Corporate Jobs Suck: Witness the Slow Death of My Career

Fwd: Protestor Passes Note to Obama

2011-11-23T10:13:00.001-08:00

Protestor Passes Note to Obama

The note reads:

Mr. President: Over 4000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While bankers continue to destroy the American economy. You must stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.

http://imgupld.lunaticoutpost.com/graphic/images/2011/November/23/35B6_4ECCF71A.jpg

Fwd: why some homes sell faster

2011-11-23T09:19:00.000-08:00

Subject: why some homes sell faster

<p><a href='http://1bog.org/blog/infographic-why-some-homes-sell-faster/'><img title='Infographic: Why Some Homes Sell Faster' src='http://1bog.org/files/2011/11/infographic-why-some-homes-sell-faster.png' width='' height='' alt='' /></a></p><a href='http://1bog.org/'>Home Solar Power Discounts</a> - One Block Off the Grid

Protesting At Home! OCW from Home!

2011-11-20T10:02:00.000-08:00

Great Work!

Mike McQueary's America

2011-11-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

In 2011, the American Middle Class is metaphorically a 10 year old boy, recruited by Jerry Sandusky's, Second Mile Charity. Mike McQueary represents our system of justice, and Joe Paterno represents our morality, that inner voice that serves as a conscious guide.
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Simply put, we American's, have a misplaced reverence for our institutions--corporate, educational, and religious. And when unthinkable conduct by those within these institutions surfaces, we demonstrate our lack of moral compass. We deny. We suppress. We cover up the dirty nastiness so as to protect the institutions at all costs. Almost as if our brains have turned to mush from all the years bad TV programs and high-fructose corn syrup.

McQueary reported hearing body slapping from the shower room and walked in on Sandusky forcing himself on the 10 year old boy's anus. Following that revelation, head coach Joe Paterno failed to escalate to law enforcement McQueary's report.

For 9 years after the rape, Sandusky was permitted regular access to Penn State's gym, fields, and locker rooms. This access legitimized the charity that Sandusky used to recruit his youthful victims. Sandusky had a lively career as Penn State's favorite pedophile.

Nevertheless, a sense of collective shame was not to be.

The behavior of the student-body when Paterno was fired speaks to the broader culture of general corruption. Similarly, the Catholic Clergy sex-abuse scandal, where every bit of energy and effort was spent to cover up and to protect the perpetrators, which had the unintended consequence of ensuring more and more victims, and more cover-ups. Just as Bankers socialize their losses when their incredibly risky behavior leads to losses, Sandusky's behavior was covered up and perpetuated.

The institution had to be protected above all else.

Compare the Penn State's failure to act, failure to use the rule of law to punish and protect the offender, to Wall Street's cabal of plunderers and economic terrorists. They are protected by the State's police force, while criminal behavior is rewarded by obscene bonuses and tax-payer bailouts and tax cuts for those that are least in need.

I hear the sound of slapping bodies in the ear of my mind.

It is not a leap to consider that moral bankruptcy on one level contributes to moral bankruptcy on another level. Just as Paterno and Sandusky placed loyalty the Penn State Football program above their legal and moral duties, we have seen the American system of justice defer to 1% of Wall Street. The Corporate plunder of 2007-2008 also goes unpunished and unprosecuted.

Is the culture of criminality a coincidence? I think not.

Consider how football is represented as a model for corporate team models, and traditionally was thought to be an instructive and character building endeavor. Football was a metaphor for success in life as well as in business.

But it is a lie, a big lie. College football is an odious greed-fueled racket. It chews up and spits out semi-professional players who in most incidents, only pretend to be real students. Everyone inch of College Football is corrupted, and it serves as a conduit for sucking dollars from brand merchandise and TV revenues. Coaches make million dollar salary's while adjunct professors cannot even get a dental plan. Bankers make millions in bonus, while the teachers pay for class room supplies our of their 40k salary's. This is fairness, American style. We've grown accustom to the body slapping and the boy screaming for someone to help make it stop. Looking in the mirror has never been this painful.

