A horrible true story of corporate greed:

So my parents were having hard times, in their marriage, financially, and so on. They missed a couple mortgage payments and had the bank take away our home-we'd had it for about 15 years or so (most of my childhood memories happened there). So they had to move out of their home. At this point they were still struggling to pay off other debts and were forced into filing for bankruptcy. A desparate measure taken to regain some normalcy in their lives. Well after they filed my mom received a mailer about a car sale. It was targeted directly at people who had recently been discharged from their bankruptcies. Basically it said something to the effect that they understood their circumstances and were prepared to offer either $5000.00 cash-back or 0% financing on the purchase of a car regardless of their debt history. Great deal, huh?

Well, my parents had since split up and my mom needed a car of her own, so it seemed the perfect opportunity. So she goes down and finds a car she really likes then starts the negotiating. Somehow she has just missed the fantastic offer. They no longer have the great financing or cash back, but what they can give her is a great 16.9% loan. So my mom takes it, she doesn't want to bother going through the stress and hassle of finding another car and dealer, especially knowing the whole time that she's probably lucky to get financing at all this soon after bankruptcy.

That was about six months ago or so. Well, just a couple weeks ago my mom got a letter. Apparently a number of people had received the same offer-with the same end results. They were now filing a class-action lawsuit against the dealership charging them of a classic "bait and switch" tactic targetting those who had just been discharged from bankruptcy. There were already about 50 people signed up. So my mom goes in to talk to the dealer, and he says it's not a big deal and that the most people are getting are about $1,500 each. He then offers to settle with her for $5,000 (the amount of the make-believe cashback offer). Of course if she settles out of court then she has to sign a contract that states the dealer admits no wrong-doing, she won't sue for damages, and that contains a gag-order, that she not discuss any of the details of the 'alleged-crime.' This all rose my hackles because last year I read Ralph Nader's No Contest which is a 400 page book exactly about corporate abuse of the tort (civil lawsuit against a corporate abuse) system. I told my mom to go after him in the courts and to not accept any out of court settlement. First of all it denies her any punitive damages (over and beyond the actual cost of the crime), and secondly it is important that these people be publically tried and charged so others don't fall so easily into their trap. That's the danger of these settlement offers with their attached gag-orders-they let the crime go on for all those who don't happen to be a part of the lawsuit. Also, if the guy was already willing to fork over $5,000 just to keep my mom silent that is a very good sign that he is well aware he is going to lose this case. Go get 'em mom! Make those corporate bastards pay.

don't they? education, people. very important, but! institutionalized education is not all it's cracked up to be. the fact that it's crafted means it has a purpose beyond education. we need to teach our children, personally. education should be a family process which involves the imparting of knowledge from the senior members to the younger members. this is how we get knowledge which has something to do with circumstances instead of knowledge which imparts only faraway and inconsequential knowledge. it's great to know that a theory of relativity exists but much more important to realize that the factories are oppressing you, and always will. americans have learned that the important information has nothing to do with their own lives. this breeds apathy and disinterest. but education should be about things that matter. i really believe that this is a big part of so much dissatisfction with education. why should we expect people who barely have the necessities of life to have any interest in world politics, history or scientific thought? so, if you have kids, please invest in them, impart your knowledge, and don't trust any educational institution whose only purpose is to make you accept the sorry state of your existence.

sidenote: whoa Condi! what the hell wrong with you girl. you lookin a little stressed, baby! c'mon girl, relax abit, just tell the truth. get it off your chess...

that i want to talk about. i am tired of patriotic people who traipse about talking about how great america is for all of her vices. i say whatever. why is america so cool? i just ask myself, besides the fact that i was born here as oppossed to somewhere else, why are we such a great country? really, in the context of every other modern industrialized country we don't have much to brag about. You can maybe say that we were the exemplar for many of the changes (though I am not sure how far that flies), but even so right here right now (thank you again jesus) we are falling ever farther behind our contemporaries (education, wages, labor, prison population, corporate scandals, etc.). so i can't really understand this american pride thing. is the argument that i should honor the land because i happened to appear in its boundaries? in that respect why the fuck ain't i a beautiful indian? where are my flowing black tresses? and my wide lips, welcoming every papoose? instead i have lank blonde hair no lips to speak of and am oppressed when i raise my voice against the slaughtering of innocents abroad. halleluja! i guess i am just asking those who are 'proud to be american' why? give me some reasons. make me believe.

Government agency finds 71% of foreign-owned companies and 61% of U.S. firms paid no tax on profits. This study is a confimation of the same one done 5 years ago with similar results. So these multi-billion dollar profit-making machines are paying much less a percentage of their earnings than you or I to the Man. Also 94% of companies paid 5% or less of their earnings as taxes-damn fine tax rate! I don't even want to bother complaining. So there it is. Wish I was a corporation, being plain ole human makes me feel such the chump.

