Seven Lucky Questions:

1) If energy costs are at record highs and energy is costing you more than 40% than last year…..fast…….who is the Secretary of Energy? In other words, do you really care what are they doing to you energy bill?

2) Nearly 99% of locals taxes have increased in the past seven years, the excuse used by municipalities and the states are consistent with "federal taxes were re-allocated sending less to local coffers." If your local taxes increase but your federal taxes declined. Do you know if your total tax bill increased of declined or stayed the same?

3) Do you know how long and how much will cost the country to invest in terminating the dependence on foreign energy?

4) Do you know how much you and your kids owe every month to the Communist Government of China?

5) Do you know the US world ranking on children mortality rate?

6) We all know that we invented the modern internet “malgrais” Al Gore. Could you tell where the US global rank is on broadband deployment?

7) Could place in other of most corrupt to least country to do business of the following: Hong Kong, Canada, USA, Finland, Singapore



If you get the seven right:

Congratulations!!!!! You really know your place in this planet

If you get 4 to six right: I am very impress…..keep it up to get them all right next round.

If you get one to three right: You can do better you have interst but not enough

If you do not get any one right: Go Get a life and read a little more and not Harry Potter or Fox News talk shows....Seriously

Answers:

A) Samuel Bodman In case you decided he needs to hear from you, send him your thoughts @
http://www.whitehouse.gov/interactive/interact_1.html

B) A national review on taxes by the IRS asserts that most people had a tax increase of 11% in the past seven years as of Jan 2005. www.irs.gov

C) Experts and various universities lead by MIT have run models and believed that it will take less than 20 years to become totally independent of foreign energy and the cost will be null. Actually, it could create an average of $145 billion a year profits to Americans, and generate around five to seven million new jobs. All we need, it will be the re-allocation of expenditures and sweetheart tax breaks on the present federal budget.
If peolple demadn from their elected official a moon kind of project to be directed to the purpose of energy independence, the whole global economy will thrive as never seen before.

D) Each American is paying around $84 a month to the Chinese in the interest and principal.
The Communist Government of China is buying an average of $480 million dollars a month of American debt for the past fifteen years. www.fed.gov
Most of this debt is being incurr during the Bush 43 adminsitration.

E) The US ranks 42 below Cuba and other quality countries.
Based on the CIA fact book http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

F) BROADBAND NATION?
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050501faessay84311/thomas-bleha/down-to-the-wire.html

In the first three years of the Bush administration, the United States dropped from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage. Today, most U.S. homes can access only "basic" broadband, among the slowest, most expensive, and least reliable in the developed world, and the United States has fallen even further behind in mobile-phone-based Internet access. The lag is arguably the result of the Bush administration's failure to make a priority of developing these networks. In fact, the United States is the only industrialized state without an explicit national policy for promoting broadband.

H) The answer is USA, Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, Finland.
http://www.transparency.org/

Money, Money, Money, Moooooney

Forbes Magazine reported this month that the richest in this earth had grow their wealth by 10% last year alone. MSNBC reports that CEOs pay is at the highest ever, versus employees has lost ground at a rate of 1% year and pensions for mayor corporations are unfunded and the same managers of these pensions paid themselves handsomely to a ration of 4000 times their average employee salary. Forbes also reports, as an average, to make to the top 500 wealthiest in this our planet, a person needs to be near one thousand times millionaire. To put this in contest, the top 500 wealth accumulators have as a whole more than 99.5 % of all countries, they all bunched up and live in a single country they will be second to the US economy. All this, while poverty is at its highest ever in the number of people affected and wealth distribution is at its lowest. Laws continue to be enacted by the elite to continue their trip to who knows where.

That stated, let’s see if I can make some sense in talking money. Since I started to talk about oil a few years back and I did a kamikaze move by buying more than 60 % of my portfolio in natural gas and oil related Canadians trusts, I felt as I bought it all, last month I sold it all. My reason is simple, like always I sell early, and I follow the rule of the taxi driver.
When a taxi driver tells me it is time to get into anything in the stock market.
If I own what he is talking about, in this case oil, like I did, I will sell it, and if I do not own it I will stay at the sides and in a prudent way, short the commodity. So I am staying with a large cash position, until a clear pattern starts to develop. My first impression after one month in cash is that there is a repositioning of capital into large caps that are being hammered, and growth funds are also getting influx of money. I will suggest look for battered big caps with positive cash flows and growth of sales above average. As of yet, there is not a clear trend, but when allocations of funds start to take people in one direction, that trend becomes over a short period of one year or so the prevalent over priced area. The early the trend can be bought the easier is to capitalize on the price appreciation. We are too many darn people buying the same things so eventually the mass over weights rationality and we return to our mean value and senses. The theory of many says when many act in one direction the majority will follow the mean trend of that direction. When people vote with their dollars the argument is that because the size of the pool is so large the extension of the price paid at the transaction will eventually outpace the actual value. Some might say it is supply and demand, the problem is that, the supply can be altered in a matter of days and demand can become irrational in matter of years.

The other bubble people are talking about is real estate, it is well funded to some extend.
By the other hand it is the result of capital risk value. The risk involved in getting into investing in real estate is being compensated like other rational investment. Thus commanding comparable and fair market value returns.
At a macro level, the price of money drives the financing and pricing of housing, that is clear for all of us novices.
Plus, housing due to global migration and global investing is getting affected by global pricing of commodities and global flow of money.
As an example Manhattan market sales of top priced properties – two million or more dollars- are in pace to be above 50% for its fourth year purchased by foreign owners.
The rational behind is the simple item mentioned above: the cost of money.
The EU right now has interest rates far below the US, thus folks with access to capital can borrow at discount and their currency. The Euro has outpaced the dollar for the third year in the row to a revaluation of more than 40%. Thus, affecting the global capital market, top market buyers are attracted to the US, as a direct investment. In the debt area, because the interest rates are higher here and the majority of median priced houses are sold to the local market, the mortgage debt generated is been sold in the international market. A very sound strategy, that can back fired if not well timed.
Three years ago you could take $1 dollar and buy 1.35 of goods in the EU. Today, the reverse $1 occurs $1 dollar buys $0.85 cents of Euro and the cost of money is higher in the US than it is there, making a lot of sense to bring euros into dollars. Specially invest in bricks and mortar in our very mobile market. This is not limited to Europeans buying it is global reaction. Thousands of brokers are selling US houses or villas -how they are marketed in EU- to anchor US real estate sales.
Some market as Chief Alan said are overextended, this does not mean they will collapse. We should expect some decline or stagnation in pricing in those over priced areas, but do not expect bargain prices, and if for one reason occur they will not be that way for too long. The first of trouble will be to tabulate the number of listed properties at the HUD web site www.hud.gov. If the number of houses in the area you are interest starts to increase and the time of sales increases, there you have a declining market. With the national average sale at $216,000 per unit, as an investor you will do OK if you can start with that number and bring it down 20% to 30% and if sales occur at those levels, it is time to jump. Now, timing is of consequence, so do not rush into it, but do not overanalyze waiting for Godot.

A Better Alternative to Mediocrity

A Better Alternative to Mediocrity

I will not engage the dialogue by giving into a Straussian view of the need for deception to justify any mean to support the rationality of elitism. The funny thin is that most people feel that they are elite of something, when in reality elite means a total different status.
Thus, the need for a harder look to where are we going as a people and country.
We must start to learn to ask for better structures, from better roads to better food. We might get cheap import products. That does not mean progress, its present meaning is cheaper product with a below average quality, progress means a better product with improve quality at a cheaper price. We need to start to wake up before is too slate and start to demand better ways all around, and question every single thing and become specialist on asking for better management of the money we are taking away from and by government leaders a.k.a. politicians.
How we can demand a better investment of our efforts from the ruler politicians, I will start by suggesting the simplest way show at their offices and rest there your concerns, following up by showing up at meetings where decisions are being made to spend your money. You might choose to be apathetic and think that you do not have time for that. Around 40% of all your income, in your apathy, you are allowing it to be dispersed without your supervision. If you think you can trust politicians, think twice, they have proved untrustworthy except from the money they garner from your pockets.

