Recent comments

  • I agree with you and hope that there is someone out there that will listen and try to do the right thing instead of always looking out only for themselves. Bank of America has always charged more and pays less interest than the other banks. I do not know why they would even have the right to any of the money.

    The unions have broke the Companies and if yo want to look up Kaiser Steel in Fontana CA you will find they started the process in the 80's. My uncle was vice precident of the union. The union got 16 week vacations for their employees every so many years plus regular vacations. When the company could no longer fight the union they went bankrupt. Check the wages and the benifits of the labor cost and government requirements for the car dealers. I guess people just forget and think it will never happen to them. I will never go for a bailout. They need to file chapter 11 and reorganize. I only hope as a retired person that while some fireman retire at over 100 percent of their wages, some teachers at 85% of their wages and if disabled at 50% tax free that our money will not run out before my husband and I die. There are many more cases of this there are few that know about this. Again everyone has their union working for them. How long before they break the bank?

    Reply to: Banks Who Don't Need Bail Out Money are the Ones Getting It   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • ...she would be a big improvement over any PeLousy Dem and this is how you really create change.

    By replacing the sellouts with real progressives. Sends a message don' ya know.

    Reply to: Rep. Marcy Kaptur Launches Campaign for House Leadership Vice-Chair of Dem. Caucus   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • but as far as I can tell this would be the first Progressive-Populist to obtain real leadership.

    I think we should promote her.

    Reply to: Rep. Marcy Kaptur Launches Campaign for House Leadership Vice-Chair of Dem. Caucus   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • Kaptur has an excellent record on trade issues, and is from Ohio. Getting her in this slot would be a good way to raise the salience of issues facing people in the industrial Midwest, which are often overlooked in favor of social issues.

    Reply to: Rep. Marcy Kaptur Launches Campaign for House Leadership Vice-Chair of Dem. Caucus   16 years 2 weeks ago
  • 'Get's the job done right...' was a card you are. Ah well, some humor, even if black, is needed.

    Like the BushWacker sez: 'Politics has consequences.' and if, as many in the GM states have done, yer vote again and again and again against your own economic interests 'cause the 'liberals', the blacks and the hippies socialist scum are takin' over...

    Well.

    Too damn bad sez I.

    I got no sympathy for these narrow minded ignorant fools who for decades have pulled the lever for Republicans.

    They are getting what they deserve. Too bad the rest of us have to suffer. But hey, folks in CA they jes luvved them some St. Ronnie. So, ignorance is not confined by state.

    Eventually folks are gonna realize that something else that got started in FDR's day is something we still need.

    Unions. Unions built along the line of SEIU not the sellout fat slobs of the UAW.

    And no, I don't think it's a good idea for the rest of us to let them go bankrupt. I still care some about these fools...

    ....even though they've spent their whole lives hating folks like me.

    Reply to: Much ado about GM, Part 2 of 3   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • Underfunded is right. They lost at least $3 billion dollars.

    Reply to: Much ado about GM, Part 2 of 3   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • bail out
    Curteosy of meltingpotproject.com

    Reply to: Paulson Now Going to Give Bail Out Money to "Consumer Finance"   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • you think this is bad, wait until it gets to the point where food is now an issue! Hell...why even wait for that? You have two countries with over a billion people each right near each other, you also have a sea nearby that could provide them both with bountiful oil supply. Plus, just to add more to the situation, you have a former super power with decaying demographics but soon-to-be ample land for crops and such. I'm sorry, but I just see history sorta repeating itself.

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • the bacterial pollution that sometimes closes clamming is about 75 miles north of there, in the Cannon Beach/Seaside area where flat lands & overpopulation make for frightening floods.

    On an Island- that just means you need to send the boats out further. Which could be hard with say, no oil?

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • Watch out for the shellfish off the Oregon coast due to pollution, bacteria.

    The crabs are aok, but be very careful on the clams.

    Yeah, well Oregon is designed for survivalists but some of the Islands he's referring to have massive populations, not enough for sustaining "hunter and gather" behavior.

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • I've seen the number of 80% of all globalized trade moved by ships. Quick math tells me that $1.2 Trillion worth of goods traveled by air last year.
    However, I don't have any numbers for what changed have happened to air freight in the last couple months.

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • Is what he referenced, not land-locked areas that need wheat and rice. Pacific Islands have OCEAN. Yes, it takes a lot more work per calorie to fish, but it's possible.  Those cultures won't starve- they'll have a huge break in what they've been eating, and will have to get used to a much more traditional food supply, but they won't die of starvation.

    Globalizing the food supply also has wiped out quite a bit of sustainable localized agriculture. This is what the farmers, from Mexico to South Korea are protesting about. (and they have lost, over and over). The Duha rounds of trade collapsed (thank God) over corporate globalized food supply in trade agreements.

    This, is a completely different problem than that in the first message.  Here in Oregon, there's this guy who for $290 will take you on a 4-day trip to teach you how to forage properly.   There is some other costs (like your $6.50 shellfish license) but once you learn, you find food EVERYWHERE.  His one-day trips are much more affordable at $25.

