03.16.11
Posted in Permanent Fail, Predator State at 1:04 pm by George Smith
It will have occurred to many that the constant peddling of US-made weapons to the Middle East oil producers willing to be American toadies in the pursuit of the war on terror has been just like tossing bags of crap at many fans. In Egypt, US-made tanks and tear gas were in the streets. The M1’s didn’t fire on the populace, fortunately. That was good, right?
In the case of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, it’s the case of US armed militaries — one acting as a mercenary force — putting down the revolts aimed at getting rid of their rotten leaders. The potential also exists for the notoriously bad Saudi Arabian military to fly US-made jets in any proposed no-fly zone thought to be needed for Libya.
According to the US State Department, the Obama administration proposed $88 million dollars worth of arms to Bahrain.
Astonishingly, Singapore, the well-known wart off the Malay peninsula,
received a 5.5 billion dollar sale. One supposes the arms, mostly F-15s, are thought needed to fend off invasions from Borneo or a sally from the port of Darwin in northern Australia. (No, no! They need a top rank air force to save world shipping in the Strait of Malacca from pirates!)
Mystifyingly, an expert from the Federation of American Scientists seemed to pooh-pooh the phenomenon in a recent story published by the Ventura County Star.
Look, if we don’t sell to these rotten countries arms, someone else will just get the business, was the message I received loud and clear. Which seems like no message at all except an opportunistic one rationalized with the excuse that if the sales are ours at least we can track them.
“Other defense experts cautioned that other countries would quickly move to replace the U.S. in any arms sales stopped for human rights concerns … ” read the newspaper.
Matthew Schroeder, an employee of the Federation of American Scientists, told the newspaper, “If you cut off arms sales, a client would go straight to U.S. competitors like Russia or China.”
That would obviously be so bad. To force them to buy tanks and stuff from Russia and China. It would make the balance of trade even more atrocious than it already is. Bummer.
The arms manufacturers, as I’ve written, enjoy the benefits of private sector socialism in this business. The US middle class, unless it’s actually employed in this protected industry, gets screwed twice.
First, it underwrites the business of US weapons-makers while it’s jobs are taken to the garbage dump and sent to China.
Second, we reap the bad publicity when it’s American-made stuff seen putting down those looking for a bit of democracy.
There’s a moral and logical argument to be made for letting Singapore, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates buy the gear for their token militaries from other nations. Part of it has to do with re-instituting an element of fairness to the American system.
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03.08.11
Posted in Permanent Fail, Predator State at 7:25 pm by George Smith
It’s a long speech. But Michael Moore delivered the goods on the 5th in front of what looked like a very large crowd in Madison. It was a call to arms — a fiery, inspirational and direct attack on the plutocracy.
At thirty minutes, I won’t embed but it’s worth every minute here on YouTube.
Last week I wondered what it might take to strike fear in the hearts of the wealthy and powerful. More of this and I have the answer.
A Wisconsin newspaper, the Isthmus, sums up the speech in its lede graf:
By now, it’s unlikely that anyone besides Scott Walker would dispute that the protests at the Wisconsin state Capitol have energized the labor movement, as well as citizens throughout the state and nation. What became clear during raconteur Michael Moore’s 30-minute talk this afternoon is that these events have also radicalized the public, in ways no one anticipated and those in power should perhaps fear.
“The rich have overplayed their hand,” Moore shouts to thunderous applause.
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Posted in Permanent Fail, Predator State at 2:07 pm by George Smith
Part, excerpted from the post last Monday where it comes in from the Globalsecurity SITREP mirror.
The nub of it is the statement that arms manufacturing, as a protected and underwritten industry, is socialism for the private sector. And that social programs, like foodstamps, are only for parasites who are leeching off the profits of the more prosperous fit.
When I wrote the piece I knew it would punch the buttons of anyone from the knee-jerk right. They can’t tolerate the idea that others might think a US industry like weapons-making is a rig job. Or even that a mere thought exercise would impose additional taxation on them for the sake of fighting hunger.
Here’s the comment’s heart:
“The tools of war are sold to the feds & they in turn sell them to other governments. Are you going to tax the government for these sales as you suggest? Then giving this tax revenue to all food stamp receipants [sic], so now you want to make government dependent individuals more dependant [sic] & prosperous (with other peoples [sic] money), are you friggin nuts.”
