Pete Seeger

I was on a ship off Vietnam in 1970 when Pete Seeger sang "Bring 'Em Home".  I don't remember hearing it.  It was heard loud and clear by millions proving the power of a single voice saying the truth that did ultimately bring us home.

"Forever Young"

I am never too young to change the world!

Thank you Pete Seeger for the inspiration you have given us.  Inspiration, like courage, atrophies when it is not given and used courageously.

You are forever young.

He had the voice of my father.  He was forever young, never old to me.

God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You.

"Time to turn things around. Trickle up not trickle down!"

"Don't give up, don't give in......"

Pete never did.

"What we do now...will effect eternity."

"Where Have All The Flowers Gone"

"On July 26, 1956, the House of Representatives voted 373 to 9 to cite Pete Seeger and seven others (including playwright Arthur Miller) for contempt, as they failed to cooperate with House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in their attempts to investigate alleged subversives and communists. Pete Seeger testified before the HUAC in 1955.
In one of Pete's darkest moments, when his personal freedom, his career, and his safety were in jeopardy, a flash of inspiration ignited this song. The song was stirred by a passage from Mikhail Sholokhov's novel "And Quiet Flows the Don". Around the world the song traveled and in 1962 at a UNICEF concert in Germany, Marlene Dietrich, Academy Award-nominated German-born American actress, first performed the song in French, as "Qui peut dire ou vont les fleurs?" Shortly after she sang it in German. The song's impact in Germany just after WWII was shattering. It's universal message, "let there be peace in the world" did not get lost in its translation. To the contrary, the combination of the language, the setting, and the great lyrics has had a profound effect on people all around the world. May it have the same effect today and bring renewed awareness to all that hear it."

Monetizing Privacy

The NSA does it for security in a world where the power of security is coin of the realm.  "Dem dat has de gold rules!"  Security is money that buys control.  Not defense but offense as a weapon to gain/maintain power projection.  The nature of the weapon called information is knowing what the opponent does not want known.  Private information.

NSA does not do it for the money.  If they did then they would be the biggest, richest crook in the world not the Banksters.

Monetizing privacy is the new gold rush.  Privacy is laying on the ground, free for the taking and worth a lot when it is taken.  When cost of obtaining goods is free and mark-up is high there is a ton of money to be made.  Something valuable for nothing is always a good deal.  The best price is free. 

Except for government agencies everybody else is in the privacy harvesting business for the money.  Legal or otherwise.  It is all about the money.

"Monetizing privacy"  Google the term in quotes.  I did it for you and the results are here.
Read all about it. 

Making money by taking privacy for nothing and selling it.  That is where the money is.

This is how it is done.

Scary?

12 privacy-destroying technologies that should scare you

Thinking Outside the Box

Thinking outside the box.  Is it a good thing or a bad thing?  Is it dangerous and to whom is it dangerous. 

Thinking outside the box is a creative thing.  It is the creation of new conceptual structures.  When new outside the box conceptual structures do not threaten the status quo existence of established structures inside the box then there is less of a threat to them.  In either case the creative nature of new structures outside the box defines them as not having previously existed.  Not exactly creative to the extent of making something from nothing but making connections between things that were not previously connected that way. 

Fundamental changes in connections of things and the interaction between them create fundamental conceptual changes.  Conceptual changes in society happen over time.  There is a tipping point concept that proposes that they will happen increasingly quicker when a certain point of popular acceptance or belief in the change is reached.  10% ? Pick a number.

Forecasting conceptual structure change over time is like looking into a crystal ball.  A good fortune teller can see the future if they can read the real time present clues of the person or entity for whom they are telling the future.

Good news predictions are more readily accepted than bad news predictions.  Ask the messenger about that.  The good news is that a thousand flowers will bloom.  The bad news is that a weed by definition is a bloom that is not desired.  It is outside the box.

Internet: God's Gift

What good is the pope?  All depends on who the pope is.  Worthless or worse by tradition in my opinion.  Pope Francis is a pope of a different vestment.

"The Internet is a "gift from God" that facilitates communication, Pope Francis said in a statement released Thursday, but he warns that the obsessive desire to stay connected can actually isolate people from their friends and family."

