Tuesday, January 31, 2017
The Fix-Nothing Farce of Symbolic Politics
The status quo in the U.S. is nothing but an interconnected network of rackets run by protected technocrats to benefit a plutocracy of wealthy insiders and their political-class lackeys. These rackets--higher education, healthcare, defense weaponry, the corporate media, and on and on--are nothing but institutionalized extortion, embezzlement and fraud, systems that enrich the top 5% at the expense of the bottom 95%....
That's how the fraud and the rackets are enforced: get each camp to view the other as the enemy in the great coliseum of symbolic, do-nothing politics. Mix and stir, then stand back and continue skimming the nation's wealth in whatever racket is buttering your bread while the two camps distract themselves with symbolic battles.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan17/symbolic-politics1-17.html
That's how the fraud and the rackets are enforced: get each camp to view the other as the enemy in the great coliseum of symbolic, do-nothing politics. Mix and stir, then stand back and continue skimming the nation's wealth in whatever racket is buttering your bread while the two camps distract themselves with symbolic battles.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan17/symbolic-politics1-17.html
Monday, January 30, 2017
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Epic – Is Team Trump Baiting Liberal Media and Refugee Protesters By Using Obama’s Own Policy?…
In 2013 President Obama suspended refugees from Iraq for six months. • In 2015 Congress passed, and Obama signed, a law restricting visas from states of concern; • and in 2016 Obama’s DHS, Jeh Johnson, expanded those restrictions. …. all President Trump is doing is taking the same action as Obama 2013, and applying Visa restrictions to the nation states Obama selected in 2015 and 2016.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/01/28/epic-is-team-trump-baiting-liberal-media-and-refugee-protesters-by-using-obamas-own-policy/#more-127798
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/01/28/epic-is-team-trump-baiting-liberal-media-and-refugee-protesters-by-using-obamas-own-policy/#more-127798
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Chesterton on Family
"Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the state. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city; the gods of the hearth" (Everlasting Man, 143).
Engels on family?
Engels on family?
Friday, January 27, 2017
Look for cooperative opportunities
I have been living in a land co-op for 31 years and the experience has been most rewarding. In fact, I owe my homestead lifestyle to the co-op model, since my wife and I could never have afforded the collective land we share with others.
Cooperative living arrangements are nothing new, although land co-ops are not as common as housing co-ops which proliferate in cities and towns. But friends can pool their resources and look for land which can accommodate multiple dwellings. Shared orchard and garden space can make food production practical when more hands are available. In our co-op, some of us specialize in growing certain crops which we share with others in exchange for a share of their specialty crop. It makes the gardening process much easier when you can focus on a few crops rather than trying to produce the many crops which provide a varied diet.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
What Would a Labor-Centered Economy Look Like?
In our credit-cartel-state form of capitalism, money is borrowed into existence at the top of the wealth-power pyramid, in central and private banks. Some modest amount of this new money trickles down the pyramid, but as you can see, not very much trickles down to all the people doing all the work that isn't profitable, or to all the people without access to the nearly-free-money that's available to those at the very top of the pyramid.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan17/labor-economy1-17.html
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan17/labor-economy1-17.html
What Was ‘America First’?
According to this consensus, U.S. involvement in that earlier war arose because of the machinations of over-mighty financiers and plutocrats—what we might call the 1 percent—who deployed vicious and false propaganda from London and Paris. Also complicit were the arms dealers, for whom the phrase “merchants of death” now became standard.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-was-america-first/
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-was-america-first/
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Education Department report finds billions spent under Obama had 'no impact' on achievement
The Obama administration pumped more than $7 billion into an education program, first authorized under President George W. Bush, that had no impact on student achievement – according to a report released by the Department of Education in the final days of the 44th president’s term.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/25/education-department-report-finds-billions-spent-under-obama-had-no-impact-on-achievement.html
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/25/education-department-report-finds-billions-spent-under-obama-had-no-impact-on-achievement.html
Why America's Healthcare (Sickcare) System Is Broken and Unfixable
Large-scale rackets like sickcare cannot survive without a Central State that collects taxes and funnels the proceeds to the racketeers, who of course have bought political influence with their plundered profits
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly14/sickcare7-14.html
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly14/sickcare7-14.html
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Monday, January 23, 2017
labor's share of GDP (economic output)
In today's use, cultural Marxism describes the overt erosion of traditional values--the family, community, religious faith, property rights and limited central government--in favor of ... an expansive, all-powerful central state that replaces community, faith and property rights with statist control mechanisms that enforce dependence on the state....
