Posts Tagged ‘blog’

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By @anarchyroll

No thing quite says the Republican party of the United States of America like a tax cut.

Did you notice how quickly and easily Congress was able to push through a tax cut for the wealthy? Almost every other piece of legislation (except for military spending increases) that has been attempted to be passed over the past decade has been a textbook example of two-party democratic government not working. If 1980s Dominos Pizza was delivering this tax cut, the oligarchs would get it piping hot and received no discount..

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Every aspect of this Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is a big, bright, and bold example of how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in America. Follow the money is an age old expression. Congressional gridlock shows just how true that is. Because the only bills that have moved quickly through Congress have been military spending increases and this tax cut. The military industrial complex (who own he Democratic Party like violent pimps) and the oligarchs. King Kong ain’t got shit on them.

This bill is less about the Republican Party and more about who they represent and who they work for. Is it half of the American population? Is it a loud minority? A silent majority? Follow the money, who does this tax cut benefit?

Passing legislation has come to a halt in America since the last two years of the George W Bush administration. There was that one big exception, but almost every other bill has been stuck in legislative gridlock hell that is the United States Congress. Healthcare reform, immigration reform, financial regulation, digital privacy protection, et al have moved at painfully slow speeds if at all. Even common sense, bipartisan bills have had a hard time even seeing the light of day on the floor of either house of Congress.

But a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans? A 500 page bill involving one of the largest transfers of wealth in the history of the country? Less than a month is more than enough time. How does that happen? Why does that happen? Is that not why we fled England in the first place? I guess no taxation without representation only applies to taxes going up and not taxes going down, on less than two percent of the population.

Is this a tax cut to benefit people making less than one hundred thousand dollars per year? Less than fifty? Less than thirty?  Many might snicker and say those making so little don’t pay taxes anyway. That is the problem isn’t it? There are vastly more people in the current society who will benefit more in the day to day lives from taxes collected on the wealthy (social safety nets, community services) than by a one time, minor at best, windfall from a tax cut/credit.

The tax bill moved so fast through both houses that they have needed double, if not triple the amount of time to take the bills into conference committees to negotiate and fix the numerous, egregious math and budgeting errors. Drafting and finalizing a compromise bill behind closed doors has taken the place of proper on the floor debate as a result of this Congress moving at lightning speed to pass a bill that no one had time to read, let alone make logical decisions based upon critical thinking.

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Congress rushed through this bill like a college kid rushing to finish a final paper or cramming at the last-minute for a midterm. There are two key differences there and that is that when a college kid waits until the last-minute to do their deep work it only affects them and their roommates. The legislative branch of the United States of America however, effects just slightly more people than a dormitorium.

Greed and corruption like this used to have the cover of a lack of transparency. In the era of telephones and television and newspapers and radios and telegraphs it was much easier for politicians to say X, do Y, and say the result is Z. The age of the smartphone makes it easier to be shady, but much harder to keep it a secret. The wave of careers being ended by sexual misconduct allegations from Hollywood to Washington is evidence of this.

What is also apparent when held up to the light of day is the fact that this bill is amoral. Ethics, budgets, math do not apply to this trillion dollar wealth transfer. Negotiated in secret, passed before it could be read, full of so many errors that both the House and Senate versions needed to be negotiated so much they were both essentially rewritten. How does the urgency of this compare to the passing of hurricane relief to Puerto Rico?

The tax cut of 2017 that has been instituted by the Republican party has been called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 by some and the #TaxScamBill by others. Terms of endearment or damnation depending on which side of the political aisle and socioeconomic spectrum one falls on. What are facts and not opinions however are that this bill was so rushed it wasn’t read or proofread by the people who wrote it. That there were so many earmarks in there in such short order that many proved to be illegible when held up to the light of day or a camera

This tax cut is like putting your coat down at a bar, turning your back for a minute, then turning back to find someone going through the pockets and them playing dumb about it. They know what they’re doing, but are hoping to use ignorance as a guise for willful immorality.

 

 

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global-warming

by @anarchyroll

You gotta have faith, faith, faith.