This morning I was pondering the highly structured nature of a computer operating system.  Structured in the extreme like an airplane is structured in the extreme.  Fault tolerant as a function of rigid design when something goes wrong but by design it does exactly what it was designed, not so much to do, (fine point here) but what it was designed to enable.  If the operating system detects a fault it is designed to call attention to it.

Maybe not so fine a point in the last sentence.  I felt compelled to call attention to it being a fine point.  Perhaps only a point made fine by our perception of something that is, when examined, not such a fine point at all but the essence of its nature.  It is the application programs that the operating system enables to do what we want to do.  The things that the operating system does to enable us to do what we want in application is exactly like our mind and bodies that enable us each to do whatever we wish in applying them to some thing.

I have used Michaelangelo's "Creation" often to illustrate the passing of the gift of life, although I view the gift as "Our power to create".  The graphic I like is the focus on the two hands with fingers extended to give and receive.  If the Internet is a gift from God then pehaps the graphic might be the finger of God extended to a a computer mouse.  A mouse of course is old school interface.  Touch screen is new school.  Perhaps the finger of God extended to a human finger on a computer screen?

In a previous blog entry I wrote about the word "Panopticon"  A structural design that either as a physical or conceptual structure enables the ability to see and therefore control everything within its view.  In the frame of an operating system the Internet has its operating system and applications that use it.  Spying on the operating system side is merely system self check maintenance.  Spying on the application side because those that spy have access to the operating system, which they neither own not maintain is just plain old covert spying.

"God" as a traditional concept is a panopticon.  He sees all but does not interfere.  "Interference" as an outside supernatural influence is however a theological debate.  I will simply take the position that if He does he does it in a natural way.  Ways attributed to entirely natural causes. 

God is in the natural operating system.  He enables the use of application programs designed by us without restriction other than the laws of natural structure.  Our conceptual operating systems are equivalent but base on the natural order concept.  Our conceptual operating system also enables us to do anything with a conceptual application system.

The Internet is a gift from God in that it is an expression of the original gift of conceptual creativity.  Ours to employ for whatever good or bad value judgement our conceptual structure of personal and social systems of belief define.

Pope Francis gives some good guidance in that regard.

The Pope is good for something.

Creative Writing

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.  ---- Oscar Wilde

Wikipedia describes Creativity

Riding Down Baja

George:  Some blast from the past....worthy of revisiting for greater meaning.....

In need of some editing.....but worth building upon?

Real Time: Now:  Saturday 6/22/2019. Retrospective look back in time
Blog entry originally published: 1/22/2014 5:31 Pacific Daylight Time.  I wrote this while I was taking flight training lessons in Bisbee Arizona,  Starting composing this blog entry much earlier in the morning.  There is something to add in retrospect from this point of time in the eternal now at St. Charles Hospital, Bend Oregon that goes into the future.............
......................................

My journey in space and time found me riding my bike down Baja three times at the end of the 80's, beginning of the 90's.  A ride from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas during the Christmas holidays.   Not alone but one among a group of people that I could identify with.  People who would want to ride their bikes, carry with them everything they would need to camp along the way and at the end of the ride all go off in different directions.

During a time when most in the country focus on home and holiday tradition we riders focused on an un-holiday tradition.  It was a tradition started by daddy Wags, as we affectionately called him.  It was Wag's ride.  He organized it, but did not lead it. He rode with us a just another rider.  More like an interested observer.  Leading by exception.  If something had to be settled or decided, which was rare, then he would do it.

Dady Wags had been a bike racer.  He lived in El Cajon and rode his bike daily to a job in San Diego.  Every day.  He lived alone and had an old pick up truck called Cap'n Crunch.  It had been crunched many times and wore the memories of past encounters like a sailor wears tattoos of past lovers.  He rarely used the truck.  His bike was more dependable.

The Baja ride did not have an official name therefore I won't put both words in caps.  That would be an injustice to the ride.  Dress it up in clothes that didn't fit, were not appropriate to what it was.  We just called it the Baja ride.  If it had any ownership is was Daddy Wag's ride.  It was his ride and he was our daddy.  Gruffness with a heart of gold.  We loved him.  Writing that truth brings a tear to my eye.  That kind of guy.