We went to see it last night. It's in German with subtitle. I liked it a lot. Nice to see some good ole Deutschland again. And to hear it, it's such a fun language. The theme is also pretty good, and although it's a somewhat hokey comedy, it deals with the reality of the people who lived in East Germany as the wall came down and their lives were turned upside down. What a strange time to live in. Socialism fading behind you, and the wide world of capitalism beckoning. Trading your role as citizen and comrade for consumer and producer. Awwww. Wie Toll!. So I would reccomend it for anyone who knows German or doesn't mind subtitles. Have fun.

Hells Yeah! Fun times. Though it started out much like any other Saturday at my house, it ended up being a blast. The spoons, they were aflyin'. The treats were neat as well. The frosting was a nice touch. Much more palatable. I can't wait till Mamaho finds the surprise I left for her. Oh how she's gonna love it. The troll in the attic is cuter than everyone says. He doesn't bite hard either. I wonder what happended to the artbomb attempt? Did it grow vagina wings and fly? Or a penis drill and dig. How droll. Say it for me Trisha "dro-oll". I really hate putting periods before quotation marks. So we go soon to fabulous Nonna's for some good cookins. Ummmmm

Is it so wrong. I didn't feel all that well yesterday, a little headache, a sore throat, annoyed from answering dumb questions at my job. So I went to bed. Straight home and under the covers. I am still a little drowsy, it's before coffee-time. I will fix that soon enough. Somehow I have become a little depressed again, and this is after months of pretty jovial (for me at least) spirits. I blame Holly a little. Well not really Holly, but the reminders of reality she force-fed me. I do agree on a larger scale with what she says, that Kerry is better than Bush, blah, blah, blah, blah. But somehow this revelation has not made me sick for joy about our democracy. Instead of making me want to vote it makes me want to move. I guess I am unpatriotic. I have no respect for this country. In fact I have little respect for any countries (in fact I believe they are all ridiculous constructions of attempted human mastery over a world that bears no intrinsic borders). So I've become a little depressed. I need some sorta change. Which I always yearn for when I'm depressed. Possib;y I just need to change me instead of my environment, but it's so refreshing to be somewhere else. New places and faces. Especially when it's a different country. Then the people are different enough that it takes very long to get to the point where you understand enough to even consider yourself a part. Then of course I might get depressed again, but at least I would have a year of fun learning and realizations. Anyways, if you see me and I'm grouchy, now you know why. I'm sorry, I'm working on it. Give me a little time and I'm sure I'll get over it, I always do.

-sidenote: Don't trust the new free google email (gmail). They have a new-fangled adbot that delivers personal mail directly to your inbox. "The Google contextual advertising system automatically scans for frequently used terms in order to serve up ads. This constitutes a neat technology fix for Internet advertisers, who are always seeking to find ways to make their spots more convincing to Web surfers. For instance, if you e-mail a friend to play tennis this weekend, the system would lock onto the keyword and send you a relevant advertisement from a tennis gear supplier." Whoopie!

As one of the "leftists" that Holly is screaming about, I feel the need to say a word or two. I think it's funny to begin with the line that if Bush is reelected there may end up being only one party, because I feel that there currently is only one party, it just poses as two (call them evil-dum and evil-dee). Both serving the same interests with the same agenda towards the same ultimate ends. A little history is needed also. Our country may not be a parliamentary system but there is nothing in our Constitution saying it has to be a two-party system (there's actually nothing about parties at all). In fact in the beginning there was basically one party (the Federalists). Jefferson helped establish the Republicans (not the current-day variety) in response to the Federalist's closeness to big business and in an effort to bring about democratic reform. I think if he were here today he would be doing the same in trying to promote a (third) party whose interests lie with the people instead of the corporations. And while I don't agree that we are founded on the principles of "entrenched binaries" I will admit that these binaries (north/south, slave-holding/abolitionist, urban/rural) have definately influenced and sustained the two-party system as we know it. Yet I think that most of these binaries are not the prevalent forces they once were. The topics of today are simply too complex to be rendered into a binary form. And more importantly, the systems we have now don't seem to operate on this principle. Seems like there was a clear binary decision in attacking Iraq, yet both sides of the equation went the same way. A law was just passed labelling an unborn fetus a victim, substanially hindering years of choice activism, where were our champions of polar forces? My main point is that our two parties have grown so close as to be virtually indistinguishable on numerous issues and a third party is one way that we could at least get alternatives into the discussion.

My basic problem is I don't see an end to this teeter-totter of bad to worse and back again. I guess I have to accept the fistfight in the alley cause I honestly can't think of many policy changes that Kerry will enact that will be much different than Bush. Will he pull our troops from Iraq or give over power to the UN? no. Will he pass major corporate reform laws? no. Will he provide health care to all Americans or just make-up some bullshit Medicare 'reform' like Bush? Will he codify civil-unions for same-sex couples? no. Will he find jobs for the millions of unemployed Americans? WIll he honestly enact tax reforms that benefit you and I and not the corporations and the rich? He hasn't convinced me on any of these issues that he is a better choice than Bush.