Faith is essential, when going through hard times. During hard times one must have faith that things will get better. One needs to have faith in his or herself to do the work needed to dig out of the hole they are in. Faith in other people is essential to living in civilized societies. Our currency is backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. More than 3/4 of the world’s population belongs to a religious faith.

The leader of the world’s largest religion believes in global warming and believes science is the way forward on the issue.

I wonder how many of his followers across the globe feel the same or in this case, believe as he does. I’m pretty sure they have to, or are at least supposed to. But aren’t we supposed to believe 97% of scientists, NASA, and the Pentagon when they all agree global warming is happening and is a threat to our security and very existence?

Is it faith that a higher power will protect us that stops people from accepting the reality of global warming? Is it greed from money earned from contributing to the acceleration of global warming over the past thirty years? Is it ignorance in thinking that because the weather in one’s hometown is fine that global warming is a hoax? Is it denial? Accepting global warming as the reality of our present and future forces both a painful look in the mirror and even more painful wide scale changes moving forward.

The Military Industrial Complex knows global warming is real. When did they become a bastion of liberal ideology? The effects of global warming are presently causing security risks and have potential for greater security threats in the future. Maybe fighting two wars for oil got them to change their tune on wind, hydro, and solar energy. Or maybe its the nature of military operations being centered around collecting, analyzing, and accepting results of measurable data that got them to come around to the reality of global warming.

On the other end of the spectrum is the current President of the United States who has said that global warming is a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese. Many of his supporters/voters are also climate change deniers. Trump is backing up his words on this issue by attempting to cut the Environmental Protection Agency budget. He also recently green-lit the Keystone XL Pipeline which has negative environmental concerns associated with it.

Climate change deniers may sound and come across as ignorant, but at least they don’t have the power to further damage the planet in an negative way. Trump, in his first 100 days in office has taken two measures to tangibly create negative consequences for the planet. I suppose I could have faith that Trump will do the right thing, change course, and become an environmentally friendly President. I could have faith and believe that all the climate skeptics will accept the scientific facts and reality.

They can have faith, I’ll trust…but verify.

by @anarchyroll

One of the most oppressive governments in the world enacting a science fiction based methods for stopping crime and terrorism…what could go wrong?

The Minority Report was an alright movie because of how fantastical the concept of solving crimes before they happen is. Fantastical in a free society at least.

Don’t let the fact that it is the largest economy in the world fool you, China is not a free society. Their communist government has their fingers in everything. In the case of the electronic data of the citizens of China, the government prefers a hand on the throat instead of a finger on the pulse.

I wonder if this attempt to stop crime and terrorism before it happens is in any way correlated with the ideological purification campaign the government has admittedly been undergoing.

Intense cultural censorship, absolutely zero digital privacy, and an authoritarian government. People in America seem paranoid that Donald Trump, a benefactor of a free market society in a democracy is going to descend the country into a racist, fascist state. Yet, the country that owns over a trillion dollars of US debt, is enacting a reality on its citizenry beyond what George Orwell could have imagined.

An authoritarian regime using data mining to predict crime before it happens seems more troubling than a real estate mogul making it halfway through a democratic election process. There is so much going on in this world it is impossible for a person to put care and effort into all the news that’s fit to print.

But let us keep the proverbial eye out as technology and power continue to intersect with each other, so we don’t one day wake up blindfolded to a materialized science fiction dystopia.

Think that a Matrix movie like dystopia is pure fantasy? What exactly does this image remind you of?

 

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By @anarchyroll
10/26/15

Freedom, an innate human desire.

Wars are fought both internally and externally for it.

People die for freedom

Others die to be free

Some people have chains on their wrists and on their ankles

Some have chains in their minds and hearts

But whether trying to exercise demons or remove shackles of tyranny

It is only organization and structure through which freedom is accomplished

To find freedom any other way is fleeting at best

And most quickly faded

Uniting with others to create strength externally

Forcing forward focus internally

There is no other way

To say there is is to lie

Unless your only definition of freedom

Is to be alone when you die

by @anarchyroll
8/9/2014

Have you noticed more news on data breaches, password stealing, and hacking as a tool for war in the news recently? It’s not just you, and it’s not just sensationalism.