Better than?
Let’s start by each individual. If you are satisfied with your medical care and medical prevention, then look no further.
If you are not satisfied, you must learn what others are doing this planet. This earth has 5 billion plus people, it means, we are a mere drop in the bucket and other developed countries must be doing something else, and if we believe the way we measure others, we rank below the 20th in care providing and far lower in healthy kid development, with a very low ranking in new birth survival, this is an indicator of how poor a society is acting upon its whole medical system.

If you are satisfied with the prospects of your education, look no further.
If you are not satisfied, and if you think that importing PhDs from abroad is the fountain of youth for the system, think twice. Brain-draining from other countries has evolved into brain loss at home. If we import people as we import cars, we continue to pay a price for purposes not all good for the good of citizens and weakening our educational system. Keeping education far away and weaken responsibilities during formation years of the family is a disastrous choice. Responsibility and coordination and constant higher goals need to be re-instated if we want to recoup the loose of ground of the past 10 years. The competition that is emerging from abroad is so large that is giving chills to the most severe.

You might be satisfied with the roads you drive. If that case you deserve mediocre roads and will miss to improve using a mediocre transportations system.
If you think that there is no better. You might want to drive around in another developed country to see is you are satisfied with the streets and roads around you.
As oil continues to grow in pricing, the cities and towns infrastructure of oil dependence will eventually prove to be obsolete and inefficient. With the present small spike on costs it is already showing signs of poor competitive capacity.

If you think that hugging trees is some malaise, well stay that way, but the price you will pay for thinking that way will be impossible to come up in the near future, and the signs are all over to be encounter.
As we continue to deny the ecology its right. The weather changes will continue this path of warming the planet. Until, we realize the solutions are difficult, to stop global warming is going to be an effort that is proving to test humans as the case in England is showing signs of impossibility.
Many countries are serious about saving the earth, some people are building the will to fight against earth destroyers. That approach is not an enhancing event for us who with less than 5% of the earth population we are using 25% of all its resources.

If you think the war in Iraq is an example of good planning, honesty, giving example of doing good and resolution. Then you must skip this one.
We must think of wars as temporary choices, the war in Iraq is proving to be an awful choice and no one is paying the price of poor or neglected decisions, Iraq is proving to be the most outrageous case of fraud. No only, from its purpose to carry out an action, but from the economic point, riddled of fraudulent and outright pilfering of funds, with already American officials arrested for fraud.

If you think that the largest military spender and powerful is also the most organized and resolute to support its citizens at home in case of disaster, then skip the subject of the latest related weather events.
The disasters of the latest weather related events in the Gulf of Mexico are proving damaging to the global economy, and more severely to the local economies around the United States. Moreover, the image that has project around the globe is of a half developed almost third world country dealing with large amounts of poverty in face of natural disaster that scientist have warmed for decades.

If you think the cost of living is low and getting lower, please move to the next subject.
High price of commodities from natural gas, gasoline, plastics, wood to water and many other vital elements for economic growth will eventually test the power of the system. The private banking system and its Federal Reserve policies are showing signs of serious weakening. This week the Federal Reserve raised rates again, at mist of the cutting of 10% of all gasoline production and inflation showing signs of creeping at very fast speed where most people will start to feel the pain.

We have yet to address the fact that foreign buyers of American debt and trade deficits are at historic levels, thus, worrying many decision makers.


What is a social storm! The ignorant will be absent from asserting a better tomorrow.

Philosophy of Deception

At times, some published articles reflect what I want to share with great detail.
Here is this one, that I found worth to keep alive.
For this autunm reading season I choose author John Perkins.
You can find Perkins books at www.borders.com

http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/
Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception
By Jim Lobe, AlterNet. Posted May 19, 2003.
Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses.
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What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war?
A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.
The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – an agency created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda, piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq.
Like Wolfowitz, Shulsky is a student of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher named Leo Strauss who arrived in the United States in 1938. Strauss taught at several major universities, including Wolfowitz and Shulsky's alma mater, the University of Chicago, before his death in 1973.
Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration. They include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by Kristol the Younger.
Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted by these men – as is obvious in Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality). As Hersh notes in his article, Shulsky and his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its inability to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that Strauss's idea of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."
Rule One: Deception
It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in an administration obsessed with secrecy, especially when it comes to matters of foreign policy. Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."
This dichotomy requires "perpetual deception" between the rulers and the ruled, according to Drury. Robert Locke, another Strauss analyst says,"The people are told what they need to know and no more." While the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses could not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of 'Leo Strauss and the American Right' (St. Martin's 1999).
Second Principle: Power of Religion
According to Drury, Strauss had a "huge contempt" for secular democracy. Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic reaction to the irreligious and liberal nature of the Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere, even suggesting that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major mistake by insisting on the separation of church and state. And why? Because Strauss viewed religion as absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control.
At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed, it would be absurd if they were, since the truths proclaimed by religion were "a pious fraud." As Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine points out, "Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers."
"Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing,'' Drury says, because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats. Bailey argues that it is this firm belief in the political utility of religion as an "opiate of the masses" that helps explain why secular Jews like Kristol in 'Commentary' magazine and other neoconservative journals have allied themselves with the Christian Right and even taken on Darwin's theory of evolution.
Third Principle: Aggressive Nationalism
Like Thomas Hobbes, Strauss believed that the inherently aggressive nature of human beings could only be restrained by a powerful nationalistic state. "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," he once wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united – and they can only be united against other people."
Not surprisingly, Strauss' attitude toward foreign policy was distinctly Machiavellian. "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat," Drury wrote in her book. "Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured (emphases added)."
"Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians believe in," says Drury. The idea easily translates into, in her words, an "aggressive, belligerent foreign policy," of the kind that has been advocated by neocon groups like PNAC and AEI scholars – not to mention Wolfowitz and other administration hawks who have called for a world order dominated by U.S. military power. Strauss' neoconservative students see foreign policy as a means to fulfill a "national destiny" – as Irving Kristol defined it already in 1983 – that goes far beyond the narrow confines of a " myopic national security."
As to what a Straussian world order might look like, the analogy was best captured by the philosopher himself in one of his – and student Allen Bloom's – many allusions to Gulliver's Travels. In Drury's words, "When Lilliput was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect."
The image encapsulates the neoconservative vision of the United States' relationship with the rest of the world – as well as the relationship between their relationship as a ruling elite with the masses. "They really have no use for liberalism and democracy, but they're conquering the world in the name of liberalism and democracy," Drury says.
Jim Lobe writes on foreign policy for Alternet. His work has also appeared on Foreign Policy In Focus and TomPaine.com.

Myth Power and its Definitions

We are in a renaissance of Myths in the western cultures.
Going back in time we realize that this is just another blip in the history of human proclivity to self-destroy societies.
I does seem that we have not learn that much after 10,000 years of organize living communities. We just enjoy killing against any tenet we proclaim. We continue to self-justify what is not convenient at the time.

