Conspiracy Thinking

An acquaintance (I like to think 'friend', but we seldom agree) has recently advised me to 'stop my conspiracy thinking as we all die in the long run'. Damned hard advice to follow....for me, at least.

History, and I'm no serious history buff, seems full of conspiracy. It seems, by definition, that every time anyone seeks to gain, with the cooperation of others, that to which he is not necessarily entitled, by means of subterfuge, it qualifies as a conspiracy, particularly if it is outside the law and at expense to the welfare of a majority of the population.

Caesar seemed, by some accounts, to have earned a prominent place in Rome. Done in by a conspiracy.

Hitler would likely have had less success if his plans had been made in the open light of day. His planning required conspiracy.

More recently, the financial collapse seems to have been the brainchild of many bankers, brokers, and politicians who knew quite well that they were selling, literally, houses of cards.

With someone paying a broadcaster like Rush Limbaugh to do what amounts to preaching against the doctrines of ecology (and common sense), the continuation of national policy more in the interests of corporations than people, never-ending devotion to an oil-based economy, and the failure to notice the dangers of nuclear power, when options to all of these situations exist, even now, simply must be the result of people who conspire to gain wealth and power at the expense of humanity.

So, I ask, "Is my acquaintance really a better friend than I know? Is he saying there are no conspiracies, or is he saying it is pointless to speak out against such things because nothing, really, will ever change?"

I do know one thing. Mr Obama is not the president we elected. He is the president he conspired to be.

That's life.

I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate,
A poet, a pawn and a king.

....not to mention a farmer, a driver, a scooper, a washer,...about everything.

Most of us have worked a few minimum wage jobs in our time or, in the case of waitresses, less than minimum wage. Generally speaking, we were proud of what we earned, worked hard to do our jobs well, and enjoyed what we did, knowing as we did, it was temporary.

Now I've just watched "Inside Job"

http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/

and, when elected, I will institute a new minimum wage law that will set the minimum wage locally for each county, borough, or whatever you have where you live. It will vary according to average cost of living across the area, and will include enough to buy or rent a place to live, transportation allowance enough to buy (only) an electric car or to take public transportation,

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html

food, health insurance, two weeks vacation a year, a savings account, a few extras, and a ticket to visit grandma in Schenectady once a year.

Opponents will say this will drive up inflation. I think it will do the opposite by keeping companies from hiring people to do work no one wants to do. If you can't afford an employee, maybe you should work yourself. It will also serve to keep the prices of homes, cars, and insurance down a bit...if big ticket items cost more, the COLA just goes up on the minimum wage.

I'll also put a strict limit on stock market investing. Companies will have to pay their employees (you know, those folks who do the work) what they formerly paid in dividends. No more getting free money just because you already have a lot of money. If you want to gamble, invest in a start-up, take a nice profit if it's successful, and get out of the way. No more leeches just because it's legal.

There will be a set maximum ratio of salary between workers and management, and bonuses paid to management will also be paid equally, percentage-wise, to employees. Think of the loyalty, quality workmanship, and feelings of personal identification with ones work that would result in such a system.

It's called 'having respect for employees and wage earners'. A very few companies have understood this over the years, and the respect went both ways.

Don't forget to vote outside the party lines next election. Mr. Obama sold us out to the bankers.

I don't get it.

I read, rather than watched, Obama's state of the union address, and totally ignored anyone who wanted to analyze it for me until after the reading was finished.

I liked most of what I heard...of course, I wanted to like it. I admit it. I'd like to see a president move us into a new age of fiscal and societal responsibility. Do I believe it?

Not yet.

Although I heard nothing about developing nuclear power plants, I was a bit disappointed to see, among the three anecdotes relating positive values of Americans, one that so blatantly showed one of the huge problems in the United States.

We had a story about the rebuilding of a small town that was destroyed by a tornado, a story about a poor young girl writing to the president, and this one just doesn't seem to fit right,....a story about a man who gives away a $60 million bonus.

Now, Mr. Abess is not the point of my diatribe. He is certainly to be commended for his selfless act, though, if he had need of the money, I suspect he would not have done as he did.

I have railed for years about a newspaper article that mentioned a bank president, 20+ years ago, receiving a one year bonus of $5 million dollars. And this bonus was twelve times that.

That's the part I just don't get. No one, and I repeat... no one, I have have known, seen, talked to, heard of, smelt, felt, touched, read about, or in any other way sensed, thought of, or experienced, has been worth this kind of money,... and the system that gives away that sort of 'free' cash is, in some way, flawed. Period.

Both these examples are banks. Sure, banks are in business. But if they have this kind of 'extra' money, they are charging rates that are too high, or are not paying back enough to the people loaning them money. Bank penalties have done nothing but climb, for years, far outstripping pay scales, the cost of living, and the cost of doing business.

Don't misunderstand me....I love the freedom to go into business and to succeed or fail, .... make a pile of money, if you can. But what I really love is a small business, or a large business that thinks small...cares about its people, shares its profits with the people who make it successful, treats the public as if they were respected customers, and charges what it needs to make a decent profit...no more, no less. Oh, yeah...and strives for quality.

Once a company, or corporation, begins to think it deserves special consideration for its 'needs', starts to meddle in government to the detriment of the consumer, and finds its products in need of excessive advertising to make a sale, its useful life should be considered over.

I'm all for new and tough regulations on the financial and every other industry. I'm all for kicking corporate donations out of politics. Let them do like the rest of us....vote. They are a small number of people buying out-sized consideration for their own world-changing game. The issues of the world are too important to trust to people buying political favor.

And I wonder, with corporations being guaranteed the right to donate to the politician of their choice, which constitutional right of the 'individual' will they try to claim next?......the right to bear arms?

There just seems to be way too much money that people at the 'top' don't really know what to do with, so they throw it at other people who, though probably very good at what they do, aren't really worth multi-millions. Seriously.

I admit it....this part of what Americans put up with, I just don't get.