It turns out the internet being referred to as the information superhighway is an apt metaphor. As it has been recently revealed that the highway is more potholes than road.

In addition to have more holes than concrete, stretches of solid road that exist are seemingly ruled by Mad Max/Road Warrior style gangs in the form of international hacker mafias. No information on the open internet is secure. That was one of the lessons that should have come from the Edward Snowden NSA Leaks last year. But that fact took a distant second to the US government having a full-fledged Orwellian domestic spying program active, in place, and recording everyone’s emails, text messages, phone calls, and data placed on social media.

Not only is our personal, private information not safe from our government but our stock markets aren’t safe from international hackers either. The NASDAQ got straight up hacked into by Russian hackers in 2010. The hack and investigation into it were recently declassified and chronicled in a great article by Bloomberg Businessweek. After the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Secret Service each took turns looking into the matter, it is still unknown exactly how the hackers got in, what they took, and/or what they left behind. Essentially the only thing they know is that the hackers were Russian.

In related news, Russian hackers just this week stole more than 1 billion passwords and half a billion emails in the largest data theft in the history of the internet.

In the spirit of a stock market being hacked, it turns out professional hackers have their own exchange market. A recent article in TIME magazine revealed that hackers sell software bugs to the highest bidder to both governments and private companies.

The last year and a half will be remembered as the golden age for conspiracy theorists. Before you know it there’ll be a video released showing big foot, shooting Kennedy, from the studio where it staged the moon landing.

Learning that the information super highway is more potholes than roads in the long run, is good for us. We must be less trusting of faceless corporations. I know we’d all like to think Mark Zuckerberg is our friend, but he’s just another CEO trying to make money off of his customers. Not only are social media companies selling our information first hand through data brokers, but the information is so unsecure that all social media services are serving as enablers for identity thieves.

I can only imagine how much of my personal information is being packaged and sold on the black market. I’ve signed up and signed away my identity to a plethora of social media providers. But I’m a lower risk target. When I check my bank account online moths fly out of my monitor. But there are plenty more people who have plenty more to lose who have plenty more valuable information floating around online. And what we have definitively learned is that the information is NOT secure, it is floating around, waiting to be snatched by any hacker collective willing to put in the time and money.

There is no going back from the digital revolution. We’re not going back to analog and paper. So what is the solution? I don’t know, I just hope a solution is found before I have enough money to invest online.

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by @anarchyroll
8/4/2014

Nothing says illegitimate boxing or mixed martial arts prize fight like a fight at a press conference.

UFC 178 was supposed to be headlined by a rematch between Jon Jones vs Alexander Gustafsson for the Light Heavyweight Championship. Their first fight at UFC 165 was a legit contender for greatest fight of all time. Jones won by decision, people like me (Jones haters) consider the decision to be controversial. But it was a unanimous decision, not a split, so it isn’t as controversial as people like me wish it was.

Both men looked not just impressive, but genuinely great in their five round slug fest for the ages. Because Jones defended his belt, there was no guarantee of a rematch no matter how much the UFC fan base salivated for one. Gustafsson removed all obstacles by winning his next two fights, clearing his way for another shot at the light heavyweight crown. Unfortunately, Gustafsson suffered a knee injury during training and had to withdraw from the fight.

Daniel Cormier has been announced as the new opponent from Jones in September. Cormier is a very worthy contender, as he is undefeated in both UFC and Strikeforce. Cormier is so undefeated, he hasn’t even lost a round in fifteen professional fights.

The but in this case is a very big but.

Daniel Cormier needs knee surgery.

Now that he has a world title shot and a huge payday waiting for him in less than 60 days, of course Cormier doesn’t need surgery anymore.

UFC just canceled a pay per view due to an injury, they don’t want the egg on their face of having to do it again. More than the egg on the face, they certainly don’t want to lose all the revenue that would be lost from canceling two world title fights in three months.