Zoroastrians lived for five thousand years in a reveled series of myths gave us the Code of Hammurabi and eventually all this codified power and religious zealotry became their destruction.
The Sumerian and Mesopotamian societies died due to the induction of religious intolerance. This was, projected from their leaders for self-enrichment purposes, ending in a tremendous black period of humanity. At the same time Babylonian kings where trying to salvage the damage in they kingdoms Egyptian mythology thrived.
Egyptians under even strictest codes, including how their Gods were to be please every hour of the day. Egyptians were strict in enforcing laws, in which they believed ferociously. Egyptians controlled how any object or person should be represented for any public purpose. Egyptians formalized the system of religious leaders by forming laws in their mythology, they had a two thousand years leadership that was their own destruction when they codified religion and social behavior and monetary greed went rampant.
Egyptians codified who was allowed to talk in righteous way of their Gods or who was a channel of their Gods. Egyptians went as far as codifying how the social leaders must be dusted with powder when portrayed in any public event.
The Egyptians kept a control of every aspect of their society for thousands of years. Egyptians had a proclivity to subjugate and slave any person they encounter along their path. Behavior they learned from Mesopotamian and it carried over to our present times.
By looking at a piece of art from the early Pharos period versus one thousand years later, the changes are imperceptible for the non-expert. One might think Egyptians were just a blip in history and all they know was to paint or cave straight lines and curious symbols so Egyptologists could make a living. All was a series of well crafted series of laws to control their citizens and still they destroyed their society and became a sand path forgotten for another thousand years. Time is not kind to abusers and destroyers of humans.
The Greeks took over from Egyptians and refined what the Egyptians learned from their social process and government controls. Greeks did realized the need of supporting their Gods and reduce the process of interpretation by religious arguments, as they arrived to their own decline due to grandiose omnipotent behavior, greed and subjugation of other people with abusive methods, very similar to their ancestor the Egyptians. This occurred in a much sorter period than the self-destructors predecessors. When the time for Greek theorists and elites arrived to feel the pain of the decline of their society, many moved to what we know now as Italy and build on what they thought was a better society.
Rome started to replicate what the Greek thinkers and military professionals learned from their past and started to accelerate their raise as leaders.
They also copied and tinker with religious and social myths, by the time Rome declined and was obliterated. The cycle of using religion to arise populace feelings was accompany by the used of horrendous spectacles, that made the Taleban soccer game intermissions of stoning people a dance ball. Rome had become a large corrupt monetary market, and religious orders were created to control production and taxes. When all ingredients of destruction of societies were in place, greed and religion did the job to destroy Roman society at a tremendous pace. We entered a dark age of seven hundred years. The rising of Arabian influence in Southern Europe, settle some of the regressions the destruction of Rome carry over hundred of years.
Suddenly, the east was having another raising start in Alexander, and the cycle continue with rise and declines accelerating. We all are familiar with the latest two thousand years of destruction and reconstruction.
The latest one, prior to the present cycle, was the European war, this process lasted just two Popes. The embattled industrialists using religion to induce radicalism and those who totally repudiated both premises, ended in a massacre that we all know it well. Up to day, the largest holocaust induced in any society.
This latest self-destruction by humans can be the biggest disgrace that we have to carry today.

But have not learn much.

Today, we have emerging greed driven mass murders as the Hutus and Tutsi situation or present Somalia. These two conflicts use religious connotations to obtain monetary greed and kill millions of people.
Myth is wonderful tool to manipulate populace by their educated leaders. Build myths has not other purpose that sue concepts of pseudo-simplicity to make the understanding pleasant with the purpose to extend fanaticism.

Now is time to see what the American Heritage dictionary says about the definition of MYTH:
1.a. A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the world view of a people , as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology , custom or ideals of society: the myth of Eros and Psyche; a creation myth. 1.b. Such stories considered as a group: the realm of myth.
2. A Story, a theme, and object, or a character regarded as embodying an aspect of a culture.
3. A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology.
4. A fictitious story, person, or thing.

From Webster’s collegiate and Thesaurus:
Myth. A traditional story of ostensibly historical content whose origin was lost,
legend, mythos, allegory. Related to, saga, fable, fabrication, fiction, figment creation, invention.

From the dictionary of Cultural Literacy:
Mythology is the body of myths belongings to a culture. Myths are traditional stories about gods and heroes. They often account for the basic aspects of existence-explaining, for instance, how the earth
Was created, why people have to die, or why the year is divided in seasons. Classical mythology- the myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans- has had an enormous influence on European and American culture.

If we self reflect, and look around us we have a lot of work to find a better path.
Myths are dangerous and we are in a rising tide of myths becoming fanaticisms.

Envisioning

We cannot look at the entropy of each action and expect to collect positive results by sitting at the side-line. We must become leaders of our own good.
Looking at the grandiose temple of Artemis we might continue to be mesmerized as Ephesians. But do not be deceive. We need to take a look at the hortatory efforts of people like Deepak Chopra and many others and act upon their messages. Reach Deepak thoughts at http://www.intentblog.com

My principal focus here is to help you become proactive with your vision and call to action. We need to constantly envision a better way.

Direct anyone who wants to take action at any level. By applying consistent actions and have the tools to participate in the democratic process. The ideal would be if we achieve primus inter pares by taking a few simple actions.
I do not want any one to become short-winded while taking on the chore or following instructions.

First, anything you do is more than doing nothing. The next action you take has improved your prior action by 100%. If you reach 100% improvement, face sunward and delight yourself.
Second, you are not alone, like you many want to do something. There are millions of people that feel the same than you feel and they are prime ready looking for you, look for them. You need to start to somewhere, try first www.dfa.meetup.com you might be able to find people around you that are already moving forward. If this group might not tantalize you, keep looking, or build your own.
Third, the most important tools you have are your vote and your opinion. Make both count, your opinion by writing at your local editor and second following with your vote at the urns. Get a calendar of elections at your local County Board of Elections. It is easy to find your Board of Elections in the internet and the phone book. If you feel heroic, ask at the Board of Elections for a list or CROM disk of party registration in your town. It will throw you back around $15 dollars or three lattes. You can get all the people that vote like you do and contact them with your action idea. To write letters to the editor or articles follow http://www.blogforamerica.com if you cannot find it there you are in the wrong place.
Fourth, take a step forward. Understand the importance how to help one local election at the time. You will learn many things by volunteering locally. You will find it enlightening. It will change the country one citizen at the time. As Senator Moniham said “all politics is local” and that’s means YOU getting involved locally. I will suggest start by getting involved in supporting a local candidate actively even if it is for local library board to learn the ropes, and get involved to town level. You can dedicate as little as you want, but your candidate will embrace anything you can do for the campaign. After you participate, you will find out how much heart and dedication candidates put in getting elected. You will gain respect for their efforts. You find out how hard is to gain one vote.
Fifth, take the next step and find a grassroots training program. I suggest you start by checking out the most approachable program at present time is at http://www.democracyforamerica.com/training.php
Sixth, have a plan for change, your plan will drive change. Stay focus, give it time, and you will see results.
Seventh, the lucky number, You already have succeed by reading all the way to here. Good luck and follow your path.

Thank you for your help building democracy one citizen at the time.

I will be reproached for using “all links” to Democracy for America web sites. I will accept the punishment. If it can help you find a path to action this is a way to start and you will find your best fit with time. The fact is that they have the most proactive web site with the most active community around without falling into fallacies and preaching.

With intent and energy,

Tomas

Notes:
Deepak Chopra blog: http://www.intentblog.com
Democracy for America: http://dfa.meetup.com/
Training Program: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/training.php

The 35 Cent a Day Billionaire

The 35 Cent a day Billionaire

Really, who wants to stack in the bank one stick and nine donuts?

