Weekend Economists Dab on some Prince Machiavelli May 31-June 2, 2013

[Demeter]

Last edited Fri May 31, 2013, 05:56 PM - Edit history (1)

No, not that one!



This one!

Although, I wouldn't mind conflating the two. For women of a certain age, Prince Matchabelli was the sine qua non of parfumiers...my grandmother was especially fond of it. I was more interested in the intriguingly shaped bottle. (Most perfumes, unless they are straight essences of fruit and flowers, smell like soap on me. Bad, chemically harsh soap.) But then, I grew up, and got attracted to another Italian "prince", in a horrible-repulsion kind of way.

Let's see where this unlikely combination takes us, shall we? After all, both are products for the 1%, marketed to the 99% as unattainable but desirable. Both are supposed to sway men to one's power....

For those not interested in either theme, how about that DOW? Down 209 POINTS at the close...we can talk about that, too.

[Demeter]

1. Watch this space--For bank Failures!

It's only 4:30, too early for the FDIC to have acted, but we will keep track...

[Demeter]

19. WE HAVE A FAILURE--IN WISCONSIN

Banks of Wisconsin, Kenosha, Wisconsin, was closed today by the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with North Shore Bank, FSB, Brookfield, Wisconsin, to assume all of the deposits of Banks of Wisconsin.

The two branches of Banks of Wisconsin, which did business as Bank of Kenosha, will reopen as branches of North Shore Bank, FSB, during their normal business hours...As of March 31, 2012, Banks of Wisconsin had approximately $134.0 million in total assets and $127.6 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, North Shore Bank, FSB agreed to purchase approximately $97.4 million of the failed bank's assets. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later disposition...

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $26.3 million. Compared to other alternatives, North Shore Bank, FSB's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Banks of Wisconsin is the 14th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Wisconsin. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Legacy Bank, Milwaukee, on March 11, 2011.

[pansypoo53219]

21. north shore? MY bank?

[Demeter]

22. So sorry to be the bearer of bad news

Welcome to the fray. Would you like the link?

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/kenosha.html

the press release:

http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2013/pr13046.html

[Tansy_Gold]

57. You're in good company here

One of mine failed a few weeks ago.

And guess what?

Nothing happened.

A letter arrived from the "new" bank a few days later, letting me know what to do if I wanted to keep my account active there and what to do if I didn't. A few days ago, my bank statement arrived, same as always. No change.


At least, not yet. . . . .

[elleng]

2. NEVER liked that parfum!

Pour moi:







And no thanks, would rather NOT talk about the Dow today!

[Demeter]

4. Welcome, elleng!

Haven't seen you around our little oasis before...I'll give you the signal when to close your eyes this Weekend. Enjoy the rest!

[elleng]

9. Thanks, Demeter.

I do read. And invest via advisers and well-diversified funds, so while certainly interested, and watch markets every day, DON'T worry about my long term. (Have Fed. pension.) Foolish?

[Demeter]

12. You can't take it with you

as we learned in You Can't Take It with You, a comedic play in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

And nobody gets off the planet alive....with a few exceptions, and they usually came back to earth.

That's why this thread lives--to form a community dedicated to group survival.

[elleng]

15. YUP!

[Demeter]

16. ‘Successful aging’ protects health & wealth: Strategies to reduce the impact of late-in-life illness

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/successful-aging-protects-health-and-wealth-2013-05-31?siteid=YAHOOB

Gerontologists, researchers who focus on life’s later phases, increasingly like to talk about “successful aging.” A skeptic could be forgiven for reacting negatively to that terminology and thinking, “I work hard all my life and now you tell me I have to excel at growing old?” But the question of successful aging holds real implications for people’s health and wealth. Those who can avoid or postpone admission to a nursing home will enjoy a better quality of life. They’ll also run less risk of outliving their nest eggs, since Medicare doesn’t pay for long-term care. Dementia—perhaps the most feared condition of older age—costs the country $157 billion to $215 billion annually, more than cancer or the country’s leading killer, heart disease, according to a recent study by the Rand Corp.

Most of us aspire to independence in our golden years, but how much control do we really have over how we age? Put another way, how much responsibility do we have to make sure we do it right? Plenty, according to experts. Successful aging traces its roots back to the concept of “morbidity compression.” Introduced more than 30 years ago by Dr. James Fries, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, the hypothesis states that if a person develops his first chronic illness at a later age, then his period of infirmity will be squeezed into a shorter period closer to death (assuming that his longevity doesn’t increase by long enough to erase the advantage). The results, ideally, would include less time spent suffering, and less money spent treating one’s medical problems.