Alternately we called him Bob, his real name.  The story of the ride was word of mouth.  The history of it being much like folk  lore as well as the word of mouth grapevine knowledge of its existence.  Limited to about 30 riders,  Application to join was made by asking Bob if you could join the ride. A self submission of qualifications. A telephone interview that some did not pass.  Prior riders had an advantage.  If they were not kicked off the ride somewhere between El Cajon and Cabo they earned the right to ride again.

I had done 20,000 miles bike touring between the time I retired from the navy in 1986 and I asked Bob if I could do the ride in 1987.  The more he told me about how difficult the ride was in order to discourage me from doing it, the more appealing it became.  Payment of one or two hundred dollars was the least requirement to join.  I was fortunate to win his drill sargeant approval to ride that consisted of:  "Send me 200 dollars and I hope you survive."

The ride started from Bob's house.  Some riders arriving days before the ride, most there the night before the ride.  Sleeping on the floor,  eating a lot of pasta.  A variety of riders,  unusual people to say the least but the usual type of person I had come to know over the prior year and a half.  We were normal among each other.

As a new rider I listened respectfully to the stories of previous riders.  Retold and embellished, I am sure, from previous years of riding.  New riders were allowed to say something about their previous riding experience as bona fides for joining.  The rider that had survived the ride most times was conferred the most respect.  Nobody had done the ride as many times as Bob.  The legend of the ride was informally told to new riders as a form of initiation but not in the presence of Bob.

The morning of the ride, all riders assembled in Dady Wags' driveway bags on bikes ready for adventure. Bob gave us a short talk like might be given to marines preparing to assault the beach head.  Take care of each other.  If you drop out, you are on your own.  Be prepared for that.  If I say you are out, you are out.  No refunds.  Let's ride!

Sometimes we camped.  Sometimes we stayed in cheap hotels.  Eight to a room sometimes.  Four on mattresses, four on the box springs.  Most chose a sleeping partner for the trip.  Bob explained that at the start.  If you did not want to sleep with another guy then sleep on the floor.  Most riders were male.  On a subsequent trip where there was no female sleeping partner, Rose chose me.  I was more than flattered until Rose added that I was the one guy on the trip she trusted the most.  A compliment that nevertheless deflated my ego somewhat.  Her initial Baja ride was reluctantly approved by Bob.  She had no bike riding experience but was the California skate board champion.  Rose was tough.

There were no official campgrounds for us to pitch our tents.  We camped in the desert.  Listened to the coyotes in the evening and woke to roosters in the morning.  Even if there were no ranchos nearby, there were always roosters crowing.  Cold crisp mornings that would gradually become warmer as we rode south.

The road was narrow.  Traffic not to bad.  If a bus or truck was coming toward me and one behind as well where I could see that we would all meet at the same time and place I got off the rode and watched them pass.  One day in the distance I saw a semi stopped in the middle of the road ahead.  A Corona beer truck.  As a rode around it I came to a bunch of the bikers in front of it.  The driver had stopped to share a beer with the bikers.

Meeting the locals was an experience.  Locals not generally used to Norte Americanos like us.  Food on the trip was on our own.  We stopped at home restaurants along the way at the side of the road that would only be passed by Americans in cars seeking something closer their expectations of appearance.  They did not get to see women patting out tortillas (the heartbeat of Mexico) by hand, putting them on wood burning stoves and turning them over with their fingers talking with her children waiting for a tortilla with red beans.

At one such place a rider asked for chicken.  There was always a menu but after finding that most items on the menu were "no hay" the inexperienced rider learned to ask "quay tiene para comer".  My Spanish was muy mal.  Hablo un poco y no mas, pero bestante.  At the end of the day we would talk about our experiences on the road.  We all road in small groups or alone.  All at different speeds having different experiences.  One rider told of lunch at a road side cafe.  He ordered chicken.  He was asked three times if he really wanted chicken. Verdad, pollo.  Shortly later he heard a squawk coming from behind the cafe.  Probably not a true story since I was once assigned the job of killing the chicken and preparing it for a fiesta in Guadalajara.  It takes a long time from a living chicken to chicken on a plate.  It was a good story and there is license granted to telling outrageous stories on the road.  The best ones were the believable ones and considering the type of people we were riding with I never was sure which were true or not.  All of them could have been.