The reality is very few people consider getting near a chair and a desk to plan it, we are talking about one stick and six donuts, so the normal person will consider nine donuts, but the normal person will gamble ten times the amounts during its life and in return receive nothing. It is possible to accomplish this incredible feat with the value of time in the side of your kin and a generational goal.
People do not walk away from the consideration of wealth because it is not possible, most of us we walk away from the planning because we do not even consider worth it of thought.
Take those $35 cents spent by the average person in donuts every day. It needs a little sacrifice for your kin, put aside those thirty-five cents for a long while and build a billion dollars account. No kidding!
Do not let ego ruin the plan, teach your kin of the importance of the goal for generations to come.
This might sound weird, it is not, this weird concept is how generations over generations of the old and powerful keep their wealth over more a thousand of years. We can travel many countries around the planet and encounter this people, living quiet lives in quiet social environment and billionaire accounts if far remote places.
Now, some people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, George Soros and hundreds of others in the billionaires club, accumulate large sums of currency by adopting a different approach, the use of risk and power, this also deserves study, and is all over the place to be learnt.
In the case of Bill Gates or many others is matter of been very rich to become the richest, call it the asymmetric access to influence capital in your favor.
Back to our obscure subject: the non-donut eater billionaire.
Who will get to benefit if you decided to get involved in this goal, well, like everything in live there is a caveat, for most of us, in our life times, we will see the amount to grow at miniscule rate. What if I tell you, that if your great-great-parents would have planned for your grandkids to be billionaires, your grandkids will be billionaires and a quarter of a billion over. That is what it entitles.
It is a matter of setting the goal on time. We all read a lot about vision, but most of what we call vision is tunnel vision it is not peripheral vision nor focused.
Accepting the reality that you might not be able to do it for yourself but you might be able to do it for you generations to come and used it as a family idiosyncratic element is worth of consideration.
You can do the math yourself use any calculator that allows you to have compound interest and use the average return of a bond that is 7% in a tax sheltered account. They are many choices, each one should do their own DD.
I used the retirement calculator by http://www.bloomberg.com/analysis/calculators/retire.html
The data I entered was 35 cents a day in constant value or $10 dollars a month with a starting capital of $10 dollars, that is, an annual contribution of $120.
The time-frame used is the average live expectancy of a working person. I consider 50 years of contributions to the account per generational kin. I did not account for better results but the time-frame can be reduced substantially if the contribution is $1 a day.
The total amount after a five kin generation planning at 35 cents is $1.2 BILLION
If we raise the contribution to one dollar the generational kin is four and the amount $4,08 BILLION

WHO WANTS TO BE A BILLIONAIRE!!!!

No Wonder

No Wonder

“You must wonder,
And no wonder what you wonder.” By me

That said, I save your time. I will not spend much debating the rationality of ice melting in cold water and why social behavior applies its modicum and becomes simile in itself of such situation.
Now, I will spend a little time in sharing about what you should expect to learn in the very near future.
You are going to need to understand risk and its implications. Understanding risk demands sophistication. If you want to have a serious dialogue about your future, you must understand risk.
Specifically, you might not need to understand risk investing in all its intricate ways.
Now imagine how your way of live is going to be affect by your risk of your present savings or your kin status.
In the next seven to ten years, the largest shift in the history of wealth creation and wealth destruction is going to occur in a calm way, affecting all countries around the planet.
The first hints of this event are appearing in all communities around the planet. A huge majority is becoming poorer and a wider but very small minority continues to accumulate a larger amount of the available currency resources. Your knowledge of this wealth distribution it is going to determine of your well-being by adapting or non-adapting to this process and logic.
Money is opposite to life, money is infinite at will, can be printed and its amount is determined by which form and the wish of the creator of the money to distribute and the exchangers to accept the amount wish to make. Life of individuals is finite, most very lucky folks after 72 start to hear cranking noises from the suspension (legs) and unpleasant empty oil tanks (stomach aches) or even worse the chassis breaks.
Thus, money in infinite and life is finite in physical terms. How do you marry money and life? From the point of view of a person, with limited resources, life and time; how a person acquires the infinite resource, money?
The smartest answer is: make your own.
Do not laugh!
Spend a few days thinking about: how do you make your own money?
Money is the tool of exchange accepted by all of us, what is the next paradigm change or tool of exchange that we all can accept?
I am going to use my finite time to help others and my soul.

Heiristocracy

The following article is by Daniel Franklin consulting editor of The Washington Monthly.
History does funny things to people, we always look at everything in retrospective, and we continue to ignore what we have learnt. Today, we are building a new reinassance of laws with wider consequences than in the past, we are scrambling social development to the point of not return, without major adjustments. It is the prevalence of ignorant people acting on laws at a tremendous rate with majestic historical consequences, affecting a vast part of the population in negetive ways. This review of "Death Tax," Death By A Thousand Cuts, by Yale political scientists Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro, demonstrates that the story is far more complicated."

The solution isn't usually found in the extremes. The all-or-nothing solutions implemented on people lives, will never be an acceptable proposal for more than one person.