And here’s the pitiless illogic of it.
Subsidized arms building, labor costs magnitudes higher than that which non-military US business employs in emerging markets, which in turn has led to mass unemployment and contributed to the astonishing explosion of people on foodstamps — very good.
Reallocating to prevent hunger at home — very bad. Only for bloodsuckers.
Commie!
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03.07.11
Posted in Phlogiston, Predator State, War On Terror at 2:36 pm by George Smith
Last week Matt Taibbi’s on-line column at Rolling Stone ran the second installment in his Supreme Court for Assholes. Taibbi and selected friends form a court and then adjudicate whether or not someone in the news is an asshole. And then, if dubbed so, they’re given a score on a relative scale of assholery.
Surprisingly, the homeland security industry came in for a judgment.
For me, that’s an easy call. Everyone mentioned in natsec stories on this blog over the last few years is an asshole.
For instance, the biggest asshole last year was Michael McConnell of Booz Allen & Hamilton, determined by the number of times he was in the media rigging the argument on cyberwar for the profit of his company. Roscoe Bartlett and the Heritage Foundation were probably in a dead heat for second.
Taibbi and his Supreme Court for Assholes judged Airline Travelers vs. Lobbyists to the TSA.
It’s here.
It reads:
Court was asked:
1) If you lobby the government to force taxpayers to buy a useless product at great expense [in this case the Rapiscan whole body scanner], are you automatically an asshole?
2) If you take advantage of and/or stoke widespread cultural fears to make money via government contracting, are you an asshole?
THE RULING
The court voted 7-2 in favor of assholedom on the first question. The dissenting votes were Sirota and myself. I was with David here, and we both bought the Lieutenant Calley/Nuremberg defense – see his dissenting opinion below.
On the second question, the court voted 8-1, with Sirota the only dissenter. To me, stoking public fear to make money is inexcusable even in a “just-following-orders??? situation …
Sirota’s dissent went as follows: “Ruling these kind of people as all assholes is too broad a ruling, because the Assholeocracy legally forces private economic actors to think solely of their profits – and nothing more. That’s their legal and fiduciary responsibility, consequences be damned. Many of them might individually be assholes, but as a blanket rule, you can’t say they are all automatically assholes simply because they work within the ubiquitous Assholeocracy.???
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03.06.11
Posted in Permanent Fail, Predator State at 8:38 am by George Smith
The top story at the NY Times today is a long piece on US arms sales and contracts with the Egyptian military.
They’re abused, no surprise, worked for the benefit of the old Hosni Mubarak-military-oligarchy.
That story is here.
However, it also unequivocally demonstrates my assertion, published most recently in the Economic Treason post at Globalsecurity, that arms manufacturing is a protected industry in the US. (It was published first on Monday of last week.)
It is a rigged form of socialism for a part of the American private sector, an entitlement, corporate welfare-spending exempt from the downsizing, pick-pocketing, austerity and economic punishments meted out to everyone in the middle class not directly connected to it.
Various quotes taken from the Times piece show a clear picture.
American corporations are the recipient of much of the taxpayer money that is sent to Egypt as military aid. And this is because the US government is concerned about diversion and misuse of funds.
For practical purposes, however, that happens anyway because a sale is a sale to US business. It is always a heads-they-win/tails-they-win situation for those involved.
The examples:
In part because of concerns about diversion of funds, only a sliver of the money from the American aid program actually goes to the Egyptian military. Instead, the Pentagon directly pays American companies that it has chosen to manufacture and ship the tanks, planes, guns and ammunition to Egypt.
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Edward W. Ross, a former official at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees the sales, said he was irked by allegations that Egyptians could have pocketed money. “That money goes to the Federal Reserve,??? he said, “and then it is only released to a U.S. contractor.???
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The yearly $1.3 billion, one retired colonel explained, is viewed as “an entitlement.???
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Over the years, the Gulfstream fleet — which now totals nine jets — has cost American taxpayers $333 million, government officials said. The most recent purchase was in 2002, but the Pentagon continues to pay $10 million a year to service the planes.