As intuitive as it sounds, “it’s simplistic to say it’s easy,” said Dr. Fries, now an emeritus professor of medicine at Stanford. (For one, Fries noted, the country’s obesity epidemic will challenge our ability to accomplish this goal.) But while genetics do play a role, studies show that common-sense moves like exercising and eating well really can help us stay healthier for longer. And the earlier we start, the better. “The seeds of successful aging are planted in middle adulthood,” said David M. Almeida, professor of human development at the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State University. Almeida’s research has focused on how people’s responses to daily stressors—like a fight with a spouse or an unexpected traffic jam—affect their long-term health. One study studied the stress responses of subjects ages 30 to 60, who reported no chronic conditions at the start, over a 10-year period. Those who experienced a more negative reaction to stress were more than twice as likely to develop a chronic condition such as heart disease, high blood pressure, or arthritis. The study controlled for socio-economic status, education, income, and parental status but not genetics. People can’t change their genes or the temperament they’re born with, but those who tend to internalize stress can recognize that and use physical exercise and social support to help cope, Almeida said.

Losing weight—or better yet, not gaining excess weight in the first place—can help people ward off a host of maladies from heart disease to diabetes. The latter, a potentially devastating condition in itself, can double one’s chances of developing Alzheimer’s, said Dr. Gary Small, director of the UCLA Longevity Center and author of the book “The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program.” The book outlines steps people can take, from exercise to nutrition to memory training, to help keep the dreaded disease at bay. There’s no cure for Alzheimer’s, and there’s no easy test that shows a person’s likelihood for developing the disease. Yet brain scans can reveal early signs of Alzheimer’s long before symptoms appear. The goal, Dr. Small said, is to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s dementia--the stage when the disease impairs people’s daily functioning—for as long as possible. If someone’s healthy habits can buy her a few more symptom-free years, she might die of another, less debilitating cause before developing dementia, the thinking goes.

To be sure, we can only control so much. Genetics account for roughly one-third to one-half of our longevity, experts say....Bottom line? When it comes to healthy aging, let’s control what we can and try not to worry too much about the rest. “Once you get to a certain point,” Almeida said, “biology just takes over.”



HAVING HAD A FRONT-ROW SEAT AT DEATH SCENES LATELY, MAY I ADD THAT PLANNING A SUCCESSFUL DEATH, AS A GUIDE TO YOUR HEIRS AND SURVIVORS, WOULD ALSO BE A GREAT INVESTMENT.

THIS MODERN WORLD HAS FAILED TO TEACH US ANYTHING: NEITHER HOW TO LIVE, NOR HOW TO LOVE; NOT HOW TO AGE GRACEFULLY, NOR HOW TO DIE.

I CAN ONLY THINK IT IS BECAUSE BUSINESS WANTS TO CAPTURE A CUSTOMER FOREVER, AND REFUSES TO ADMIT THAT PEOPLE MUST CHANGE AS TIMES CHANGE--THAT'S WHY LARGE COMPANIES GO OUT OF BUSINESS...THEY CANNOT ADAPT.

MEDICINE SEES DEATH AS FAILURE...WHEN WHAT THEY SHOULD SEE AS FAILURE IS GROTESQUELY TORTUROUS AND PAINFUL, UNPEACEFUL AND LINGERING DEATH.

AND RELIGION, WHICH HAD THE PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY TO TEACH ALL THESE THINGS, WELL, MISERABLE FAILURE IS THE PHRASE THAT COMES TO MIND...

[elleng]

17. Dad passed at 98,

and may have been concerned about whether his investments would suffice. They did, just, and I'm about to distribute 'gifts' to his grandchildren, leaving minuscule for me and my brother.

My birth mother died from breast cancer at 30-something.

[Demeter]

42. Condolences

from one orphan to another. Father was 80, mother 63. He basically refused to live without her, she died of smoking 15 years earlier.

[elleng]

54. Thanks, Demeter, and shared condolences.

Happy to have brother and his family (tho we're not geographically close,) and my daughters, whose father (my husband) just passed. Good investment planning by him for them. U.S. govt employees Thrift Savings Plan a REAL asset, among others.