""To the Democratic mind, there is no tax more just, more moral, more American, than the estate tax. If we must tax someone, who better than those fortunate few who have gobs of money and did nothing to earn it; the children of the wealthy? Every dollar taken from the ranks of Bergdorf blondes is a dollar that need not be taken from working Americans. And so that poor, beleaguered Democratic mind could be excused if it falls into a sputtering, senseless rage with the recognition that Republicans have turned eliminating a levy on the luckiest and least worthy into a legitimate populist movement.
How a populist movement arose to eliminate the most populist of taxes is a political mystery without parallel. Not since World War I has a progressive tax been excised altogether, and yet four years after President Bush signed a phase-out of the estate tax, he has yet to reap a word of backlash. Tempting as it is for Democrats to chalk up their loss on the estate tax to Republican lies or sleight of hand tricks like renaming it the "Death Tax," Death By A Thousand Cuts, by Yale political scientists Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro, demonstrates that the story is far more complicated.
No doubt, the estate tax debate is riddled with misinformation and misperception. But the phony facts mask a fundamental and far-reaching change in how Americans look at the morality of taxation, one upon which Democrats appear to be on the losing side. Democratic leaders comfort themselves by saying, if people only knew the facts. But “the Democrats' failure,” the authors write, “goes to the very core of their approach to convincing the American public that they are right about two of the most fundamental questions in any system of government: how and why the country should tax its citizens.”
For all the book's many virtues, thrills are not among them. Those looking for a page-turner that captures the excitement of the legislative process should look elsewhere (and let me know when they find it). Instead, the book reads like a narrative of how termites ate your house. Out of sight and unopposed, the advocates of repeal just munched and munched and munched until support for the tax caved in like a corroded joist.
The story begins in the late '80s, as liberals would expect, with a few rich folks who wanted to keep more of their money. A key early figure in the movement was the boutique financial planner Pat Soldano, who handled the assets for the Mars candy bar family, the Gallo wine family, and the heirs to the Campbell's soup fortune, among others. The effort to repeal the estate tax was just another aspect of Soldano's investment advice. For a relatively small investment—a Heritage study here, some lobbying fees from Patton Boggs there—families might one day reap tax breaks worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a bet a growing number of wealthy families were willing to make, offering the leaders of the repeal movement all the resources they would need to make their case heard.
Since the plight of the Gallo heirs was unlikely to draw many tears around the country, activists smartly latched on to the emotional appeal of family farmers and small business owners. Despite a mountain of data proving that only a tiny fraction of farmers and entrepreneurs were affected, the activists showed that an anecdote beats a statistic any day. One of the most effective was that of Chester Thigpen, an African-American tree farmer from Montrose, Miss., recruited by Jim Martin, one of the leading repeal activists. The grandson of slaves, Thigpen was heaven-sent. Less than a month after Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, Thigpen was testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee. “Right now, people tell me my tree farm could be worth more than a million dollars,” he said. “All that value is tied up in land or trees. We're not rich people. My son and I do almost all the work on our land ourselves.... My children might have to break up the tree farm or sell off timber to pay the estate taxes when I die.”
Thigpen's story was recycled so many times that at one point, a strategist considered renaming repeal bill The Chester Thigpen bill. There was only one problem. Thigpen's farm was not, in fact, subject to the estate tax. It handily skated in under the minimum threshold, according to Thigpen's son. When the authors asked Chester's son, Roy, if his father had written his own testimony, the son broke up laughing. “Some professors,” wrote it and gave it to him to read. Repeal activists were untroubled, as they often were, by facts. Thigpen was an effective stalking horse, and his story democratized the image of the repeal effort.
As the numbers of Americans supporting repeal grew, Democrats responded with the same uncomprehending refrain: But it doesn't affect you. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin tells the story of how he was once asked by an O'Hare Airport baggage handler when he was going to do away with the Death Tax, “so I won't have to pay it.” The moral of the story, of course, was that, if only Americans knew the facts, support for repeal would melt away to the two percent of Americans actually affected. In fact, the numbers tell a different story. One CNN poll found that nearly 40 percent of Americans believe that they are in the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans or will be there soon. Only 26 percent had given up hope of reaching the top of the income ladder, a cold splash indeed to dedicated class warriors. For the Democratic strategy to work, they would first need to convince Americans that they were worse off than they feel. Who would vote for someone who tells them they have no chance of achieving the American Dream?
But good old American blind optimism only accounted for some of Americans' resistance to Democratic logic. More troubling for Democrats was the fact that they lost the moral argument—the idea that the fairest tax was the one that hit those most able to pay. Americans increasingly bought the Republican line that the estate tax was doubly unfair—first because it treated some Americans differently than others. Second, because it taxed the same money twice: when it was earned, and later when the earner died. The absurdity of the argument of double taxation has been made before: All kinds of money is taxed more than once, most frequently when, as the case of the estate tax, it changes hands. But facts, as Ronald Reagan said, are stupid things. Polls showed that nearly 90 percent of Americans believe the estate tax is unfair. In 2003, a NPR, Kennedy School, Kaiser poll found that only 15 percent of Americans wanted to preserve the estate tax. One respondent, a retired transportation director for a Delaware school district, said that he knew his estate would not be big enough to be taxed, but he wanted it eliminated anyway. “I knew this gentleman, he's worked his life doing what he does, and does it very well, and I know his kids. He told me once—he said they would have to sell 90 percent of what he's invested in order to pay his taxes. So, you know, it's just not fair.”
If it felt like repeal activists were pushing at an open door, it's because, to a large extent, they were. Democrats offered no real alternative to repeal, and no effective argument for preservation of the estate tax. Not unlike the Republicans, the Democratic Party is driven by its constituent groups. But where was the constituency for the estate tax? The pain of the tax was concentrated to a small group with the means to fight for their interests. The benefits, meanwhile, were spread thinly across 150 million taxpayers. The liberal Center for Budgetary Priorities and Policy didn't begin working against estate tax repeal until 1999, four years after Chester Thigpen testified to the Ways and Means Committee. In one clever measure of political attention, the authors note that Republican pollsters had conducted 20 separate studies of the politics of estate tax repeal. Democrats had conducted four polls, and three of these were done after the 2000 election, when, to a large extent, the fight had already been lost.
Graetz and Shapiro are at their best when depicting the subterranean interplay between activists, think tanks, lobbyists, and donors that fuels federal politics. If there's a weakness in their description of how Washington works, it's in their gross underestimation of the influence of campaign contributions. The authors dismiss as naïve the suggestion that congressmen fought for repeal for the sake of campaign donations. But I think it's Graetz and Shapiro who are being simplistic. The authors seem to take on face value various congressmen's argument that contribution limits prevent any one donor from wielding undue influence. This is true, as far as it goes. But when well-connected fundraiser organizes an event where $1,000,000 is raised from 1,000 different donors, it's as if he gave all the money himself. His calls get answered. Moreover, when politicians spend so much of their time cultivating people wealthy enough to give a campaign contribution, it has a tendency to shape their thinking. The authors suggest that personal contacts, rather than campaign contributions, persuaded members of Congress, including many Democrats, to support repeal. They quote Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) saying, “everyone in the House knows one person who's affected” by the estate tax. But the chances are, they met that person at a fundraiser. After years of attending fundraisers with the same group of donors, the line between friend and donor gets awfully blurry. A former Senate Democratic leadership aide once complained to me of having to redirect Senators' attention when they returned from fundraising trips. “A fundraiser is not a focus group,” he would remind them. It's the rare politician whose perspective is not affected by his or her constant exposure to the wealthy people whose money they need to get elected.
The authors' suggestion for how Democrats can rebut the Republican onslaughts falls short for me, as well. Graetz and Shapiro chide the Democrats for letting Republicans focus attention on the working rich who accumulated the estates, rather than the decadent children receiving them once they died. Many of the people taxed could easily be made to look like the “Paris Hiltons of this world,” rather than the Chester Thigpens, they argue. Perhaps this would have helped. But since 40 percent of the country believes that they are or will be in the wealthiest one percent of which Democrats speak, it's just as likely the Republicans could have responded by saying, “Those are your children they're talking about.” Even reviving the original argument for the estate tax—preventing the establishment of an aristocracy built on generational wealth—seems doomed to fail. After all, Paris Hilton became Paris Hilton with the estate tax in effect. It seems probable that the ease with which the wealthy circumvent the tax has become one of chief causes of its demise, an argument the authors neglect. Since it accomplishes no clear good beyond the money raised, the estate tax becomes like any other: a necessary evil. Republicans have shown that in the minds of Americans the step from necessary evil to just plain evil is a short one indeed.
If the estate tax debate shows anything, it's that tax politics based on distinguishing Americans by class has failed the Democrats utterly. Something new that reaffirms the connection between all Americans and our obligations to one another, rather than our differences, must soon take its place. For Graetz and Shapiro are profoundly right when they discuss the implications of the estate tax debate for politics and the nation. “This death tax effort has been a critical piece of an attack on the very idea of progressive taxation in America.... They know that what they want cannot be accomplished at a fell swoop. Hence their strategy: death by a thousand cuts. What strategy is there on the other side?”"

Daniel Franklin is a consulting editor of The Washington Monthly.

Bite and Bite

Every time the national television announced some big special bullfight or soccer game, my mom will scream, FASCISTS AT WORK!!!
No wonder, she lived thru the executions young people while "the biggest bullfight of the decade" or the "the game of the century" draw the attention of people, and the government took the lives and freedom of hundreds of people.
Most, people felt no need to say anything, it was no them who were being affected.
Every time, the fascist government of Franco decided to have some special law that will erode the little freedom left, a special sporting event was created and broadcasted as if the planet had stopped. Those manipulations did not passed easy by many, who understood how easy is to manipulate populace opinion, those few fanatics endorsers from home and abroad continue the self feeding fanaticism of nationalism via second or third tier issues.

There is not breakthrough on what we are seing today around the planet in the way the news trickle down in to the populace. It is such global mislead the way issues of importance are treated, what we are receiving is propaganda, it is dangerous at minimum and treaterous if fully investigated. As citizens who have to make decisions about who govern us, we have lost a grip in the truth, there is not way to rationalize the preset news or accept them as the truth.

Humans have the tendency to eliminate -kill- each other, mostly with sentiments emanated from simple ideas, one idea is the need for greed, other is power to subjugate others and the last is material enrichment.
Most social philosophies as religion, pay homage to those actions by branding them as pernicious to humans and their societies, forgetting what the consequences are for abiding to greed, lying, killing for enrichment and doing harm to others. It is a dangerous behavior that always comes with strong punishment. Time will to continue to be harsh the judge, and pardon never arrives on time.

Cut and Run or Tie and Rest

Black or White
Night or Day
My way or the Highway
Rich or Poor
Run or Walk
Tall or Short
A or Z
Ferrari or Yugo
Gold or Dust
Sea or Sky
Truth or Lie
Cat or Dog
Fire or Ice
What is between the extremes?

A life is so poorly created and driven by dualistic and idiotic views, with masses allowing leaders to build their future in this bobo based logic, judgement day has not remorse, there is no kindness in history for this behavior nor its supporters.

Choice for Retirement Income

Privatizing Social Security has everybody turning into many different schemes.
The whole debate should be in only one direction: choice.
Not to forget choice with idiocy. The linked title shoudl provide some light into the facts and lies of who is in charge. Let's do it babe, it is all greed and money.
No government forced direction.
Privatizing the future of retirement is practically already accomplished by the elimination of employer sponsor pensions. The problem is the pater familias behavior from the government of the few, that continues to bail out all those failed plans with taxpayer money. What good is to bail out private pensions? The market should allow this to adjust by itself without government intervention, or make pensions plans 100% funded endeavors, you cannot have meargerly funded pension plans -today less than 10% of liabilities are in cash reserves for private pensions- and expect anything less than chapter 11. It is another way to tax in those who follow the rules.
The danger of the present form of privatizing craze is simply too great of a risk to the rest of society, no because of the privatization, but because it does not allow freedom to invest and increases government with a new agency, again a news tax increase. This republican majority is turning into a hide and seek tax dodger, with one hand they send a $600 check with teh otehr the ask for $5000.
Basically, the proposed plan is just another tax in the middle class in drag. They send a check in the mail, then, they rip you off in the rest of taxes and owerllian projects.
Democracy is based in simple principia: decisions from government should be made to improve the quality of life of citizens.
The present plan to privatize social Security does not address the most important issue, how this privatization will improve the rest of society. The fact points toward teh direction of "most likely will not improve pensions as it is presented."