(Gulfstream Aerospace is an American firm. It is a part of one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world, General Dynamics. — DD)
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Last year, the American military awarded two Foreign Military Sales contracts to Chrysler in Detroit. One, for $26 million, was for 750 unassembled Jeeps. The other, announced in November, was for $7 million to ship tools and spare parts for Jeep Wranglers to the Egyptian Ministry of Defense.
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Mr. Springborg, the expert on the Egyptian military, said he was skeptical that, in cases like this, the Egyptians could maintain a firewall between production of civilian and military items.
Another area to look at, Mr. Springborg said, is the production of the well-known M1A1 Abrams tank, which the Egyptian military builds under license with American-made parts. The Pentagon pays General Dynamics to ship tank kits to Egypt, where military workers assemble them.
Former American officers consider the tank manufacturing plant a giant jobs program. “It’s as much about providing jobs as it is buying military hardware,??? General Collings said.
In 2007, the Defense Department announced the sale of 125 more unassembled tanks to Egypt, at an estimated cost of $890 million. So far, Egypt has more than 800 of the tanks.
“There are two assembly lines where they make that tank,??? a former senior American military official said. “They are all in the same huge building.???
Next to the tank production line that receives the American aid, he said, workers are assembling an Egyptian construction vehicle for commercial sale.
(General Dynamics Land Systems’ M1 tank business is in Sterling Heights, Michigan, Lima, OH, and Eynon, PA. All the counties these communities are located in have suffered high unemployment during the economic collapse. All are now faced with public sector worker lay-offs. However, arms manufacturing has been exempt from hardship in the same communities, in this case gallingly making and sustaining jobs in Egypt. General Dynamics Land Systems incorporates its various ventures in Delaware, recognized by everyone as a national and community aimed tax-cheating and avoidance strategy. — DD)
While the New York Times article is primarily interested in reporting the news of diversion of military aid to the Egyptian Army aristocracy for civilian projects, it also stands as a striking example of US arms manufacturing welfare. And how the American private sector arms making business is guaranteed and underwritten by the taxpayer, given opportunity and riches not afforded anyone else. Except maybe the oil industry and Wall Street.
The companies involved plead ignorance. They’re totally unconvincing, intelligence-insultingly so.
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03.04.11
Posted in Made in China, Predator State at 8:36 am by George Smith
DD remains mildly amused by the new type of spam comments netted by the blog filter.
Today’s howler is for the sake of a firm specializing in corporate tax avoidance and off-shoring through Panama. And, routinely, the spammer tries to attach such things to posts having to do with jobs and my “Made in China” series.
It’s the very picture of the US-minted global vulture economy, very much aimed at providing enabling to American big business in national looting and pushing people to the brink.
For a mordant laugh, here’s the ID: panama dash offshor(e) dash s(e)rvic(e)s dot com. Be sure to leave out the parentheses around the ‘e’s.
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02.28.11
Posted in Made in China, Permanent Fail, Predator State at 6:05 pm by George Smith
The Great Recession caused by Wall Street whacked almost all of the middle class in the United States. Newspaper articles and the opinions of economists discuss the the mass unemployment and hardship caused by it daily. However, there are some industries which escaped the Great Recession, one because of massive government bailout, another because it is also protected by the taxpayer and the US government.
The first, and most obvious, is Wall Street; the latter is arms manufacturing. The arms manufacturing industry in the US enjoys protections afforded no other industry except for Wall Street. It is an exercise in socialism for the private sector, rigged to be underwritten and guaranteed by labor and taxes of the US middle class. It is not subject to pressure from global labor markets, pressures which have been used by American big business and government policy to tear apart and destroy all other domestic manufacturing in this country.
Previously, a graph from the New York Times makes a bad picture very clear.
The Great Recession cratered demand and US non-military production. But arms manufacturing, paid for by the middle-class taxpayer, soared.
At a time when the GOP and Fox News portray middle class union workers — teachers — as pampered parasites, there are two American industries totally immune to any notions of austerity and shared sacrifice. Obviously, one is Wall Street. The other is made up of weapons makers.
While they don’t enjoy quite the same very top fruits of greed and avarice like Wall Street CEO’s, the bossmen of US weapons-makers also make out really really well. While everyone else was getting fired or seeing their incomes shrink, for instance, General Dynamics — one of the top five US arms developers — was richly rewarding its CEO.