Dad remarried, and lived happily with my/our adopted mother for many years. He did outlive her.

[DemReadingDU]

86. I am so sorry about your father.

If you had posted it, I'm sorry I missed it earlier.

[Demeter]

88. No, I hadn't.

He escaped his existence April 13th. He just didn't want to live.

The whole family was in shock, but we are coming out of it now.

[Demeter]

3. Brief History of Prince Matchabelli Perfumes

http://princematchabelliperfumes.webs.com/history.htm

The company was created by Prince Georges V. Matchabelli in 1926 at 160 East 56th Street New York. (AHA! A TIE-IN TO THE ECONOMIC WOES....3 YEARS BEFORE THE BOTTOM FELLOUT!)

Prince Matchabelli was not only a previous Georgian Prince and ambassador to Italy, but also was an amateur chemist who began creating perfumes for his friends and family as a hobby. George was a Russian exile who fled the Soviet Union and immigrated to the USA after the Russian Revolution. (ANOTHER TIE-IN!)



He and his wife, Princess Norina Matchabelli (an actress whose stage name was Maria Carmi), opened a small antiques shop Le Rouge et le Noir at 545 Madison Avenue. The name derived from Stendhal's novel, red for aristocracy (Matchabelli's origins) and black for clergy (The Miracle, a religious play).

Soon, the shop came to hold more perfume bottles than pieces of furniture and with his new interest in perfumes, Georges began to concentrate on making more perfumes for his clients and he and Norina later established the Prince Matchabelli Perfume Company in 1926. He was the sole manufacturer, bottle designer, merchandiser and publicity agent and he was proficient in all.

Perfumes were personally blended for clients, especially royalty. Some of these perfumes were Princess Norina, Princess Marie, Princess Nina, Queen of Georgia, Prince Georges and Princess of Wales. Other clients included the Duchess of York, for whom he created a special perfume in her honour, Queen Marie of Romania, and Matchabelli even created a personal perfume for Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt called "Inauguration". King Edward VIII was an avid user of Matchabelli's men's fragrances.


The Queen of Georgia perfume was created in memory of the Queen Tamara from the eleventh century. Her beauty wisdom and character were so remarkable that she has become a legendary figure in Russian folklore. The perfume was first introduced in 1928 in America, but had lain dormant for years. The smart Parisian women were clamouring for the scent an based up the European success of the scent, Matchabelli re-released it to America in 1936.


Georges created Ave Maria as a tribute to his wife for her inspiring performance of the role of Madonna in Max Reinhardt's production of "The Miracle".


In 1934, the Prince created a perfume in honour of stage star Grace Moore, who was known for her wonderful talent as much as her wildcat temper. The perfume was described as "feminine with a touch of a vixen" in a newspaper article. In another article from that same year he explains why he did it and why his rumored lover Katharine Hepburn was so jealous. "My newest perfume was created for Grace Moore, always before I created perfumes only for those of royal birth. But Miss Moore - ah- she is the queen of the stage., so I make a perfume to suit her, a perfume, gay, vivid, like she is. Then one day I am driving in the motor of the greatest star of all. She asked me if, I myself had created Miss Moore's perfume. I had to admit I did it. Suddenly she stopped the car. "Get out!" she ordered me. Jealous you see?" He then went on to say that he didnt obey her, but made a promise after to sufficiently analyze her personality, that he would create a perfume for her, but added that it was going "to be difficult, very difficult.". From this promise sprang the perfume Katherine the Great, both named for the famous ladies of history.

Other perfumes were named for single flower scents like Gardenia, Honeysuckle, Lilac, May Flower, Muguet, and some perfumes were inspired by the holidays, Easter Lily, Christmas Rose and Holly Berry or evoke times of the year with Summer Shower, Summer Frost, Spring Fancy, and Golden Autumn. Then there are those perfumes that were directly inspired by romantic images such as the perfume Gypsy Patteran, also known as the gypsy trail, which is the handful of grass which the gypsies strew in the roads as they travel, because the gypsies of old were in the habit of making the marks with the leaves and branches of trees, placed in a certain manner, this was done to give information to any of their companions who may be behind, as to the route they have taken.

In 1931, Princess Matchabelli became a dedicated follower of Meher Baba; in 1933 the Matchabellis divorced. Prince Matchabelli died in 1935 and was buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Queens, New York.