We know today more than 60% of people coming into retirement in the next 20 years are going to need Social Security to provide 50% of more for their basic needs. Today, more than 35% of people under the protection of Social Security depend 100% on social security for income and the trend does not seem to change over time. Those are hard facts.

We know that England, Mexico, Chile and other countries directed their citizens to support a privatized retirement income systems, this year are screaming: wolf. Mildly put by some experts.

Privatizing can give us many results, in the present form it is just a worthless piece of advice. Freedom of choice is the solution.
It continues a pattern of undermining freeedom coming from the present Cabinet. The present retirement program as proposed by the Cabinet has some very interesting outcomes, as highly probable. We live in the US where the consumer society is all gods, in which personal savings rates are minimal and in many cases negative, in which around two million people go bankrupt every year. Talking this harsh reality into account, the first outcome will be something I call “Mexicanize.”
Basically, the present plan as present it, will develop itself into a very similar situation to what you encounter when you travel to Mexico City, or any other Mexican town. The elders in Mexico do not have enough savings into senior age, for a different reason than in the US but still no savings, the elder in Mexico are reduced to sell trinkets in the streets, and many will work regular jobs well into medical incapacity. It is not improvable that if in time we open our borders as is happening in Europe, and it is shaping up around the globe, it is not such far fetched probability, to see the situation of Mexicanizing our elder citizens, today our youngters, viewed as normal. I think Mexicanizing is the direction we are going if we continue to follow the present republican ideas.
The next alternative is the “Santiago Move.” The Santiago Move takes a different turn on reality. It turns the virtual-reality marketed by the administration upside down. Basically, the present results on Social Security privatization as took place in Chile. Chile it is hitting the hard wall of fees, poor stock and bond market performance, and people that were promised a better tomorrow. Chileans who choose to go private with their retirement savings, today, are living a worse than a nightmare reality. The reality is their open market pensions are worth less than the government secure assets. Chileans are screaming out loud and foul, they are asking for their money back. In this situation we must consider that eventually a broad social bail out will be need if individuals follow the advice provide it by Wall Street and Ken Lay’s future earnings guidance. This is sitution in which social unrest is highly provable.
The last and nearest experience in Social Darwinism is the royal experiment of privatization in England. I will call it the “Pub Effect.” In this case people get really drunk with ideas of exuberant results from the stock market returns. This occurred in England during the conservative era. England having a strong employer sponsored pension program decided to drink in cheers the pension offered by the royal funds, invest in “schemes” as they are called in England was teh magic trick. Any one could have told the English folks that a "scheme" is a "scheme" no matter how you shape it. Today, the scheme after privatizing the pension system is called a “bloody mess.”
Those are the nearest examples we have to draw information and conclusions.
We need to be aware that those systems were implemented with the support and advice of many supporters and advisors of the present plan, right now!
Because the risk and impact on individuals and society deceived from corporate leaders is so great. The choice to elect to have the future retirement payments at risk must come with insurance to the rest of society.
This insurance must be a fee as any other insurance for a mortgage offered from private insurers in reverse, and must cover the equivalent of the total amount of principal invested and the equivalent of government sponsor plan. This way there is an equal footing even for those no versed in the risky art of investing.
Choice must also have a full contribution from all citizens that includes anyone earning an income from employment.
“Give me choice and give me freedom, protect my neighbors from my good heart.”

Memories and Aromas

No all summers are the same. Only, one summer you are nine.
There was only one summer I remember with strong aromas of fresh wheat and omelets galore a summer never to be left on its own, I am still nine.
First communions are part of life events that one remembers in detail. I do remember some details. Specially, the unlimited gluttony of ice cream at my first communion in May of 1968 is one that makes the rounds at family events. Memories are a funny thing. Sometimes appear clear like a reflection on a pond, other times as a taste of joyous saltiness or pungent aroma of fresh basil. The summer of 1968 was a special summer for my memories. It was bundle around aromas of flowers, wheat fields ready to harvest, immortalized views of golden twigs swinging in the horizon. Many times dreamed by creators as imaginary tempests in canvasses, my sensations of those fields, it reminds me of the succulent aroma of fresh bake loaves of “pain de guerre” competing with an old wheel-barrel full of homemade sausages coming to be stored in the centuries old cabana to dry and age. During hot days in July, this image continues to appear year over year.

Walk thru a shadowed stoned street, walled by houses build hundreds of years ago, with unseen signs, but smelling the direction of wood burning, carry a 30 pound bag of freshly harvested hulled wheat on a makeshift cart, with purpose and unlimited expectations to see the holy grail of baked bread. As will get near my destiny, an artistically carved, very old dark looking door entrance will appear. I would feel the sweetness of my destination, in a hot summer date. A thick wood poorly carved door sign reads “Tahona,” it was the symbol of my finish line, as the old baker home was called, still a reminiscent name of medieval times. I fancy going back in memories of this wonderful time. I realize how many centuries one travels in a single life. I always thought “the beauty of this baker is his accommodative stance to my schedule.” The truth was this baker did follow a rigorous schedule. The same way his father did, and his grandfather, his great-grandfather, as far I could tell he was baking bread since the Genesis. The reality of his reality was, he baked the bread to be ready at early sun break time, later at lunch time, usually at one thirty in the afternoon, and baked again for dinner usually he will be finish by eight thirty at night.
The baker’s door also was the symbol of its status. The baker in the village was trusted and adored as a healer of sad hearts. The three hundred or so people living in the village granted him its due respect. The baker always had a chair at the center of the domino’s table, with Don Ramon skinny cranky and well meaning priest and Mr. Lopez “The Major” a lawyer by training and descendant of prominent stock of the village. The two were guardians at left and right of the baker’s game.

What really interested me was how the baker baked.
How to create the aroma of heavenly bread as the oven gave a golden crisp crust, and how the different mixes of the same four ingredients would yield such disparity of dreamful loaves.

Time taught me the hard way, no all bakers are trained equally, no all bakeries operate at the same hours, not all ingredients are the same, no all operations cared as much as my summer baker, no all bread were Dionosio’s bread.

You might think I am exaggerating, not I am not, I continue to have dreams of aromas flowing thru my window during siesta, the wood burning oven heat mix with yeasty bread aromas filling the town plaza.

I will be back!

Socially Responsible Investments

One of the most common components of social responsible individuals is the frustration with the lack of economic power.

First obstacle, it is the complexity and lack of media coverage for Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) venues that increases this frustration. Second is neagtive coverage of SRI investing and alternative capital creation methods except from the old classic ways from the media it supports.
Creative ways of building capital are possible and less risky than average investements.
The ease of access to the internet allows individuals to brainstorm with leading individuals in the field of social investment, actually allows individuals to make competitive profits by doing good. Socially Responsible Investing must be part of any social responsible individual.
It does not take capital, it takes will to find how capital can be helped to do better in society. As we progress in this field of SRI, proven ideas in social investing are starting to break some barriers from those in power in the financial media.

It still is common to treat social investing as some kind of out-of-way for using investment money. It is not, it is irresponsible to cap coverage and fair information on SRI.

Making money and social responsibility are not exclusive. It is the way of the future.