Days were short in December.  We rode long distances each day.  Normally riding with first light in order to get to the next destination by dark.  An excellent motivation to ride fast.  Nobody wanted to be on the road at night in Baja.  Being on the road in the morning was different and there was none long stretch from what we called "Construction City"  because it appeared to be perpetually under construction with rebar sticking up as if praying for clothes to cover its stark nakedness.  The destination was.....140 miles away in one day.

Flight

It was a couple days past the full moon.  Watching the full moon rise is always a pleasure but the show goes on for days.  Not in the evening but in the morning.  Early.  I get up at 5:00.  Maybe earlier if I have and idea that wakes me with the urgency of a full bladder wanting to be relieved.  As the moon traverses its lunar cycle it is higher in the sky each morning brightly shining, casting shadows in the pre-dawn.

Each morning I go out.  Greet the morning.  Say out loud "Its gonna be a great day".  There is an Indian custom to rise from sleep and touch the ground to start the day.  Some people say morning prayers.  We usually say good morning to others.  When learning a foreign language it is one of the first phrases to be learned.

I always greet a special day with a special feeling of anticipation of what will happen as the day unfolds.  An adventure I plan to happen and the unknown that will happen when adventure finds me.  This is one of those days.

I am going to fly!

My first flight was with my sister in 1953.  I was 10 years old.  She was an airline stewardess for Capitol Airlines.  The airplane was a DC-3.  A work horse of WWII.  Flying cargo and passengers.  Mine was not a seat in the passenger cabin but the jump seat between the two pilots.  The best seat on the plane!  The pilots were both WWII flyers.  The captain in the left seat, the co-pilot in the right seat.  I knew that and much more about the plane and flying because I was an avid reader of books about flying.

Today I was going to be in the left seat.  The pilot in command.  Nominally and by tradition of the seat position.  The instructor in the right seat would turn over command and control of the aircraft to me, and regain it as necessary.  However for periods of time I was going to fly it.  Once long ago my father was in the right seat of a 58 Ford teaching me in the left seat to drive.  This morning recalls that fond memory.  A once in a life time experience.

I am in my trailer south of Bisbee Arizona writing of this adventure that I will experience today.  The first of 3 days training.  The lesson starts a 9:00.  Time to review the flight manual.  The flight manual gives me new appreciation for the expression "flying by the seat of my pants".  Flying is about numbers.  Dominated by numbers.  If the numbers are not right then the plane does not fly and me along with it.  Unforgiving numbers.  Numbers that do not stretch the laws of gravity.  Numbers that tell what I cannot do and still expect to fly like the numbers that tell me I cannot fly by running flapping my arms like a chicken as I did when I imitated imaginary flight when I was a young boy.

No longer I am a young boy.  This morning I have the same excitement that I felt when I was.

Panopticon

Panopticon.

I have seen that word twice in two days.  No idea what it means and discovery of an vague frame of reference to which it may belong was not revealed by its use in context.

For example, this is how it appeared when I saw it this morning and decided that I need to know what it is if I am to encounter it again.  Like figuring out the word and how to spell it by asking it to be used in a sentence.  To disambiguate the word.  Disambiguation was a prior word that bugged me as a kid until I looked it up in the dictionary.  Now we have Google and Wikipedia.

But I digress, as I usually do.  This is how it was used in a sentence:  "We wanted to build a global village – only to end up with a global panopticon instead."

The Wikipedia explanation of a panopticon: 

"The Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow a single watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether they are being watched or not. Although it is physically impossible for the single watchman to observe all cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that all inmates must act as though they are watched at all times, effectively controlling their own behavior constantly. The name is also a reference to Panoptes from Greek mythology; he was a giant with a hundred eyes and thus was known to be a very effective watchman."

I get it!  I get why I have seen it used recently.  Actually more than twice.  I knew what a panopticon prison design was but had not connected the meaning of the structure to the word.