I am also just annoyed that I am no longer supposed to vote for the candidate whose vision of America is like mine, but rather one who is slightly better than the other. It's so undemocratic. Why even pretend to have a democracy anymore? Since polls were brought up, the over-riding reason people give when asked why they are voting for Kerry is to get Bush out. That is just not right. It's disgusting. The fact that our democracy is in such a shambles that any old rich fucker with a Democrat pin is gonna get half of the country's vote just because he is wearing that pin and not because anyone gives a damn what he stands for is simply appalling. In my opinion a country whose vision of democracy is so off-kilter and so in the hands of big-money and corporations deserves to have Bush for another 4 years. Perhaps he is what we need for people to get their heads out of their asses and to start to think about actual issues and not so much what party they belong to (it had to get that bad before Spain was able to elect a true reform candidate). I also think the threat of Nazimerica is ill-conceived. The idea that we need to sacrifice democracy in order to fend off fascism is rather disinge
nu
ou
s. How are we rejecting fascism by restricing our democratic freedom? It seems more fascist to have elections with only pre-chosen candidates. It's along the same lines that we need to sacrifice our personal freedom and civil liberties in order to have security from our enemies. So, until the democratic party can offer a candidate that represents true change (which was offered in the forms of Kucinich and Mosley-Braun, but again rejected because of 'electability' issues) they aren't getting my vote (unless I suppose the field has been narrowed to its "proper" binary dimensions come election time).

They came home "rejoicing" over "fragrant bohea [tea] for themselves, plug tobacco for their husbands, flashy calico for their children, gay ribbons for the girls, jack-knives for the boys, crockery for the cupboard, and snuff for 'Grannie.'"

-an excerpt from an autobiography published in 1884. It demonstrates one of the market's first excursions into rural America. Today we take for granted that we 'need' certain commercial objects. One of capitalism's first motives involved creating wants, which hopefully transcended to 'needs.' Consumerism is impossible when people are happy with what they have, and in the 1820s subsistence farming gave most families everything they needed, the basics of survival to the comforts of company and association. The market realized from early on that these needs had to be replaced with fabriacted ones. Even though many farm families were perfectly content before the market invasion, as soon as Mr. Smith down the road had bought fancy calico and crockery manly patriarchal pride made anything less for one's own family out of the question. It makes sense in that so much of communal farming was based on the relationships between neighbors, and anything that brought this tenuous balance out of line was a cause for concern. Thus families worked a little bit harder so they could have these new necessities. At first it was just an extra cash-crop of wheat or cotton, but as the availability of ever-more exotic merchandise increased, so to did the price of these items. Families that at one point could comfortably subsist were forced to work harder to gain these modern contrivances. Eventually it wasn't enough to have an extra crop or two, farmers were forced through the entrance of the market and its related concerns (including higher property taxation: after all the roads need to be built and protected to bring the merchandise) to find more ways to realize the goal of capital. Where once cultivation of one's land produced everything necessary, now there were new things to be had and higher prices to be paid. Many faced choices between buying slaves to increase production or mortgaging the farm to get money.

The concept of money was foreign, alien, and unnatural to many farmers. For years they had simply had no need for it. The idea that one's labor could be exchanged for a bit of gold or paper notes was inconceivable. You can't eat it, make clothes from it, and the heat you get from burning it is certainly not worth it. But the new merchants wouldn't except their extra foodstuffs. For decades it was natural that you would trade once a year or so an extra cow or abundant crop for a tool or bauble that was not otherwise obtainable. Now the merchants wouldn't take it, they wanted specie, money. This concept is at the core of how America was forcibly catapulted into the market revolution. The desires were built, the money was made available (if at extroadinary cost), and the roads were paved with the blood (taxes) of the farmers. And, I guess today is just a hop skip or leap from then. Of course we have a pretty perfected system now. Barely anyone has any relation to their own survival. But, the basic tenets are the same: create want, make commodities available, and make the money (still at pretty extroadinary cost), the rest, as they say, is cake.

So I'm getting most of this from a book. The Market Revolution by Charles Sellers. It's one of the first real history books I've read for pleasure and I am enjoying it more than I would have thought. You can't understand the present without a grasp of the past. Nothing makes sense in a void. And our current situation is hardly a void. It is a totally foreseeable consequence of choices made by generations of men (and yes they're almost all men) bent on changing the nature of how people lived their lives. So far their vision has been realized in extents I am sure they could never have dreamed of. I wonder if they could see it wha
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ey would think and if they would have made the same choices. In any event I have to reccomend history. Yes, a pretty broad statement. But from one who never thought he was interested, it bears a second glance. I will probably post more pertinent tidbits as I traverse the rocky terrain of the market. Stay tuned...

...and please: try to get grannie off the snuff!