Subsequently, the Prince Matchabelli perfume business was sold to Saul Ganz in 1936 for $250,000. Ganz appointed his son, Paul H. Ganz, to be president of the company. In 1941 Prince Matchabelli was sold to Vicks Chemical Company. In 1958, Vicks sold Prince Matchabelli to Cheesebrough-Ponds. Cheesebrough-Ponds was acquired by Unilever in 1987. In 1993, the Cheesebrough-Ponds division of Unilever sold the Prince Matchabelli brands to Parfums de Coeur, Ltd.

Company now owned by DeCœur Fragrances, associated with Parfums International.

...Most of the very early fragrances from this house are lost to us, although the beautiful crown-shaped bottles are much sought after by collectors, and it was only after the business was sold in 1936 that their most famous perfumes were introduced; Beloved, Prophecy, Stradivari, Golden Autumn and of course the most famous all, Wind Song in 1953...

....today the only older classic in the lineup is Wind Song, now much changed from its original formula. At one time the Matchabelli perfume company was an American tradition. Several of its fragrances, including the feminine floral Added Attraction, were once given away by car dealers as a free gift with purchase of a new Chevrolet automobile; something for “the little woman” as it was assumed that her husband was the one paying for the car. How times have changed! I have had the opportunity to smell several of the vintage Prince Matchabelli perfumes, and they are much better than the drugstore version sold today....

http://perfumesmellinthings.blogspot.com/2011/03/very-brief-history-of-new-york-perfume.html

[Demeter]

5. FOR A BIG STINK: Radical Kleptocrats Anxious to Stop Disclosure of Corporate Money in Elections

http://www.nationofchange.org/radical-kleptocrats-anxious-stop-disclosure-corporate-money-elections-1369801549

By Jim Hightower

Perhaps I've been too harsh on congressional Republicans.

I had assumed that their vitriolic attacks on even the meekest of proposals to restrict the tsunami of secret corporate cash slamming into our elections stemmed from a hallucinogenic mix of partisan self-interest and Koch-induced plutocratic ideology. But I've since learned that they might simply need medical help.

Take Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who recently came unglued at a public hearing before the House Financial Services Committee. Mary Jo White, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, had been summoned by GOP inquisitors to answer to a modest, straightforward proposal involving the disclosure of corporate political donations. Actually, it is not her proposal, but a citizen petition — signed by a record half-million Americans — asking the SEC to require that corporate executives reveal to shareholders how their money is being spent in elections. That's entirely reasonable — unless, like Garrett, you've got the political temperament of a live grenade. He exploded on White, demanding in a bullying manner that she "refuse to be bullied by these outside radical groups" who submitted the petition. He insisted that she declare, then and there, that the agency would not even consider the citizens' proposal.

Yes, Garrett is a corporate toady, but that can't explain his foam-at-the-mouth hissy fit. Then I learned about a new medical study that offers a clue about the source of such behavior. It seems that conflicts at work cause some people's brains to release hormones that prompt them to fly into a rage and even threaten others. The researchers found out that corrosive hormones can make blood platelets stickier, causing the brain to go "boom," creating angry outbursts of stupidity. So maybe Scott's problem is not merely toadyism, but the terrible tragedy of sticky platelets syndrome....Still, one wonders: What did Rep. Garrett mean when he squawked about "outside radical groups" daring to submit that disclosure petition to the SEC? How radical is it to seek restraints on corporate chieftains who are pouring unlimited (and untold) amounts of their shareholders' money into our elections?

The great majority of Americans — including rank and file Republicans — agree that, at the very least, the shareholders who own the corporation have a right to be told how much of their money is being spent on behalf of which candidates. This explains why more than 500,000 citizens have petitioned the SEC to require disclosure...Who, you might wonder, exactly are these scary citizens, considered such a threat to corporate power that a Congress-critter is tarring them publicly as radical outsiders? They're professors from leading law schools, state and national elected officials, pension fund directors, public interest advocates and corporate shareholders. Not exactly outsiders, much less radicals. And that's what makes them so dangerous to the autocratic elites who run corporations as their own fiefdoms. Top executives want no accountability for the hundreds of millions of shareholder dollars they're spending to elect corporate lickspittles like Garrett, so they feel it necessary to demonize the citizenry itself. Don't question us, they demand, just trust us.

