we are friends and exchange info and I contribute to the project because it has high value. But ROFLMAO…of we must be pissing the PTB off but good. (Another telltale: the disinfo sites usually don’t have any contact info and are run by folks ostensibly outside the USA because (no surprise here) we have lawyers, too…the term stupid dickheads comes to mind, but it’s a little early for that kind of talk…)
Still, I expect most of the freeloaders and shallow thinkers won’t realize how they’re being played.
Some Kids ARE Thinking
Two signs that kids may actually have one or two more brain cells than we give them credit for: One is the headline in the Guardian that “It’s SO over: cool cyberkids abandon social networking sites”. Duh. Tweets is near twits in my dictionary of life.
Other thing is that at least one parent I know has explained recent (to a son) that “If you want to go visit your girlfriend and need money for the trip, you better get on the phone and rustle up some work.” Seems so obvious once you grow up to the point of realizing that mom & dad ain’t gonna provide everything and if you have big wants, hard work is the first step to getting them.
Strange as this may seem if you’re under 18, parents are not full-o-crap.
Unless, of course, you happen to be an alien wandering around the woods of Florida. Perspective has a lot to do with it.
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Send comments to george@ure.net
The UrbanSurvival Mall:
Peoplenomics This Week:
5-Years Out and 10 Days in October
Now that last week’s report on how banks are, in effect, swapping write-downs and garnering tax credits as their reward for crashing the housing market has been confirmed, we can put enough pieces of the Great Puzzle of Life on the table, using diverse source materials, that a kind of ‘rough out’ (as some tradesmen would describe it) of the future can be tabled. When I tell you that this ‘rough out’ draws on diverse backgrounds, everything from Federal Reserve notes on the economy, news clips from major media including the BBC and even old UFO-studies books, don’t be alarmed. Nor should my looking to the recent “The Shape of Things to Come”, the follow-on to the ALTA series from www.halfpasthuman.com, which only a few people have figured is connected to the much earlier book “The Shape of Things to Come by H.G. Wells.” Grab your tinfoil hat. We’re off this week on a major dot-connecting mission, which should things collapse as expected this fall, might be a dim star to steer by on what for most will be very dark times indeed.
More For Subscribers Subscription Information
MyGroPonics
My commodity broker JB Slear has nailed a great solution for people who living in apartments and condos who want to become at least partially self-reliant when it comes to raising food: An ultra-high efficiency micro-hydroponics system using readily available local parts. 25-pages and plenty of pictures to turn you into a farmer no matter where you live (Great if you have back problems, too…)…or if you just want to fill up the back yard with MyGroPonics trees and feed the neighborhood… $10 bucks here…
Maxa-Cookie Manager
The newest version of Maxa-Tools Cookie Manager (MCM) is available. Existing users of MAXA Cookie Manager Pro use the update button in the about window, all others can download the Standard version here:
Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those pesky ‘non-browser specific’ cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster. I took over 1,000 cookies off my son’s machine that he swore was clean. It ran much faster.
Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world.
Help US Go Viral
UrbanSurvival has a dandy growth rate, but sadly, it’s nothing like swine (hybrid) flu’s growth rate. However, if you’d like to sicken the PowersThatBe, just click here for a tool that may help. (It’ll pop up an email window if you use Outlook (or a few other email programs) then simply send a link to everyone on your distro list…
“Live on $10,000″ Updated
What? You haven’t ordered the ebook “How to Live on $10,000 a year — or less”? Suit yourself. We’re all going to live it shortly, anyway. I just thought you might like a heads up by reading about how to do it before you get pink-slipped. But, suit yourself OR visit www.liveontenthousand.com or, click one of the following button:
Yep – still possible. I also took a bit of additional material that was pertinent from recent issues of Peoplenomics and included them. The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the aforementioned dollar amount, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you make a little more than that and do some active savings… Click here for the page with more details on it.
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Last week’s report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)