“The chief executive of General Dynamics Corp. received pay and compensation the company valued at $17.96 million during 2008, a 15 percent annual increase that came as the defense contractor posted a big profit on the sale of equipment such as armored vehicles, private jets and submarines,” reads a news article from The Street.
“General Dynamics gave Nicholas Chabraja $1.38 million in salary and a bonus of $4.5 million, according an Associated Press analysis of the Falls Church, Va.-company’s proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday. Chabraja’s salary was up slightly from 2007, while his bonus was $1 million richer than the year earlier.”
In 2008, when millions of Americans were being laid off, the SIPRI database on worldwide arms sales showed the US industry ascendant. While everyone else in the heartland was being hammered, seven of the top ten arms sales companies in the world were American.
In the previous installment of the Economic Treason series, I discussed the itty-bitty arms maker, Combined Systems.
Combined Systems, a manufacturer of tear gas, high explosive rounds and handcuffs, is the primary employer in Jamestown, PA. Its entire business is arms manufacturing. It ships worldwide and is not subject to the pressures which have destroyed US non-military production. Famously, its products were seen being used against the now victorious Egyptian revolution.
Located in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, it has flourished while all other
industries making things in the county and its environs have suffered.
But that’s only one small company.
This year, SIPRI described its database on very big worldwide arms merchants in this manner:
With e total arms sales of the SIPRI Top 100 maintained the upward trend in their arms sales, an increase of a total of 59 per cent in real terms since 2002 … 45 of the SIPRI Top 100 are based in the USA. These companies generated just under $247 billion in total arms sales, which is 61.5 per cent of the SIPRI Top 100 arms sales.
While American big business has shipped all the jobs it can to China, US arms manufacturing labor is sacrosanct. It is protected, essentially underwritten by the mass of taxpayers who have been treated so shabbily in the last decade. While we were getting poor, arms manufacturing, like Wall Street, was getting rich through its status as a profoundly unfair industry underwritten and guaranteed by the state.
The Economic Treason series focuses on arms manufacturing businesses, comparing them to the fortunes of everyone else in the communities in which they are located. Because the effects of the economic collapse are so widespread, as a general rule it appears that while weapons production facilities have done well in the last ten years, everyone not in weapons production in the same or surrounding communities has done abominably.
Mass layoffs, which ticked up at the Bureau of Labor Statistics here, are for everyone. Except Wall Street and arms makers.
Mass layoffs occur for everyone else but not at weapons plants. And mass layoffs are now always threatened for public sector union workers, something prescribed as belt tightening as well as shared sacrifice and pain. This is fork-tongued speak. Like Wall Street, no sharing of pain ever comes to weapons makers. They are exempt.
Take General Dynamics Land Systems in Sterling Heights, Michigan.
Unemployment is abominable in Michigan. And it is also very bad in Macomb County, part of the Detroit metro-area, where General Dynamics Land Systems design bureau and corporate headquarters is located.
Michigan’s unemployment rate is 11.7 percent, as noted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics here. Statistically, it stood out in this report because of the rate of change, which has been greater than most of the rest of the country. While the rate has decreased faster, it is not because Michigan has a good jobs creation program. The rate of change downward is due to a decline in the population of the state.
Unemployment is terrible in Macomb County, Michigan. Unless you work for General Dynamics designing armored fighting vehicles. (Data from the St. Louis Fed here.)
The M1 Abrams tank manufactured by General Dynamics Land Systems is not particularly useful in the war on terror. We were attacked by suicide commandos using boxcutters on 9/11. al Qaeda has no armored fighting vehicles. The M1 tank went into action when we attacked a country that didn’t attack us in a war sold on a variety of now very famous frauds.
The M1 tank also had a visible role in the Egyptian revolution. But while it did no harm it was not really on the side of the people who brought down Hosni Mubarak.
In Macomb County, threatening public workers with layoffs is noticeable in the news. Articles oncoming layoffs at municipalities hurt by the economic collapse is also a common feature in Michigan newspapers in nearby Oakland and Wayne counties.
This recent news item from a place called Clinton Township says:
Clinton Township Supervisor Bob Cannon recommended that three police officers and 12 firefighters be laid off in the 2011-2012 fiscal year budget to help the two departments’ struggling bottom lines.