It is as if Sandusky has his hands on our collective genitals, and the Coach seems not to notice or care.

We embrace and celebrate lawlessness as a culture and as a country. It points to a culture that has no behavioral boundaries to cross. It's a culture of fakeness: fake corporate values, fake warrior religious culture, fake corporate responsibility, and fake sense of fairness and fake morality and fake Democracy.

And it makes for dam fine entertainment......

Fwd: Going On Strike

2011-11-18T15:09:00.001-08:00

"That, to me, is what Occupy Wall Street is addressing. People don't know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: F**K THIS S**T! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values. [...] But now, I get it. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something."

To use Taibbi's wording, OWS is about "going on strike from one's own culture".

From a Comment on Barry Ritzhold's, Big Picture. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/you-are-the-98/#comments

Why would anyone want to go on "strike against one's (our) own culture'?

After all our culture is a manifestation of our American Exceptionalism. In our exceptional wisdom and demonstrating exceptional discernment with respect to the infrastructure on which our culture is based.

Here are my views on why anyone would want to protest against our culture:

I define today's culture as one of excessively indulgent and obsessed with cheap materialistic consumerism, indulgent in dietary appetites, and cowardly beyond any generation of Americans in our inability to collectively enforce rules of law, and on micro level, we are a nation of cheats and scammers. And we are not even that concerned about our collective direction either.

I live in the armpit of the suburban misadventure and misappropriation of our nations assets in a mammoth endeavor to suburbanize and sprawl cookie cutter track homes and strip malls and big box store across the landscape. Trillion of dollars in the last decade has been squandered on a mode of living, a misadventure, that is both unsustainable as it is socially and spiritually impoverishing.

A trip through my community proves my point: strip malls with endless nail salons and fast food and grocery and day care centers. These underwhelming features are punctuated by office condo's inhabited mostly by doctor offices and ancillary medical business of the great medical industrial complex, more on this in a future post. Then the big box super stores and big box restaurants where you can get a plate of laboratory designed food stuffs that taste EXACTLY identical whether purchased and consumed in New York, Florida, California, and Washington.

The drove of corporate clone crappy genetically modified-food restaurants give way to 4 Super Stores in a 3 mile radius of my home. Walmart's, Target's, Ikea's, and more Wal-Marts. Large telemarketing call centers complete the landscape, where the US corporations indenture the local population, me included, into servitude that they call labor or work. Those of us that are really fucked up and brainwashed, call it the American Dream.

Seems my friends and associates and neighbors and children's friends and their family's, oscillate from retail center to job to school to church and to the doctor's. It is how we American's express our freedom of choice. Our profound choices between Walmart Super Center and Target Super Center and Costco Super Center. Then we get to choose what credit card we wish to enrich with fees, so we can buy our Cheese Doodles.

We American's have amazing freedom of choice when it comes to choosing the medical care we need to get the pills (enormous choice here) we need to keep our cholesterol low while eating hormone and antibiotic packed trans-fat producing food-creatures. Collectively do we every ask ourselves if the choices have consequences.

Our economic choices are also immense, yet indistinguishable. As a college graduate, and professionally trained financial professional, I can choose to make 30k per year at any of 8-10 call centers that pay the same, treat employees like cattle on conveyor belt, rolled in to call center customer service or what passes for customer service in today's economy. Yet these are the fortunate workers--the unfortunate ones are working for cash under the table with not insurances and they work and sometimes get paid, if they deserve it or not.

After all, it is their choice.

Or is it?

I don't feel like I have a choice. I feel like I have fake choices.

It really doesn't matter which TBTF bank I do customer service for, does it? Does it matter what big box store I patronize? What institution I deposit my money?

Point is, if our choices are fake, our freedom and liberty is fake, and the pillars of the entire charade crumble.

The OCW movement is calling attention to the Bie Lie of freedom of choice within a crappy culture.

As the commenter says, "people want to go someplace for at least five minutes where minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something".