One word explains the rise of panopticon from obscurity:  NSA.  That is a word?  Guess so, it has meaning and nothing conveys that meaning more than panopticon, if you know what I mean.  My spell checker has yet to learn that it is a real word.

This is a gem from the Wikipedia description of the word:

"Bentham (the designer) himself described the Panopticon as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”[1

Can you say NSA?

The more I read the Wikipedia description of the word the more poetic it became.  Poetic?  Yes, I suppose in that there are so many interpretations when used metaphorically.

"Whereas Bentham himself regarded the Panopticon as a rational and enlightened, and therefore just, solution to societal problems, his ideas have been repeatedly criticised by others for their reductive, mechanistic and inhumane approach to human lives."

Repeatedly criticized.  Definitely!  Defended?  No, simply applied by those that seek reductive, mechanistic and inhumane approaches to human lives.  Criticism appeals to public attention.  Stealth evades it.  Not just avoids it like avoiding taxes in a tax return where income is stated but excluded for a given reason and anyone can see it.  Evading tax by hiding income is illegal.  


"Most influentially, the idea of the panopticon was invoked by Michel Foucault, in his Discipline and Punish (1975), as a metaphor for modern "disciplinary" societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalise. "On the whole, therefore, one can speak of the formation of a disciplinary society in this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social 'quarantine', to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of 'panopticism'".^[41] The Panopticon is an ideal architectural figure of modern disciplinary power. The Panopticon creates a consciousness of permanent visibility as a form of power, where no bars, chains, and heavy locks are necessary for domination any more.^[42] Foucault proposes that not only prisons but all hierarchical structures like the army, schools, hospitals and factories have evolved through history to resemble Bentham's Panopticon. The notoriety of the design today (although not its lasting influence in architectural realities) stems from Foucault's famous analysis of it."

Panopticon.  What a wonderful word undergoing a metaphoric resurrection.

Use of the word in literature and the arts is described by Wikipedia.  This the link again to view its use those areas.

A physical structure has become a conceptual social structure composed of conceptual brick and mortar.  Similarly, we are already accustomed to distinguishing internet stores from real world stores by calling the real world stores "brick and mortar stores"  Amazon delivers the goods as much as any store that has a door.  It just does not have a parking lot except for the employees.

Anti Surveillance Graphic:

MLK Day

"We are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." --Martin Luther King

Tossing a coin to a beggar does not solve a social problem.  The edifice is a social structure that needs restructuring.  That exactly is what I seek in my struggle to understand the current monetary system which is the heart of the economic system.  The foundation of what money is that facilitates what money does in its application to economics.

That is what this blog is all about.  Not the money but the structuring of money as a social media object to serve our social decision making objectives, private and public.

Writers and Readers

There are few writers but many readers. 

Many writers write one to one.  Email, Texts, Tweets.  Sometimes one to many using multiple addressees.  The level of creative content is low.  Informational content is variable. 

Among the writers that write in the one writer to many readers mode commercially some are writing creatively in short, concise target oriented marketing mode.

Academic writing is a significant category of one writer to many readers.  High in information content, variable in creative content.  Creativity mostly in style rather than subject matter since most academics is nothing new, just teaching old stuff to new generations.

Creative writing.  All writing is creative.  That was the line from a previous post.

Not true. Most writing is not creative if the definition of creativity is making new conceptual structures out of nothing.  Much of what is commonly thought of as creative writing is repackaging, re gifting, restyling old conceptual structures of things and their relationships.

Perhaps writing is analogous to Science, Engineering, Construction and Use.

There are few scientists, some engineers that apply science, many workers that construct the designs of engineers and we all are users of what is constructed.

The continuum of writing is analogous to the continuum of science to use.  Science is the leading edge, the discovery.  The creation of conceptual structure.  That is all we can as humans truly create: Logic concepts expressed in language to create structure.

Logic concepts that model the natural world. 

Logic concepts that model the conceptual world that we as humans create.  Social conceptual structures.  Sometimes founded on natural world stuctures, sometimes having little or no fundamental connections to the natural world.  Pure fantasy.  Things that cannot be true in a natural world.  A world where pigs can fly.