Uh ... no. Far from earning trust, they've already wrecked our economy and betrayed our nation's egalitarian ideals — while feathering their own plutocratic nests. Now they want free rein to pervert America's democratic process with clandestine election campaigns secretly financed with other people's money. NO! These kleptocrats are the real radicals. It's time to stop them, not only by disclosing their thievery, but ultimately by outlawing it — and retuning elections to the people. To join the effort, contact Public Citizen: www.citizen.org.

[Demeter]

34. Chevron Shareholders Reject Ban on Political Spending By Michael Beckel

http://www.nationofchange.org/chevron-shareholders-reject-ban-political-spending-1369926631

Chevron Corp. shareholders today rejected a resolution seeking to prohibit the company from using corporate funds for political activities.

Last year, the oil company was one of the largest corporate super PAC donors, as the Center for Public Integrity has previously reported...Just weeks out from Election Day, Chevron donated $2.5 million to the Republican-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC led by former Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and associated with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio...

Ahead of Chevron's annual meeting in California, the company's board urged shareholders to reject the measure. "Chevron’s participation in the political process is an important means of protecting the interests of the Company and its stockholders," the company wrote in its 2013 proxy statement. "A fixed policy barring the company from participating in the political process would undermine the board’s flexibility to exercise its business judgment in a manner that it reasonably believes is in Chevron’s best interests," the board members argued. The board also noted that Chevron voluntarily discloses on its website information about its donations to political committees and trade associations, such as the $1 million it contributed in 2012 to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

...Leslie Samuelrich, senior vice president at the financial advisory firm Green Century Capital Management — the firm was the lead filer of the shareholder resolution — said the measure garnered at least 3 percent of the not-yet-official vote. But she spun this seemingly miniscule support as good news. "We're thrilled," Samuelrich told the Center for Public Integrity. "It is the beginning of a turning of the tide."...Samuelrich told the Center for Public Integrity that the motion's supporters gained enough traction to refile the resolution again next fall, should they so choose. "We're looking at all our options," she noted. "We're not satisfied with the progress Chevron has made on this front."

[Demeter]

36. SEE ALSO:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022929039

[Demeter]

6. BREATH OF FRESH AIR: Why America Needs an "Education Spring"

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16652-why-america-needs-an-education-spring

Well, someone in the mainstream media finally had to ask the question.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, on his “All In” program on May 24, covered the forced closing of 50 public schools in Chicago – the largest incident of mass school closings in the nation’s history.

Joining Hayes were Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers’ Union, and education professor Pedro Noguera to discuss the rationale for the closures. Lewis said school administrators and Mayor Rahm Emanuel changed the rationale for the closings so many times that the case had become “murky.” Noguera declared the closings were “not a solution” for fixing or “reforming” schools.

Then Hayes dropped this: “Is this a strategy to – I’ll put it on the table: School closings as a strategy to kill public education?”

GOOD OLD RAHMBO....HIS BURIAL SITE WILL NEED WARNING SIGNS LIKE THESE:

[Demeter]

7. PASSING GAS: An Irresponsible Austerity Narrative Endures By Paul Krugman

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16643-an-irresponsible-austerity-narrative-endures

The Financial Times published an interesting article on May 16 about problems with Ireland's gross national product (not gross domestic product) accounting. Essentially, measured income is being inflated by foreign companies with no real activity in Ireland that, nonetheless, find ways to make profits materialize in a low-tax jurisdiction.

We sort of knew this was happening — that, for example, a lot of the apparent rise in productivity was just a shift to pharmaceutical companies that add little to the Irish economy. But a new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute suggests that the problem is bigger than realized.

This passage in the Financial Times article got me: "The E.S.R.I. research raises question marks over the strength of Ireland's recovery, which has surprised many foreign observers in light of the severe economic crisis the country experienced in 2008." Who are these surprised foreign observers? My impression is that Ireland has been proclaimed a success story again and again and again, only to have the narrative slink away in the face of disappointing experience.

And if we look at the jobs numbers, which are not subject to these accounting issues, we can see what the "strength of Ireland's recovery" looks like — check out the chart.



WHAT DR. KRUGMAN DIDN'T MENTION IN THIS PARTICULAR COLUMN WAS THE "APPLE" EFFECT...PROFITS PARKED IN IRELAND FOR TAX-FREE PURPOSES....WHICH NO DOUBT IS USED TO CONFUSE THE IRELAND QUESTION.