The board is expected to vote on the budget and possible cuts on March 21, and will make another decision that night on a federal grant that could re-hire seven firefighters already laid off last year.
Cannon made the recommendation at a Feb. 22 public hearing on the budget.
From the city of Troy, in neighboring Oakland County, we read this:
The city projects a $6.2 million budget deficit in 2010-2011, $6 million in 2011-2012 and $3.2 million in 2012-2013.
Under Option One of the restructuring plan, there would be no police layoffs until 2011-2012, when four police officers would be laid off. In 2012-2013, 29 police officers are slated for layoff, 14 in 2013-2014, for a total of 47 police layoffs.
The plan calls for reducing library staff by 39 people in 2010-2011 and 69 in 2011-2012.
The Parks and Recreation Department would also be eliminated in phases …
Armored fighting vehicles — special! Libraries, parks and recreation for children and civilians, not so much.
Unemployment has been craptastic in Allen County, Ohio! Except for the General Dynamics tank-making facility in Lima, the county seat.
“Ohio Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) President Jay McDonald hosted a press conference in Lima to highlight how Congressman John Kasich’s tax plan for Ohio would force local tax increases or lead to layoffs in public safety departments, according to a media release Thursday,” reads this bit of news from the web.
“Congressman [John Kasich’s] tax plan for Ohio would continue the damage he wreaked on the state during his time in Washington and on Wall Street … Similar to how Kasich’s support of outsourcing through unfair trade deals like NAFTA led to hundreds of thousands of layoffs in Ohio, his tax plan would force layoffs in our schools, and just as alarmingly, our police and fire departments.”
M1 Abrams tanks — huzzah! Police, public safety, teachers — eh.
Unemployment bloomed in Lackawanna County when the economy went ka-boom in 2008. Except, you guessed it, if you worked for General Dynamics Land Systems in Eynon, PA.
This item from Lackawanna County, describes public worker lay-offs in 2010 due to fiscal distress:
Majority commissioners have pledged to not raise taxes in 2011. They have cut the county budget by about 5 percent since taking office in 2008 without increasing taxes, but to keep that promise have laid off 109 employees and eliminated many others, including more than 320 positions through the sale the Lackawanna County Health Care Center earlier this year.
It is a drearily familiar thing. Public and private sector workers getting the chop everywhere. But not arms manufacturing. Firemen, hospital workers, policemen, receptionists, teachers — everyone threatened or downsized outright. The economy stumbles along, lives are reduced to splinters, people are tossed away in the wind.
But the factories that produce armored fighting vehicles are sure doing well.
General Dynamics Land Systems corporate headquarters emits a steady stream of truly wonderful press releases — these from 2009 — on tanks and armored fighting vehicle production. Tanks for the Iraqi army. And still more tanks and upgrades for our great pals in Saudi Arabia.
And while 2008 was really bad for almost everybody, it was swimming for General Dynamics Land Systems.
Record numbers of Americans apply for food stamps and unemployment. Every job not in finance or arms manufacturing gets beggared or threatened with shipment to China. Saudi Arabia and Iraq get tanks. More and more tanks. There are never enough.
As a thought experiment, I am going to propose a war-profiteering dividend/tax on US arms sales. Since the core markets for all these businesses are essentially guaranteed by the US taxpayer and government, it seems only fair Americans ought to be regarded as shareholders. And as shareholders, they ought to be in for some rewards. It’s the American way.
Let’s make the war-profiteering tax significant because, although even though I haven’t researched it yet, the US arms industry is probably quite adept at tax avoidance already. So I make it twenty percent of all profits in overseas arms sales — weapons, tanks, aircraft, ships, guns, ammo, bombs, chemicals, computer systems, software, consulting services and support — everything.
Here’s the calculation, using SIPRI’s latest data:
20 percent of 247 billion = 49 400 000 000
Further, I will propose a yearly war-profiteering dividend check for everyone in the United States on food stamps.
According to Reuters: “For fiscal 2011, average enrollment is forecast for 43.3 million people.”
Here is the calculation:
49.4 billion divided by 43.3 million = 1 140.8776
Everyone on food stamps, no exceptions, gets a check from the protected US arms industry, for roughly $1,140.88. That would certainly be a help.