The performance of mutual funds specializing in socially responsible investing is advantageous and profitable. SRI mutual funds rate above 95% of all other venues to invest when explained to individual investors. Some SRI funds rank in the top 2% performance of mutual funds sectors. With general investments performing below the Socially Responsible Investing choices, it makes sense to take the next step for individuals who care about how public corporations behave. The next step is to make SRI the norm as an investment choice and work to take further steps in social responsibility.

Many detractors bring up the costs to manage SRI due to the research need it inside companies to comply with social behavior. The facts do not substatiate the negative assesment, most costs are average and competitive, with above average returns. No one complains for and extra 0.05% if you beat the return of 95% of the competition, at the same time, do good to society, versus blind investing and shoddy practices.
The more SRIs enter the market, costs will be reduced to compete for capital.
Sometimes, SRI mutual funds fall for the lies of corporations, but that is something we need to work harder to correct, and a subject to treat later, the stronger the SRI become the more difficult becomes to lie to investors.

Different SRI investments work with different focus, some work to improve woman and family rights, some do not buy shares in military or war promoting corporations, other focus more in environment degradation from pollution, choices are plenty and some of the SRI managers are becoming shareholder activists, which is the key to success and change for progress.
Many of these investments are part of large families of solid funds like Vanguard Calvert, Domini Social Equity , Pax World, there is a complete list of these investments in this link:

http://wealth.bloomberg.com/wealth/0105/feb_ft_ranking2.pdf

Wall Street is not kind with words or actions to SRI for a simple reason: Wall Street is afraid of its activism.

Activism is anathema to the clubby investment style that prevails in the pyramid scheme of Wall Street. The most important thing Wall Street fears is having to go to court to defend scandals. With the upcoming push to Mexicanize Social Security, talk about whow to settle disputes with investments is an interesting subject to treat the near future.

Today, many of the SRI mututal funds are billion dollar investments and are demanding seats in boards, clean accounts and they are demanding what politicians refuse to demand from corporations: social patriotism and responsibility to the society that provides with all tools to operate.

It is important to understand SRI in the context of power. Politicians are bought by the same groups of power does not matter which party affiliation they have. Very few elected officials walk into their office with a clean slot to work for the good of all American citizens, most work for the good of those citizens that gave them money to get elected and plan to use taxes to favor their buyers and work in the next election. That includes Wall Street.
Wall Street is pushing to get Social Security dismantled in favor if its clients.
Politicians will bent over backwards to please their masters. Wall Street is one of the few masters who can castigate any politician in seconds, sending the politician to earthy purgatory.

Here is where SRI can make a huge impact and hopefully bring good unintended consequences of dismantling retirement security and privatizing Social Security. It is necessary we consider professional advice to invest in SRI via our IRA’s and 401Ks and other retirement plans, talk to experts in SRI. Also we need to start to talk about how we can help others to expand their choice of investment into SRI.

All SRI mutual funds have IRA investment options. This should be an easy choice. What we encounter in most 401Ks or other retirement plans, SRI choices are non-existent.
A few private retirement plans offer SRI as a choice. TIAA CREF Social Choice is offered to teachers, and in a few other pension plans, but the amount is so small that we will need to have a decade of committed actions to bring the SRI choices forward.
The key word here is choice.
While federal elected officials are weighing when to dismantle and Mexicanize the social safety nets. We must have the choice to invest in those causes we believe. WE need to start to turn some of the tide around. By investing in SRIs is to give access to change, there is not need to have laws passed to create social change, that is the beauty of capital formation going in the right direction.
The broader the appeal to the general public of SRI the more effective investing it becomes. The more vocal SRI becomes the corporate behavior becomes more acceptable. The more targeted the investment higher is the possibility of above average returns.

How difficult is to open the doors of a 401K plan to have choices in SRI mutual funds? It is easy to have the choice included in your selection of mutual funds. It takes a simple request to the HR department asking to have one SRI choice. Talk with other like minded people in the work place to ask to have the choice added to the retirement plan. Many organizations and companies offer what they call a retirement cafeteria plan, the request is simple add the SRI as one choice. Today, many plans have open choices and wide open selections which will make easier to invest in SRI.
Those whose believe in balance budgets can start at home creating a SRI investment plan.

I do invest in SRI and proud of it.
This is not intended as financial or investment advice.
It is my personal independent opinion.

Oil at E29, Soon Oil at E20

The EU consumer pays in real dollars, around, $29 per barrel of oil, monthly average from last summer. If the dollar continues its decline the price will be near E20.
The American consumer is paying around $40 per barrel oil monthly average. This week $49 per barrel.

No there is not magic or shadowy deal. It is just a simple conversion of currencies.

While the administration and everybody plus its brother, continue to make claims of a strong dollar policy. The dollar is declining at record levels. Reality and narrow-minding are not great friends.
If the dollar continues its decline, and the forecast now stands have a dollar worth 50 Cents of Euro. Can you imagine, the dollar .50 cents of Euro! The Volvo-driving-cheese-eating-French and its Europeans comrades will be paying $20 oil while loud mouth French-trashing-people and its friends on currency-pegs will be paying around $43 per barrel of oil.
In the near future it does seem possible, unless something gets seriously done, that rides to Sunday Church will have to be part of the Park & Ride system.
Someone needs to start to take stand and kick butt, to tell the truth about the economic situation.
The elected folks, specially, those in Washington; need to be send packing in the next election, no questions who no questions for what. I do not mean republican elected folks but also democrats. Sending packing means to elect any challenger in large enough numbers that they get the message to wake-up, and do other than pilfering peoples assets.
The interesting part here is, while the dollar is losing value against the Euro, no one seem to really care much; eventually, the EU will have to stop the floating of dollars at such discounted prices.
Basically, the dollar will be sold by Wal-Mart, if wisely done they might even make a profit from selling dollars, next holiday season retailers might advertise the dollar as a “closeout out, all dollars at 70% off.” “Sell today, big discounts.”
As we are aware where there is bad news we need to have good news somewhere.

The good news: the cycle needs to reverse; the bad news: “or else”

In an open market economy, strong currencies are sign of healthy and strong economy; weak currencies are a sign of weakened economies and declining influence.

Cycles in currencies of imperial powers have the tendency to lose a substantial amount of value at the most minimum resistance from outside. It is not a new event, Spain lost the value of the ducat after 500 years at its hegemonic decline their currency conversion would be the equivalent of 1/1000 to the original coin. The most recent example is the English Empire in the 1950’s. When the League of Nations sent a message to London with a very simple text: “imperialism is over, reform before we intervene” England went in free fall from India to Zimbabwe. As the “freed” colonies started their own currencies the crown direction, since then, declined in a consistent basis, today the British pound buys 1/3 of what used to buy 60 yeas ago this decline is a natural cycle of adjusting not the currency but the behavior of those controlling their currency.

Today the decline of the US dollar is in the same path, the most alarming situation is the fast and sudden decline. There is a belief of disparity economic strengths between the European and US, the reality is different. There is not such pronounced disparity. The exception is the incremental decline from US employee standard of living versus European employees. The intrinsic economic differences are not so large that is what is worrying some prominent analysts. The fallacy is catching up with reality. Some of this disparity comes from energy policies and blind acceptance of policies that do not address the reality of society.

Pumps and dumps

The equation for the oil producers is simple but includes the inclusion of high-risk lack-of-discipline of from the US Budgets disparities. The Oil rich solution, sell more oil in Europe, a market that is growing at 15% in currency terms, sell the strong euros to buy US bonds, and hope for the best, while getting pay by the American tax payers in fair interests. In that case US productivity needs to grow larger than the cost of the interests sent abroad or else!

YOU DECIDE!

Government Structures

Remembering Some Definitions

What is Fascism?

This may surprise most educated people. One of the more common government strategies today, especially in developing regions is fascism. Fascism is commonly confused with Nazism. Nazism is a political party platform that embraces a combination of a military dictatorship, socialism and fascism. It is not a government structure. Fascism is a government structure. The most notable characteristic of a fascist country is the separation and persecution or denial of equality to a specific segment of the population based upon superficial qualities or belief systems.