[Demeter]

13. WILD IRISH ROSE: How one Irish woman made $22bn for Apple in a year

http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/29/apple-ireland-cork-cathy-kearney

A private individual who shuns publicity, Cathy Kearney is thought to be the brains behind the Cork office that has helped save Apple billions...Cathy Kearney, an accountant in the Irish city of Cork, appears to live a fairly modest home life. A graduate of the local university, her home for 15 years has been a dairy farm outside Youghal, a seaside town a short drive from the city. The 49-year-old lives with her husband and children in a large, but far from grand, farmhouse. Outside work she is involved in the local church. She is also, at first sight, the brains behind much of Apple's exceptional global success in recent times.

Kearney is the Silicon Valley computer giant's top lieutenant in Ireland, and has overseen the explosive success of the company's operations in Cork, responsible for selling iPads, iPhones and MacBooks to scores of markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. No less than $22bn of Apple's profits – two-thirds of the total for the group – came from Kearney's Cork companies in 2011 alone. Back in the United States, Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, has described this international success as unprecedented...Two years ago Kearney featured in a list of Ireland's 20 most powerful women produced by the Irish Independent. It declared that Apple's success owed much to her "shrewd direction", though it also noted that she was a very private individual and had refused to provide biographical details or a photograph of herself. "We focus on our products rather than individuals as we like to recognise the team effort at Apple," a spokesman said.

Kearney did give one interview last month, however – speaking in private to US Senate officials. They have been gathering information about Apple's Irish operations on suspicion that the group is aggressively – though legally – shifting profits from operations around the world, particularly from the US, to Ireland in order to pay less tax. Of particular interest to the investigators was a cluster of companies, registered at Apple's Cork office, to which had been transferred development rights, outside the Americas, to many of the group's products. As one senator put it last week, Apple had "shifted that golden goose to Ireland". Poring over paperwork for these companies, Senate staff saw the familiar names of senior California-based Apple executives, including Cook himself. They also saw Kearney's name – again and again.

Probing further, among the companies they alighted on was Apple Operations International, the top Apple holding company in Cork. Kearney is the only AOI director in Ireland. Directors' duties usually include attending board meetings. But the Senate officials discovered she had attended just seven of 33 AOI board meetings over almost seven years – once in person, the other six by telephone. All but one of the meetings were in California, where the other directors were based.MMeanwhile, in four years, almost $30bn of profits poured into AOI, though it has no physical presence or employees in Cork or, indeed, anywhere else on the planet. One source on the Senate subcommittee on investigations joked that AOI and others were "iCompanies – i for imaginary, invisible".

FOR HOW SHE PULLED THIS CON, SEE LINK

[Fuddnik]

49. The ultimate fudged numbers.

I tells ya, "The economy is strong and getting stronger". Hairy Reed

[Demeter]

8. SQUASHED CABBAGE LEAF: Striking Back at the Sequester

TEN POINTS IF YOU CAN IDENTIFY THAT QUOTE!

http://inthesetimes.com/article/15065/striking_back_at_the_sequester/

In the first major workplace action against the sequester, hundreds of New York City legal-aid workers picketed yesterday...

“Joe Genova, Joe Genova, where are you, where are you?
Hiding from the workers, hiding from the workers,
shame on you, shame on you.”

Manhattan rang with a labor-themed rendition of Frère Jacques yesterday morning as over 100 members of the Legal Services Staff Association and their supporters picketed the offices of corporate law firm Milbank Tweed. But it wasn’t sung in the low tones of a lullaby. The workers wanted to make their voices heard 40 floors up by one of the partners of the firm, Joe Genova, chair of the board of Legal Services New York City. Exactly two weeks earlier, more than 200 lawyers, paralegals, process servers, and other staff employed by Legal Services NYC had walked off their jobs after working without a contract for over a year. Typically, the workers spend their days fighting on behalf of the most vulnerable members of our society. They defend poor and working people from evictions and foreclosure, fight for benefits for people with disabilities and the unemployed, aid victims of domestic violence in obtaining orders of protection, square off against predatory debt collection agencies, advocate for those suffering from HIV and AIDs, guide newcomers to the United States through the broken immigration system and, in general, provide a helping hand to those whose lives are torn apart by Kafkaesque government and employer bureaucracies.

In one case, Legal Services defended a man who was evicted from his apartment by the New York City Housing Authority in the middle of winter, even though he was paralyzed from the waist down. The first night, he slept in a hallway. Legal Services workers saved his possessions from destruction by the Housing Authority and helped him get moved back in.