Jon Jones is not a paper or fluke champion. There is a case to be made that he is the most dominant champion in UFC or mixed martial arts history. Therefore, putting anything short of an equal parts worthy and healthy contender against him is a full-fledged sham. It is not easy to say that a 15-0 contender getting his earned title shot is a sham, but if he needs knee surgery, then he will be a shell of himself.

Not to mention, how do you replace a fighter with a knee injury with another fighter with a knee injury?!

When substance is lacking, style and ballyhoo take over (see Michael Bay movies). Daniel Cormier has probably uttered two sentences of smack talk during his entire career, now he’s fighting people at press conferences? Give me a break. This fight is a joke, the UFC knows it, the fighters know it, and they are ratcheting up the hype machine to fool casual fans and themselves that the UFC 178 main event is legitimate. Jones vs Cormier is a money grab, pure and simple. It might as well take place at this year’s WWE Summerslam.

Jones has been eating up and spitting out worthy, healthy challengers for years. What is he going to do to someone who just a month and a half ago needed surgery in two different parts of his knee?

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by @anarchyroll
7/30/2014

“Insurmountable water crisis” jumps off the page, don’t you agree?

Massive droughts won’t just be for California anymore by 2040 unless societies move away from water intensive power production. Does that mean hydroelectric power is a no go? No, it means the opposite. It turns out that the largest usage of water in the industrialized world is the water used to cool  (coal and nuclear) power plants.

Yes we need electricity, but you know what we need more than electricity? You guessed it, we need to be able to live, and we can’t do that without fresh, drinkable water.

Reducing pollution seems like less and less of a hippy issue when we’re talking about an “insurmountable” water shortage in less than three decades. If three decades seems like a long time, worry not, because there are seven states running out of water in the continental United States right now.

A global shortage from which there is no going back in three decades, a national shortage going on currently, sounds like commercial/industrial conservation should be on the menu. Instead, businesses in the US and the UK are doubling down on fracking which in addition to poisoning fresh water reserves, also uses massive amounts of freshwater as part of its process.

Fracking has been viewed as the light at the end of the tunnel in regards to energy concerns. But in the face of a national and global water scarcity both now and in the future, fracking is nothing more than a freight train. Cheap energy creating economic booms are useless if we are all dying of thirst.

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by @anarchyroll
7/14/2014

Wages have not kept up with inflation or the consumer price index for over thirty years. That is what is meant when you hear people talk about wage stagnation.

As long as wages remain stagnant compared to how much stuff costs there will never be a fully robust economic recovery.

Wage stagnation is why there is currently an all time record high of income inequality in America.

This is why you don’t need a degree in economics to understand why all debates over economic issues in America are made to seem overly complicated on purpose. Because if people were paid more for their time and effort, they could buy more things. But wouldn’t those things then be more expensive? Yes, but people would be making more money. It would be a cycle, kind of like the cycle our economy is on now but less vicious and soul crushing for the generationally poor.

You’ve heard about class warfare between the 1% of earners who possess more wealth than the other 99% of earners in the country, right? That is the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movements and protests. Why is there such a gap in income equality? Why is there class warfare? Why is there a sentiment that the “game” that is the US economy is rigged and the American Dream is dead? The underlying cause/answer is wage stagnation.

Wage stagnation is not an accident, it has been done very much on purpose for almost half a century. The haves don’t want to pay the have-nots an honest salary for their honest work and have been allowed to get away with it. The 1% could make the choice to pay their workers more. But other than it being the right thing to do, why? After all, paying the masses a living wage would mean less one-percenters could afford private yachts, jets, and islands.

Wage stagnation is tied directly to the rise in consumer debt (people use credit to pay for necessities they don’t have the money to have because they don’t get paid enough), student loan debt (parents and students need to take loans because they don’t get paid enough to pay for college tuition), and mortgage debt (not being paid enough to afford a home). Being able to afford a home is the center piece of the American Dream. To afford property, not simply to achieve financial prosperity as many would have you believe.