More than a class system, fascism specifically targets, dehumanizes and aims to destroy those it deems undesirable.

Simply stated, a fascist government always has one class of citizens that is considered superior (good) to another (bad) based upon race, creed, wealth or origin. It is possible to be both a republic and a fascist state. The preferred class lives in a republic while the oppressed class lives in a fascist state. Until the Civil Rights act of 1964, many parts of the US were Republic for whites and could be considered fascist for non-Caucasian residents. Fascism promotes legal segregation in housing, national resource allocation and employment. It provides legal justification for persecuting a specific segment of the population and operates behind a two tiered legal system. These two tiers can be overt as it was within Nazi Germany where Jews, Homosexuals, Catholics, Communists, Clergy and the handicap were held to one set of rules and courts, while the rest of Germany enjoyed different laws.
Or it can be implied and held up by consensual conspiracy, (people know it is wrong but do nothing to stop it or change it. Through lack of action, they give consent), as it was in the deep South for African Americans and others of color. In Fascism, one segment of society is always considered less desirable, sub-human or second class.
(Note: no single government is pure anything. Most have elements of several structures with one dominant structure). Below is the political definition and general characteristics of a fascist country.

General characteristics of a fascist country:

1. Fascism is commonly defined as an open terror-based dictatorship which is:

Reactionary: makes policy based upon current circumstances rather than creating policies to prevent problems; piles lies and misnomers on top of more lies until the truth becomes indistinguishable, revised or forgotten.
Chauvinistic: Two or more tiered legal systems, varying rights based upon superficial characteristics such as race, creed and origin.
Imperialist elements of finance capital: Extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political domination of one state over its allies.
Though a dictatorship is the most common association with fascism, a democracy or republic can also be fascist when it strays away from its tenants of sovereignty.

2. Fascism is an extreme measure taken by the middle classes to forestall lower-working class revolution; it thrives on the weakness of the middle classes. It accomplishes this by embracing the middle-class' love of the status-quo, its complacency and its fears of generating a united struggle within the working class revolution losing its own power and position within society

In a more simplistic term the people currently in control fear that if they allow equal rights and equal consideration to those being oppressed, they will become oppressed and lose everything. Generally those in power are of a smaller segment of society, but they hold the wealth and control of key systems like manufacturing, law, finance and government position, (i.e. the slave owners in the south prior to the civil war) and the oppressed vastly outnumber them, (the slaves during the same period).

In reality it is the oppressors' fear of retribution by the oppressed that perpetuates fascism; for justification they dehumanize, demonize, strip them of rights, add new laws, restrict movement and attempt to control them by whatever means possible to prevent an uprising. It is very common in a fascist system to have the oppressed referred to as sub-human, animals, terrorists, savages, barbarians, vermin or any other term designed to create justification for the acts of terror and fascism perpetrated on the oppressed. Via dehumanization society can then accept that the oppressed are incapable of thinking or acting in a peaceful manner or taking care of themselves, and thus society is exonerated from culpability in their own minds. Propaganda, not persuasion, logic or law, is the tool of fascism, though at times very difficult to spot. It specifically rides the fact that negative behavior is innate, (born with) rather than a logical behavior in response to oppression. Propaganda also empowers the oppressors with elitism racially, socially, intellectually and/or spiritually.

The 7 conditions (Warning signs) that foster & fuel fascism are:

Instability of capitalist relationships or markets

The existence of considerable declassed social elements

The stripping of rights and wealth focused upon a specific segment of the population, specifically the middle class and intellectuals within urban areas as this the group with the means, intelligence and ability to stop fascism if given the opportunity.

Discontent among the rural lower middle class (clerks, secretaries, white collar labor). Consistent discontent among the general middle and lower middle classes against the oppressing upper-classes (haves vs. have-nots).

Hate: Pronounced, perpetuated and accepted public disdain of a specific group defined by race, origin, theology or association.

Greed: The motivator of fascism, which is generally associated with land, space or scarce resources in the possession of those being oppressed.


Organized Propaganda:

a) The creation of social mythology that venerates (creates saints of) one element of society while concurrently vilifying (dehumanizing) another element of the population through misinformation, misdirection and the obscuring of factual matter through removal, destruction or social humiliation, (name-calling, false accusations, belittling and threats).

b) The squelching of public debate not agreeing with the popular agenda via slander, libel, threats, theft, destruction, historical revisionism and social humiliation. Journalists in particular are terrorized if they attempt to publish stories contrary to the agenda.

3. Fascism dovetails business & government sectors into a single economic unit, while concurrently increasing in-fighting and distrust between the units fostering advancement towards war.

4. a) Fascism promotes chauvinist demagogy, (appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace by fostering selective persecution and accepted public vilification of the target group. It then promotes this a "patriotic", "supportive" or "the party line" and disagreement with such as "anti-government", "anti-faith" or "anti-nation".

b) Fascism creates confusion through "facts". It relies on junk science, revisionism, the elimination of cultural records/treasures and obscuratinism to create its case and gain acceptance. Fascism can also combine Marxist critiques of capitalism or faith based critics of the same to re-define middle class perceptions of democracy and to force its issues, confuse logic and create majority consensus between targeted groups. This is also referred to as creating a state of Cognitive Dissonance, the mental state most human beings are easily manipulated within. TOP

5. Both middle and upper-middle-class dictated democracy and fascism are class dictatorships that use organized violence (verbal or physical) to maintain the class rule of the oppressors over the oppressed.

The difference between the two is demonstrated by the policies towards non-lower-working class classes. Fascism attains power through the substitution of one state's form of class domination with another form, generally bourgeois democracy segues into an open terrorist dictatorship.

The 14 Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism
by Dr. Lawrence Britt

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism -
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. TOP

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. TOP

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause -
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. TOP

4. Supremacy of the Military -
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. TOP

5. Rampant Sexism -
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homo-sexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution. TOP

6. Controlled Mass Media -
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. TOP

7. Obsession with National Security -
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. TOP

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined -
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. TOP

9. Corporate Power is Protected -
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. TOP

10. Labor Power is Suppressed -
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. TOP

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts -
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked. TOP

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment -
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption -
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. TOP

14. Fraudulent Elections -
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Additional Reading....

1) They Thought They Were Free, By Milton Mayer

"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945", University of Chicago Press. Reissued in paperback, April, 1981. As Harpers Magazine noted when the book was published in 1955 (U. of Chicago), Milton Mayer’s extraordinarily far-sighted book on the Germans is more timely today than ever.

2) This is not an endorsement of Socialism or Communism, which are fundamentally at odds with the US Constitution. However, reading some of the works on Fascism during the 1920's & 1930's in Europe by members of the Communist and Socialist parties will provide you with additional insights. You may want to start with: Fascism: What it is and How to Fight it by Leon Trotsky

Related Articles:

The Roadmap to Peace:
Disarm the True Enemy, Hatred

Emotional Blackmail, Cognitive Dissonance, the Media
& the Middle East

Watch out for the Blaming:
Watch out for the hate

Protecting Yourself
from Emotional Blackmail
What you can do to minimize the effects on you

POLITICAL SATIRE: Goat Politics

How do you know you are being SPUN?

Color Profiling or Racial Profiling? What is the Difference? CAPPS II and Trusted Traveler

Definitions


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Bourgeois (aka middle classes (n)): the social class between the lower and upper classes: Middle Class TOP

Imperialism (n): The policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political domination of one state over its allies and over other nations. 2: The system, policies, or practices of such a government. TOP

Demagogy (n): Impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace TOP

Obscurantism (n):

The principles or practice of delivering vague truths and hiding key facts.
A policy of withholding information from the public.
The act of lying through selective omission

Tyranny (n):
A form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator and is not restricted by a constitution, laws or opposition etc.
Dominance over a populous through threat of punishment, terrorism, oppression and violence

Autocracy (n):
Government by a single person having unlimited power; tyranny, dictator.
A country or state that is governed by a single person with unlimited power.