One could also extend the dividend to all tax-filers for a given fiscal year although it would probably cut the size of each check by at least two thirds. The only people who wouldn’t be entitled to checks would be employees of the US arms manufacturing base. They’re already getting dividends as well as security.
Of course, none of this has any chance of consideration. It’s just a thought exercise. The protected industry of American weapons production is a third rail. No one will seriously discuss taking any big whacks at it.
However, this article does illustrate that when politicians, both GOP and Dem, fight for pieces of defense budget funding because of the familiar cry that it preserves “jobs” in their community, what they really mean is this:
Weapons making jobs are good and need preserving. Everyone else can go to Hell because “we’re broke” or belts need tightening or public sector union workers are scum.
It is also fun to imagine that such a war-profiteering tax/dividend might cause American arms manufacturers to raise prices to various clients (often countries whose rulers do not share our now largely theoretical democratic ideals) to retain profit margin. Or they could always start outsourcing to China.
Is there an arms manufacturer in your county? One you’d like to see profiled in the Economic Treason series? Send me a note or leave a comment.
General Dynamics plutocrat compensation — 2010.
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02.17.11
Posted in Permanent Fail, Predator State at 4:56 pm by George Smith
Explained by Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone.
A lot of it you know — government capture by Wall Street, the revolving door between the financial policing agencies of government and plush Wall Street positions which guarantee you are “fit for life” once landed.
A couple graphs really stand out:
“You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street,” says a former congressional aide. “That’s all it would take. Just once.”
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As for President Obama, what is there to be said? Goldman Sachs was his number-one private campaign contributor. He put a Citigroup executive in charge of his economic transition team, and he just named an executive of JP Morgan Chase, the proud owner of $7.7 million in Chase stock, his new chief of staff. “The betrayal that this represents by Obama to everybody is just — we’re not ready to believe it,” says Budde, a classmate of the president from their Columbia days. “He’s really fucking us over like that? Really? That’s really a JP Morgan guy, really?”
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The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don’t feel real; you don’t see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They’re crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let’s steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy. They’re attacking the very definition of property — which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone’s claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality.
Another mental stumbling block is that most Americans don’t even know who Lloyd Blankfein is, given the execrable track record of the mainstream media in pointing out who the big villains are.
Earlier in the week DD ripped a new hole in an old colleague who not only didn’t know who Blankfein was but thought that was the name of the rock n roll band.
So as far as the matter goes, Americans know things have turned awfully rancid. But as to the details and who did the bad, many are still radically mis- and under-informed.
And while there is a great desire loose in the land to see people punished, it’s not the real public enemies who are the targets of the ire. Instead it’s people like school teachers in Wisconsin who the President has failed to enthusiastically support in what can only be described as continuing evidence of politically expedient cowardice.
The idea that he might actually fly in to get on the line in the Madison courthouse with the people who voted for him in 2008 seems very alien now. Instead he flew to see Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.
Taken altogether it forms the context of the idea that the greatest national security threats faced by the people of the United States are not abroad. They’re right here.
But there are still countless idiots who hog up all the frontpage space whinging about al Qaeda, pathetic alleged homegrown jihadis and Iran.
“Let’s Lynch Lloyd Blankfein” — which I will play in Pasadena on Saturday night — here.
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09.16.10
Posted in Bioterrorism, Predator State, Stumble and Fail at 1:10 pm by George Smith
Some additional notes from today’s hardcopy Los Angeles Times, including a frank admission that the food regulatory system is broken.
Completely, DD might add.
It’s more proof that nobody in power is really interested in doing anything about the Dickensian characters from US agribusiness who emerge as threats to the general welfare.
But they are always ready to throw immoral amounts of money at bioterrorism research and defense into protecting against an outside threat.
“[While] most policy-makers and food safety experts agree the regulatory system is broken, they also agree that chances of a significant overhaul anytime soon are dwindling,” reported the newspaper here.
Unintentionally telling lines, an excuse, actually:
“In what FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg recently termed an ‘unfortunate irony,’ new FDA rules governing egg safety went into effect July 9, too late to prevent the current salmonella outbreak.”