    Just about anyplace that once had agriculture, has food supplies like this, no matter how unprofitable it suddenly became to grow monoculture crops like rice, wheat, and corn.  Once again though, it's a major change from going to the grocery store to eating blackberry shoots (yes, there was a recent OPBS special on that guy, and that was one of the foods he recommended, apparently cane berry vines have a sweet edible core).  

    We're so used to our modern trade, modern agriculture, and modern conviences, we forget that the natural world actually has some pretty impressive stockpiles of food.  It is not sustainable- but it's enough to get a population through the tough times and out the other side.

    Oh, and for my birthday, this weekend we're going crabbing in Yaquina Bay.  If it goes the normal way, my brother and I will go out crabbing, while grandpa takes the kids to the sand flats to dig clams.  Nearly free food- just for the harvesting, and pretty good eats.  

     

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • I covered Paulson in an instapopulist but did something else happen beyond in so many words telling the American people, with only $350B of the TARP left, that now they get to bail out, the very companies with their predatory credit cards and rewriting the bankruptcy bill to further screw and squeeze them to the point they are completely broke?

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • He's referring to areas that truly need food imports to survive and there are many like this around the globe. Trading cheap labor for wheat and rice scenarios.

    Globalizing the food supply also has wiped out quite a bit of sustainable localized agriculture. This is what the farmers, from Mexico to South Korea are protesting about. (and they have lost, over and over). The Duha rounds of trade collapsed (thank God) over corporate globalized food supply in trade agreements.

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • What about air freight? I looked at this Baltic index and it doesn't look like it's included.

    They sure are not going to ship if they cannot even recover their costs, you're right and our lovely globalists have created this interdependent web without even understanding the parameters in the moderate extremes, never mind something like this.

    Any small nation who cannot have a strong domestic, localized economy is in deep dodo from your stats.

    Another thing that really bothers me, in mathematics, the minute one sees delta functions (which are all of these spikey things on these graphs, or large charges in no amount of time) that implies system instability. It's not a good thing usually.

    The global financial system is a multivariate, multi-dimensional interaction and it's no wonder we have analysts saying massive deflation to hyper inflation, all with legitimate points to a degree and what I believe is going to happen is a standing tsunami wave of changing conditions...i.e. instability in the system.

    Looks like we also need an "ode to Ron Paul" post on the Federal Reserve at this point (maybe more ode to William Greider).

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • Those "resource poor" nations are actually pretty rich in the resources that actually count: food, water, shelter. They might have to get a bit creative like cannibalizing their cars to build deep-water energy transfer condensers, moving the bulk of their labor force back to fishing, etc but they'll survive, and be better off for not depending on regular shipments of the latest plastic toy from China.

    Yes, $6 Trillion in goods traveled the ocean last year. But what we forget is that international trade is truly a LUXURY- that almost everyplace people are living today, people have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, save a few places like Antarctica.

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • ...question is who will fix it?

    The Bush admin is melting down before our very eyes. Look for a market plunge tomorrow in the wake of Paulsen's collapse in front of the camera today.

    Obambi seems to be struggling also. The 'Agenda' section on his website was removed today.

    Too much criticism...huh....

    Some are saying his plans for healthcare, lacking any mandates, are DOA.

    I'd be worried if we hadn't been putting up with this shit for the last 50 years of ReThuglican economic 'theory'. Eventually folks will wake the fuck up and then...

    ....look out.

    And yes I do have 3 weeks food and water on hand.

    Plus plenty of ammo.

    ps. The 'folks' are actually pretty awake now Congress and Obambi just don't know it yet.

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • What resource-poor nations like Pacific island nations? They will flat-out starve unless this gets fixed. I've seen the number that $6 Trillion in goods traveled by ocean last year. This means localized shortages of various things in every corner of the world.
    This must get fixed and fixed soon. Otherwise we are talking about famines, economic collapses, and political and social upheaval on a global scale.

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • That if you kept your natural resources at home, and ground that wheat yourself to bake into bread to sell to your neighbors, you wouldn't need to ship it halfway around the world.

    This, of course, comes from the pre-Keynesian idea that England shall never starve, because it's surrounded by fish-bearing ocean.

    It doesn't work if you've shipped all your millstones to China.

    Sooner or later though, Distributionism (living within your means and putting your closest neighbors first in your capitalistic endeavors) may well take hold, but it's going to take a major collapse to do it.

    I suspect we're on the brink of just such a collapse. Hope everybody has their 3 acres and a donkey ready.

    Reply to: Two signs that something is seriously wrong   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • I wouldn't be so fast on assuming partisanship on any of this.

    The reason is there were many conservative Republicans who screamed bloody murder on the bail out and now Boehner, House Republican leader is screaming bloody murder because the Fed will not disclose which private institutions received over $2 trillion dollars.

    Another "ReThug" who has really been a friend of Professional Labor is Sen. Chuck Grassley, so ya can't put the corruption really in partisan terms.

    I think if we looked at the money, I bet that would follow and align completely with the selling of this country down the river.

    Reply to: Meet the new Boss's Board   16 years 2 weeks ago
    EPer:

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