I too want different values, something different to do on free time, something meaningful to do for work, some public spaces that are not dominated by strip malls and parking lots, places to eat that reflect the amazing ethnic diversity of my community, and a mode of living driven by needs of the community than fueling the corporate overlord that have sold us a crap culture, with the label of Exceptionalism.

An Exchange with my Republican Friend....

2011-11-12T12:32:00.000-08:00

"....you gotta tell me whats going on with you. You used to not be so negative but lately you just sound like a whiner. It pains me to read some of your posts lately due to how negative they are. No country is perfect but you keep slamming this one. If you are really that negative about the US, why dont you leave? Go to the country you feel is perfect. I am sure they will let a smart and motivated guy like you in. I dont mean that in a mean way, but if I hated this country that much, I would pack my family up and leave."

Greg, if you wish to make a sufficiently generous donation to the my Expatriation Fund, there are many first world countries where I'd love to live, or at least visit on an extended basis. If you're feeling particularly philanthropic, a relocation donation that would fund my family's new life in let's say, Australia, Europe, or any of a dozen Asian countries. I celebrate you and I officially take you up on your offer--it'll be worth it--it'll keep me from voting. See how the glass is half full?

Really, any thing I've posted or said or whatever bunches up your panties, please bring it up, and tell me what's really up. Make a case, show me some evidence. Point out the error of my ways. I'll always listen. Seriously.

By no means do I believe that I hold some ultimate truth, that it is my way or the highway, and anybody that disagrees with me is going to hell, or should go to hell, or should move somewhere else.... that whole "love it or leave it" argument is so Limbaugh 1996.

Hey, I could be wrong about everything: GWB was a terrific President and it was genius to go to war in Iraq, and sectarian differences between Sunni and Shiite don't matter, "We Will Be Greeted As Liberators", WMD's all over, and repealing Glass Steagall is great for the economy, Fannie caused the financial crisis, 1% rates don't make bubbles, ZIRP is good, Perry is a genius, and Mitt Romney lives the courage of his convictions, tax cuts increase revenue, deficits don't matter, the world is 6k years old--Hey, maybe Obama WAS born in Kenya, and is a Muslim, and hates white people. Show me---I'm open to all of it! Do I still have to move?

Does everyone that disagrees with you have to move? Who decides? Isn't this ridiculous?

You've taught me more about Conservatism than any one person, so I know it's a waste of time to post links and facts and so forth, since only ideology matters.

And hey, I think it is cool for you to believe, and to have, any kind of politics, and say anything you want, and everyone should be cool with differences. But I have noticed that many of my Conservative brothers and sisters have been a little on edge recently. The Republican President candidates are exceptionally uninspiring, they have tipped into extremist irrelevance, only to sputter into fits of self reinforcing madness. It's only a matter of short time till Republicans become the Whigs of the 21 Century--(quick history fact--Whigs went extinct/became irrelevant. no link provided) Your nominee Romney was pandering to occupy protesters the other day!

I feel for you, and worry what may become of your, Obama Derangement Syndrome when you have to endure another 4 long years. But at least we will have Michelle Obama, and she's pretty cool.

Bye the way, the whole angry patriot thing 1. doesn't suit you and 2. is trite and worn AND I'm, rubber, you're glue, whatever you say, bounces off me and sticks on you!

I Am Back, for now

2011-10-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

I started this blog, during a spell of unemployment back in 2008. I quit blogging when I got a job. More on the job later....

I've grown frusterated with politics, and do not intend to "pick up where I left off."

I intend to post a couple times a week, and I intend to be honest. I intend to be real. I intend to not engage in any writing that is harmful to anyone else, critical OK, harmful and petty, NO more.

The last few years have taught me much, has changed my life direction, and hopefully gained some small measure of enlightnment, I hope.

http://youtu.be/3NYTtfQVw1c

Support the Jobs Bill

2008-10-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

Donation Drive for Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher

2008-10-16T09:17:00.000-07:00

PLEASE, LET US PUT OUR PARTISAN DIFFERENCES ASIDE AND DONATE TO JOE THE PLUMBER WURZELBACH.