Another unfortunate irony is that when Margaret Hamburg was installed at the FDA by the Obama administration, she was lauded for her focus on bioterrorism.
That has certainly worked out well.
In a sidebar piece, Eat Shit Farms Wright County Egg in Iowa was announced as the target of a civil suit including sickened people from six states.
“Self-policing doesn’t work,” said the lawyer representing them, during a press conference announcing the suit. “The farms failed to follow US regulations to prevent contamination,” reads the newspaper.
The Wright County Egg salmonella distribution “is the largest instance of salmonella poisoning since the Centers for Disease Control began tracking cases more than thirty years ago.”
In the last installment of Eat Shit Farms, I contrasted Austin “Jack” DeCoster’s Iowa tainted egg farms with the case of the Rajneeshee cult in Oregon in which the group instigated deliberate salmonella contamination.
In 1984, the Rajneeshee sickened 751 people with Salmonella typhimurium.
DeCoster’s firm is responsible for 1,519 diagnosed cases of salmonellosis.
The lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the suit estimated the number much higher.
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09.08.10
Posted in Predator State, Rock 'n' Roll, Stumble and Fail at 10:17 am by George Smith
Since DD blog is on Yahoo, I get a daily dose of the sites “news department.”
Everyday there’s stuff on “hot jobs,” or “how to get a job,” or how you probably f—– up your resume, your interview and life. And after being out of work so long you’re hardcore unemployable, so pay someone for ersatz reintegration and skills training now.
It’s part of an industry of parasitism, one designed to make money from those who have little but who also happen to be looking fruitlessly for work in a wrecked economy.
One facet, for example, is the current job fair.
“Job fairs” are now places where you go to find an opportunity to give your money to an assortment of lampreys and hagfish. Five hundred dollars down and we’ll train you to be able to work in an insurance office, no guarantee of work or placement though, buddy.
What years ago started out as a way to launch people into work is simply turned over to parasite businesses which thrive on unemployment and desperation, psychologically and financially chiseling the afflicted.
Believe it or not, there are even state government training courses to teach the unemployed how to be unemployment counselors.
But back to Yahoo. Today’s topic is hot jobs — the story is here.
However, even the readers know it’s a joke. In the broke economy, the jobless are not actually able to run out and invest in a four-year college degree for Yahoo’s hottest jobs. Over the weekend, the hot jobs were financial analysts (you know, the bankster industry) and teachers.
Today, it’s nurses, accountants and software engineers.
Tomorrow it will be bedpan technicians or windmill repairmen. Do you like mucous and/or great heights?
The best quotes are in the comments, where nobody is really buying the horseshit as practical or even good.
My favorite is the one on how to be a penny ante vulture at the carcass. The yard sale business is glutted in Pasadena these days, and he’s absolutely right:
The fastest growing market in the recession is in the market of buying lots of goods at bargain basement prices. I have a 6 month leave from my employer, and had the means to move and just shop for the time being. This guy at the table next to [me] bought a T-shirt at OLD NAVY for 49 cents. For the consumer with means the recession [is] like a permanent sale.
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Americans do not appreciate their industrial heritage. Their shrinking industrial base. We have invented massive numbers of products and inventions now taken for granted. What happened?
What our kids see on TV is models, lawyers, cooks, entertainment elite, sports rich. They do not see reality.
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We now have a government that is closer to the labor unions than any government in the last 50 years. You show me one industry other than government employees that is heavily unionized and survives and grows jobs. It dont happen.
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If you buy foreign cars and foreign refrigs and other high ticket items you are part of the problem. You are not the greedy corporation sending jobs overseas.
If you want prosperity for your children – then understand that we need a industrial base. Right here in the USA
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Well that is great for a young person…What Jobs are avilable for people between 50 and 62 ( before the Republicans raise the retirement age ) supposed to be avilable???
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My grandfather worked in the mines. My father was a life long dairy farmer. What happened to these jobs?
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I do not know where they got the information. I do not see any hiring for accountants and auditors. I have been looking work as an accountant for two years, and I have not heard the word, you are hired. Companies have been shipping work to overseas.
And here, another fitting musical one-minute interlude from US of Fail:
Free Man in the Morning.
It’s the live intro to China Toilet Blooz — which you should click up for me on YouTube. Pretty please with sugar on top?
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