Public Spending - Federal Budget - Big Money Does Rule

 $1.1 trillion dollars is big money to spend and it belongs to all of us to spend.  100% of us, regardless of how much money we have all get an equal say in how it is to be spent.  99% of us therefore have more government money to decide how to spend than the 1% have government money to decide how to spend, they may have most of the private money but they only get to make decisions on spending 1% of public money.

Big money does rule!  All we need to do is make categorical direct decision as citizens where we want to spend the money.  Public Money is a social media decision making tool for public benefit.

Does that sound like populism??  Up with populism!: Except from this link:

"Our conclusion is that the fabric of American politics may in fact be breaking down, but the basic structure of national power is, if anything, hardening. The most important fact about political talk is the real context in which the conversation occurs. And in 2014, that context is clear: Competition between the national political parties mostly represents competing blocs of the 1 percent. These older national political forces are now testing whether they can absorb and profit from changing local power constellations thrown up by years of persisting austerity. Whether the old center or the new populists come out on top will be a critical issue going forward; the fate not only of the Democratic Party, but the whole political system may well hang in the balance. "

The Fed budget is $1.1 trillion.  Every citizen with the right to vote should have the right to allocate their pro-rated portion of the Federal budget among about 12 major things that government spends the money on.  Then within that broad allocation the politicians and their special interest cronies can decide how to benefit themselves.  At least for the first year.

The next year every citizen gets to allocate their share of public spending among 12 sub categories of each of the 12 major spending categories.

If one of the major categories of government spending is harm reduction then citizens should be able to determine what percent of the budget they each would like to have spent on harm reduction.  Furthermore, exactly what would be spend on the relatively major categories of harm reduction.

While the agencies that are given budgets are generally related to major functions of government, some reasonable thinking about a general category of “harm reduction” would include defense, disaster, disease, health, traffic and transportation safety, law enforcement, crime investigation, Wall Street regulators, etc.

Fear is a the flip side of harm reduction, anyone wanting money in the budget can emphasize (or create) the fear factor.  Harm reduction might even be a better objective than defense and certainly is much broader in scope covering so many areas including environment which is indirect harm to us if abused. 

Basically:  What do we as Americans want from the government to enhance our pursuit of happiness.  Happiness in terms of the Constitution meaning living our lives with freedom of choice how to live respecting the freedom of others, all protected by the rights we have conferred upon ourselves. 

Private money is ours to make spending decisions.  So is public money.  Electing public officials to make our public spending decisions doesn’t work.  They are not making our decisions but the decisions of special interest.  We should at the very least determine broad category allocations.

Spending out of proportion to threats:  Wikipedia:
"The U.S. federal budget has been criticized for spending on research and action on harm reduction out of proportion to the magnitude of the underlying threats. For example, heart disease, cancer, strokes, respiratory diseases, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease claimed about 1,650,000 American lives in 2007, when the government spent about $9.6 billion researching ways to alleviate those illnesses. In contrast, terrorism had claimed about 300 lives per year on average over the previous decade, but $150 billion was spent to prevent terrorism, not including even more costly defense and war expenses.[104] However, a major terrorist attack could cause substantial economic disruption. The September 11, 2001 attacks killed almost 3000 people, but caused extensive economic disruption including about $40 billion in insurance losses, a stock market drop which took months to recover, about $15 billion in assistance to airlines, substantial tourism losses, and 430,000 lost jobs amounting to $2.8 billion in lost wages over the three months following."

Gross total consumption spending per year is roughly equal to gross production.  Total spending is roughly equal to total income.  All more or less.  That amount is about $15 Trillion.  1 trillion annual is spent by the federal government.  That is its annual budget. 

In general is would appear that:  If the annual total income is about 15 trillion and the fed budget is 1 trillion and the tax rate, pulling a figure out of the air is 20% then tax revenue would be about 3 trillion.