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan17/collapse-Left1-17.html
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan17/collapse-Left1-17.html
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
John Jeavons: Blazing the Trail of Biointensive Agriculture
Generally, to grow food organically, you have to do just two things: Don't use chemical fertilizers, and don't use pesticides. You may be depleting the soil just as fast as a chemical farmer would. Consequently, the food may not always be very nutritious. After all, if you're not building nutrients in the soil, they won't be in your crops.
Organic food, in some instances, may even be toxic. An organic farmer may add a beneficial amendment like manure. But if that manure isn't fully composted, it can contain excessive nitrates—in a form that's easily picked up by a leaf crop like lettuce. So some organic lettuce could possibly give you nitrate poisoning.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/john-jeavons-biointensive-agriculture-zmaz90jfzshe
Friday, January 20, 2017
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Want to Know Why Trump Won? Just Ask His Supporters By Robert Oscar Lopez
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/01/want_to_know_why_trump_won_just_ask_his_supporters.html#ixzz4WDrEXmoS Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Monday, January 16, 2017
Sunday, January 15, 2017
In the Shopping Cart of a Food Stamp Household: Lots of Soda
The federal government provides SNAP benefits to roughly 23 million households each month, many of them single-parent homes at or below the poverty line.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/well/eat/food-stamp-snap-soda.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/well/eat/food-stamp-snap-soda.html
Saturday, January 14, 2017
American millennials paid 20% lower salaries than baby boomers at same age, report reveals
When baby boomers were young, they owned more homes and had amassed assets worth twice as much as young people of today.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/u-s-millennials-paid-20-salaries-baby-boomers-article-1.2946195
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/u-s-millennials-paid-20-salaries-baby-boomers-article-1.2946195
Friday, January 13, 2017
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
The outgoing president leaves a loaded gun in the Oval Office.
As a presidential candidate, Obama made clear that, along with "dumb wars," he firmly opposed unauthorized wars. That December, in a candidate survey on executive power conducted by reporter Charlie Savage, Sen. Obama stated plainly: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
http://reason.com/archives/2017/01/10/goodbye-obama
http://reason.com/archives/2017/01/10/goodbye-obama
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Rebuild the Fed From the Bottom Up
Today the institution of the Fed is as intellectually entrenched as it has ever been. It has become the largest employer of people with doctorates in economics. It has hired or contracted with more than 1,000 of these economists, who actively endeavor to validate, rather than question, orthodox theories and policies.
http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/DanielleDiMartinoBooth/trump-fed-yellen-trump/2017/01/06/id/767154/
http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/DanielleDiMartinoBooth/trump-fed-yellen-trump/2017/01/06/id/767154/
Monday, January 9, 2017
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Saturday, January 7, 2017
I Can’t Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems
The same year that MIDNIGHT appeared on the STAAR test (2013), Texas paid Pearson some $500 million bucks to administer the tests, reportedly without proper training to monitor the contract.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad-i-cant-answer-these_us_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad-i-cant-answer-these_us_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341
Friday, January 6, 2017
Thursday, January 5, 2017
The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and ...
Russ Rymer's sobering essay “Integration's Casualties,” which appeared in the ... began with the succinct subtitle, “Segregation Helped Black Business. Civil Rights Helped Destroy It.” Significantly, thirty years after the height of the Black ...
Trickle Up
According to Robert E. Weems, Jr.: “White-Owned businesses, rather than unfettered black consumers, were the primary beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”4
http://web.stanford.edu/~write/papers/THE%20ECONOMICS%20OF%20CIVIL%20RIGHTS%20REVOLUTION.pdf
Trickle Up
According to Robert E. Weems, Jr.: “White-Owned businesses, rather than unfettered black consumers, were the primary beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”4
http://web.stanford.edu/~write/papers/THE%20ECONOMICS%20OF%20CIVIL%20RIGHTS%20REVOLUTION.pdf
The Trillion Dollar African American Consumer Market: Economic Empowerment or Economic Dependency?
By the mid-1960s, African American consumer activism contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Among other things, this landmark legislation prohibited racial discrimination in the realm of public accommodations (including hotels, restaurants, theaters, sport arenas, etc.). Ironically, succeeding decades would illustrate the ability of white-owned businesses, rather than unfettered black consumers, to benefit from the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In 1969, black marketing research expert D. Parke Gibson wrote The $30 Billion Negro, whose title reflected collective African American annual spending power at that moment in time. Since then, aggregate black net income has dramatically increased crossing the $1 trillion dollar threshold in 2013.
On the surface, the significant increase in African American buying power since the 1960s announced that blacks have made significant economic “progress.” Yet a closer look at the nuances of African American consumerism since the 1960s suggests that African American spending power might be better characterized as spending weakness. For instance, although blacks have acquired more money to spend since the 1960s, there has been a simultaneous decline and disappearance of historic black-owned enterprises.