Until wage stagnation is addressed and done away with, very little else matters in terms of turning around America’s economy for 99% of the population. To deny this is to deny reality, or be apart of the minority of the population that is benefiting from the system as it is currently constructed. There is no gray area or in between.

A living wage is the only humane solution to this problem. But traditionally, humanity and the American economy don’t always go hand in hand. The fierce resistance to paying a living wage in America is only the most recent example.

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by @anarchyroll
6/13/2014

There have been a number of articles published on this website about fracking. The other half of the Frackishima label is the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Very few news events that I have no control over have kept me up at night, given me nightmares, and made me fearful for my existence on planet Earth the way Fukushima has. Let’s take a look at some of the facts as to what worried me so much:

The vast majority of people simply don’t want to think about Fukushima. Who can blame them? But not wanting to think about something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist and that the problems won’t be affecting us as a human race for…ever.

Do we really think that all that nuclear waste and radioactive material that is still in the ocean isn’t going to have negative ramifications?

How much radiation in the water and land are we as a species willing to tolerate before enough is enough?

I sometimes wonder if all this radiation, oil, and chemicals that have leaked and/or spilled into so much of our water supply has something to do with the global rise in cancer rates. How about  you?

Earth is a very big planet. What happens on one side of the planet doesn’t necessarily effect what is happening on the other side of the planet. I find it hard to believe that the repeated nuclear bomb tests, bomb drops, and reactor meltdowns aren’t having/won’t have a negative effect on the planet and the people who inhabit it.

I may not be a scientist but I can do addition. I am smart enough to know that all of these toxic materials poisoning our air, water, and land have to be adding up to something. It’s not 1950, it’s 2014 there have been a lot of oil spills, chemical spills, and nuclear materials around the globe. Just because they were mistakes (mostly) doesn’t make what happens after the incidents any different from if they were on purpose.

Are we poisoning the planet?

That is not a sarcastic question. That is not a rhetorical question. That is however what has kept me up, made me worry, and given me nightmares.

Because when I wake up, splash some cold water on my face, and turn the lights on; Chernobyl still happend, Exxon Valdez still happened, Deepwater Horizon still happened, Fukushima still happened, and thousands of nuclear bombs have been tested and continue to be tested (North Korea). What effects that we know about are happening to the planet and all species who inhabit it? What effects that we don’t yet know about?

These are things that are way outside of my sphere of influence, knowledge base, and pay grade. But I think about them nonetheless and I hope other people do too, because not thinking about it doesn’t mean these events haven’t happened, aren’t happening, and won’t have consequences we as humans must deal with for generations to come.

Are we poisoning the planet?

by @anarchyroll
5/7/2014

The last year has been full of vindication for all those paranoid schizophrenics out there.

We now know that not only has the NSA essentially been getting all the data on the internet and storing it, which is bad enough, but it came out this week that they weren’t using a back door but rather have the keys to the front of anything and everything Google. Which is basically everything that isn’t Apple.

The paranoia about what is done with our information is done online is spreading, and why wouldn’t it? It has also been found that our search engine uses and habits have changed in the wake of the NSA leaks.

I suppose I should think that unlawful spying is unlawful spying regardless. But something, and I’m not sure what exactly bothers me more than Google has been in on it the whole time. Call it naivety, and you’d probably be right or the other thing to call it is a natural reaction to massive trust violation.

This is why those agreements we have to sign before signing up for anything for free online is so long and in such small print I suppose. Fill it with loopholes so there is no legal obligation to not sell the information of every customer to a data broker or give it to Uncle Sam. What about the moral obligation? Oh, there’s that naivety again. It’s business, who has time for morals?  After all, what could be more moral than listening to one’s government?

It is sad how much Google is able to justify what they did to themselves. I suppose that there is a strong correlation with trust violation and monetary profit, not just these days, but basically since currency became the currency of the world. The amount of flagrant Big Brother going on with the NSA and telcoms physically weakens me. It makes me feel like not writing. All the more reason to write. The quality may not be on par, but if anyone learns about what is going on through my writing then it’s worth it.

Great news sources that stay on top of the NSA are: The Intercept, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and The Verge.