Here is some info from From Wikipedia to refine that general observation:

"During FY2013, the federal government collected approximately $2.77 trillion in tax revenue, up $326 billion or 13% versus FY2012 revenues of $2.45 trillion. Primary receipt categories included individual income taxes ($1,316B or 47%), Social Security/Social Insurance taxes ($948B or 34%), and corporate taxes ($274B or 10%). Other revenue types included excise, estate and gift taxes. Revenues rose across all categories in FY2013 versus FY2012 as tax cuts expired and the economy improved.^[13]
FY2013 revenues were 16.7% GDP, versus 15.2% GDP in FY2012.^[13] Tax revenues averaged approximately 18.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) over the 1970-2009 period, generally ranging plus or minus 2% from that level. Tax revenues are significantly affected by the economy. Recessions typically reduce government tax collections as economic activity slows. For example, tax revenues declined from $2.5 trillion in 2008 to $2.1 trillion in 2009, and remained at that level in 2010. From 2008 to 2009, individual income taxes declined 20%, while corporate taxes declined 50%. At 15.1% of GDP, the 2009 and 2010 collections were the lowest level of the past 50 years.^[14][15]"

Diagrams and Dollars

J.D. Alt draws diagrams of the money system to explain how money works.

From Mexico asks what money is.  Nobody really knows.  It all depends on what kind of money they are talking about.

Pathetically amusing simple attempt to explain money destroyed by asking a simple question about what it is.

The explanation and the answer should be simple.

The Last Gasp of American Democracy

The title of this post is something written by Cris Hedges and appearing in Truthdig.

The link is here.

Every single word rings clearly with truth.

He concludes:

"The structures of the corporate state must be torn down. Its security apparatus must be destroyed. And those who defend corporate totalitarianism, including the leaders of the two major political parties, fatuous academics, pundits and a bankrupt press, must be driven from the temples of power. Mass street protests and prolonged civil disobedience are our only hope. A failure to rise up—which is what the corporate state is counting upon—will see us enslaved."

Mass street protests and prolonged civil disobedience are not the answer.  Seizing control of the fundamental monetary system is the social media for social decision making applied to the allocation of resources (money) is the answer.  Crypto Currency in a secure open source system.  Money always has been the vote cast for the things anyone wants. 

When each citizen can choose among 20 or more broad budget categories where they want the money spent by government to be applied and how much of it in each application then we have control.  Not our legislators that have been corrupted and produce corrupt budgets.

Public control the purse strings through an asset based monetary system. We the people of the United States are in debt to no one.  It is our money, our government, our country.

If we want it all spent on bread and circuses then so be it.  The people have spoken and if we chose poorly or unwisely then money will serve its purpose as a decision making tool and go into the hands of those that would use it better.  A fate that we will deserve.

A universal uncontrolled by government monetary system is probably the worst fear of those in control of the USA and it is not us now.  Money must be ours to directly control.  Speculation interest rates and government/corporate special interest that distributes it unjustly must be stopped by us.

We stop it when the collective monetary system is ours to control.  Let each decide with their money how much of a required amount will go to each purpose we choose.

Renga and Hyperlinked Poetry

For my poetry amusement:  Renga

I was looking for links---hyperlinks embedded in poetry when I found Renga.  A different and much older form of linking.

This is more like what I was looking for:  Poetry with hyperlinks

If You Could Read My Mind - Gordon Lightfoot

If you could read my mind love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
'Bout a ghost from a wishin' well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I'm a ghost that you can't see
If I could read your mind love
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a paperback novel
The kind that drugstores sell
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just too hard to take

I'd walk away like a movie star
Who gets burned in a three way script
Enter number two
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me
But for now love, let's be real
* I never thought I could ACT this way *
And I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where we went wrong
But the feelin's gone
And I just can't get it back

If you could read my mind love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
'Bout a ghost from a wishin' well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
But stories always end
And if you read between the lines
You'll know that I'm just tryin' to understand
The feelin's that you lack
I never thought I could feel this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where we went wrong
But the feelin's gone
And I just can't get it back

To Kill a Walrus - Moral Limits of Markets

A thought provoking link at Yves Smith blog this morning:

"The Moral Limits of Markets" presented by Michael Sandel at the Union Theological Seminary, New York City

Michael Sandel wrote:  "Justice: What is the Right Thing to Do?"  Darn good question!

The Wikipedia explanation of the book has this interesting sentence: "Sandel quotes Alasdair MacIntyre and his characterisation of humans as being 'storytelling beings' who live their lives with narrative quests."