On the surface, the significant increase in African American buying power since the 1960s announced that blacks have made significant economic “progress.” Yet a closer look at the nuances of African American consumerism since the 1960s suggests that African American spending power might be better characterized as spending weakness. For instance, although blacks have acquired more money to spend since the 1960s, there has been a simultaneous decline and disappearance of historic black-owned enterprises.
Calhoun on Precedent
I place myself one higher
grounds—I stand on the immovable principle that, on a question of law and
Constitution, in a deliberative assembly, there is no room—no place for
precedents. To admit them would be to make the violation of
to-day the law and Constitution of to-morrow ; and to substitute in the
place of the written and sacred will of the people and the legislature, the
infraction of those charged with the execution of the laws. Such, in
my opinion, is the relative force of law and constitution on one side, as
compared with precedents on the other.
In the Senate, January 13, 1834
In the Senate, January 13, 1834
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Poverty Overview
There has been marked progress on reducing poverty over the past
decades. The world attained the first Millennium Development Goal
target—to cut the 1990 poverty rate in half by 2015—five years ahead of
schedule, in 2010.
http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview
http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview
The eradication of poverty is becoming a reality.
At the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, the world’s countries
set the goal of halving the 1990 incidence of extreme poverty by 2015.
This was met five years ahead of the deadline.
http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/and-the-poor-shall-rise/19146#.WG1qjrksDOt
http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/and-the-poor-shall-rise/19146#.WG1qjrksDOt
Federal Debt Climbs $1,054,647,941,626.91 in 2016
During President Barack Obama’s time in office the federal debt has increased by $9,349,949,902,134.72—rising from $10,626,877,048,913.08 on Jan. 20, 2009, the day of Obama’s inauguration, to $19,976,826,951,047.80 on the last day of 2016.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/federal-debt-climbs-105464794162691-2016
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/federal-debt-climbs-105464794162691-2016
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Willie Horton: A Fake News Story That Refuses to Die By Jack Cashill
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/01/willie_horton_a_fake_news_story_that_refuses_to_die.html#ixzz4Ui9Npik3 Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
Monday, January 2, 2017
Violence in the Halls, Disorder in the Malls The holiday hooliganism traces back to the Obama administration’s destructive efforts to undermine school discipline.
Interviews with teachers confirm the proposition that children from communities with high rates of family breakdown bring vast amounts of disruptive anger to school, especially girls.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/violence-halls-disorder-malls-14920.html
http://www.city-journal.org/html/violence-halls-disorder-malls-14920.html
Sunday, January 1, 2017
John Wayne tribute to Harry Carey
Western star Harry Carey died in 1947. Director John Ford cast Carey's wife (Olive Carey) as Mrs. Jorgensen (the mother) and Carey's son (Harry Carey Jr.) as one of the sons (Brad) as a tribute to Carey. In the closing scene with John Wayne framed in the doorway, Wayne holds his right elbow with his left hand in a pose that Carey fans would recognize as one that he often used. Wayne later stated he did it as a tribute to Carey. Off-camera, Olive watched.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049730/trivia
Harry Carey (January 16, 1878 – September 21, 1947) was an American actor and one of silent film's earliest superstars. One of his best known performances is as the President of the Senate in the drama film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor....
Carey was born "Henry DeWitt Carey II" in the Bronx, New York, a son of Henry DeWitt Carey,[1] (A newspaper source gives the actor's name as "Harry DeWitt Carey II").[2] a prominent lawyer and judge of the New York Supreme Court, and his wife Ella J. (Ludlum). He grew up on City Island, Bronx.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Carey_(actor)
Harry Carey's description of City Island when he was a boy in the Eighties made a hoarse and mildly profane pastorale. It sounded like pleasant passages out of Huck Finn.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E01E4D81F3CE533A25754C0A9639C946193D6CF&legacy=true
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049730/trivia
Harry Carey (January 16, 1878 – September 21, 1947) was an American actor and one of silent film's earliest superstars. One of his best known performances is as the President of the Senate in the drama film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor....
Carey was born "Henry DeWitt Carey II" in the Bronx, New York, a son of Henry DeWitt Carey,[1] (A newspaper source gives the actor's name as "Harry DeWitt Carey II").[2] a prominent lawyer and judge of the New York Supreme Court, and his wife Ella J. (Ludlum). He grew up on City Island, Bronx.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Carey_(actor)
Harry Carey's description of City Island when he was a boy in the Eighties made a hoarse and mildly profane pastorale. It sounded like pleasant passages out of Huck Finn.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E01E4D81F3CE533A25754C0A9639C946193D6CF&legacy=true