COME ON AMERICA, THE MAN IS HURTING, HE ONLY MAKES $250,000 + PER YEAR. LET'S SHOW AMERICAN GENEROUSITY AND HELP OUT JOE THE PLUMBER.

PLEASE DONATE.

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/joe-plumber-more-joe-keating-family-

Is "Plumber Joe" a Keating?

James

What is the Economy Like In Your Town

2008-05-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

Thank you for borrowing my children's future for a cheap political point.

Testing

2008-05-16T14:11:00.001-07:00

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

Infliation's Little Parts and Interactive Graph

2008-05-04T18:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/03/business/20080403_SPENDING_GRAPHIC.html

You Should Be Very Angry...

2008-05-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

Love these protestors. Anyone see this on the 'News'?

I Just Dislike Her

2008-05-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

I can not put my finger on the source of my distain.

Fake Job Adds: American's Need Not Apply

2008-04-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

Howard Beale: "Do Something"

2008-04-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

Jim Rogers--Big Mortgage Company Bailed Out--Why?

2008-03-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Here is what Jim Rogers says on why Bear Stearns was bailed out:

"You know the reason they did it this way was because, if Bear Stearns had to declare bankruptcy, you'd realize that Bear Stearns paid out billions of dollars in bonuses in January - six weeks ago. If he let them go into bankruptcy, they all would have had to send back their bonuses.

This is what they're doing, they're doing it so they don't have to give back their bonuses. That's why they didn't put them into bankruptcy. Jamie Dimon has gotten a great deal because the Federal Reserve is paying for it. The Federal Reserve is using taxpayer money to buy a bunch of Bear Stearns traders' Mazeratis."

I want to know why those that need it the least, get the most bail out help? The little guy goes homeless, hungry, and then to debtor's prision.

And You Thought You Had Budget Problems....

2008-03-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

Mental Health Break--Get a Tissue--You Will Need It

2008-03-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

James Howard Kunstler Nails It

2008-03-11T19:12:00.000-07:00

The US faces a pretty stark choice right now: it can let the losers take their losses -- both the big institutions who created and traded in fraudulent securities, and all the "little guys" who borrowed too much money trying to get rich quick, or trying to live like the millionaires they see on TV. We can let them go down, and suffer the consequences of their bad choices (and maybe prosecute some of the culpable bankers and corporate executives), OR, in an effort to let these losers off the hook we can wreck the whole machinery of capital by making our medium-of-exchange worthless.

The people in charge -- both in and out of government -- can't face the losses, so for now they've apparently decided to wreck the currency. The dollar has lost two percent of its value against the Euro just in recent weeks, as cheap loans from the Fed pour into the black hole on Wall Street (never to be seen again). Other soft-pedalers in the media claim that the financial markets have "already priced in" yet another expected .75-point interest rate drop by the Fed this week, but I'm confident that such a move will only accelerate the dollar's vanishing act.

I'll admit, it's hard to believe what's going on in the American finance sector. But incredulity in the face of a rare catastrophe isn't the same as pretending that it's not happening. A whole flock of black swans is flying in front of the sun. Don't expect to work on your tan this month.

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/03/goping-going.html

Fed Fixes The Economy 3/11/2008 Party On!

2008-03-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

Pinstripped Bandits

2008-03-09T14:43:00.000-07:00

Between these 6 crooks they have made over $4 Billion Dollars in salary, compensation, bonus's and severances in 2007 alone.

If you are feeling guilty about not being able to make your minimum monthly payments this month, don't. These fat-cats are not going hungry.

The little over-sun-tanned midget, second to the right, Mozillo, he owes me over $6,000. He is not making any monthly payments to me whatsoever.

What is Fair?

2008-03-07T03:56:00.000-08:00

Socializing Countrywide's Losses While Privatizing Profits

2008-01-13T10:10:00.000-08:00

Brace yourselves, taxpayers of America. You're going to help Bank of America finance its $4 billion buyout of Countrywide.

After Mozillo has sold almost 1 Billion Dollars in CFC stock, he sells the defunct company to B of A, and you and your taxes will cover B of A losses on this one.....