Most of the highly-trained legal workers decided to forgo lucrative careers in private-sector law. They work at Legal Services because they believe in the cause. Walking out of the courtroom and onto the picket line was a difficult choice. No one wanted to leave their clients’ cases hanging. But after reviewing management’s demands, workers felt they had no other option. The board sought a pay cut equivalent to two years of seniority, an increase in healthcare costs that could total thousands of dollars a year, a 29 percent reduction in employer contributions to retirement funds, a freeze on cost-of-living pay increases. These cuts would remake the working environment at Legal Services NYC along the lines of the revolving door model that reigns in the corporate firms LSNYC’s board members run in Manhattan, doing irreparable harm to the organization’s ability to advocate effectively for its low-income clients. Ian Davie, one of the striking legal workers, explains that with cuts to healthcare, “When you reach a certain point, you can't continue taking your kids to the doctor, or you can't afford to go to the doctor. You can’t raise your kids here in New York, so you have to find other work. We think it's really about turning this into a high-turnover workplace. The cuts are so drastic that they will undermine our ability to serve our clients.”

.............................

The bosses live in a different world than the workers, says Davie: “Milbank Tweed, where the chair of the board works, is downtown at Chase Manhattan Plaza. Michael Young, the vice chair, works in the new New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan. They are very far from our clients. In his ten years as board chair, Joe Genova has never even visited our offices. We think he just doesn’t understand the work we are doing. Their clients are large banks. Our clients are the poorest of the poor, often being sued by those banks.”

Compensation for partners at Milbank Tweed—including Mr. Genova—ranged from $2.44 to $2.57 million in 2011, placing them easily within the richest 1% in the United States. Genova is married to a general counsel at JPMorgan Chase, who is also treasurer of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association.

............................

There is a bitter irony at the root of the current conflict. The Legal Services Corporation distributes funds to over 100 nonprofits like Legal Services NYC across the United States. Congress created LSC in 1974 with the approval of Richard Nixon, in order to integrate the grievances of poor and working people into the judicial system. It seemed like a wise investment with the riots and rebellions of the 1960s and early 1970s fresh in politicians’ mind. Even Judge Lewis F. Powell, author of the Powell Memo, now infamous as the charter document of neoliberalism, thought it was a good idea. The broad ruling class consensus behind the creation of Legal Services reflected the reigning ideology of corporate liberalism...Four decades later, most Democrats and Republicans are united around a new ideology of shredding the New Deal social safety net through sequestration and other forms of austerity, while waging a war of attrition against the labor movement. Sequestration is only one thrust in a much broader assault on poor and working people. In fact, it may be capitalists’ endgame, as even the mild-mannered civil servants at organizations like Legal Services Staff Association and the NLRB come under attack. The workers at LSNYC aren’t willing to sit back and watch the erosion continue. They have a better idea: Make common cause with those who rely on public services, and strike back.

ABOUT THIS AUTHOR

Erik Forman has has led labor organizing workshops and trainings in 22 countries for the IWW and other unions. Research on strategies for union renewal has now taken him to Montréal, where he is studying the Quebec student strikes of 2005 and 2012. Follow him at twitter.com/_erikforman.

[Demeter]

10. THROUGH THE RYE: Genetically Modified Wheat Isn't Supposed to Exist. So What Is It Doing in Oregon?

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-30/genetically-modified-wheat-isnt-supposed-to-exist-dot-so-what-is-it-doing-in-oregon#r=hp-ls

Wheat farmers, advocates of food safety, and pretty much anyone who eats bread or noodles have turned their attention to Oregon, where a wheat farmer found a genetically engineered strain of wheat in his otherwise unmodified crop. He couldn’t kill it in any of the normal ways, so he sent it to the lab for testing, which sounds like the set-up for a farm-belt horror movie. The reality has caused alarm of a different sort: Genetically modified wheat hasn’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and unlike corn and soy and other so-called GMO foods, there isn’t supposed to be any genetically modified wheat in the U.S. food supply at all.

There are two reasons to care. Food safety folks lobby hard for labeling of genetically modified foods, saying that the jury is out on the long-term health and environmental effects and consumers deserve to know what they’re buying. The companies that make the seeds say they’re perfectly safe. And for wheat farmers and exporters, this potentially cripples the export market: Many foreign buyers don’t want genetically modified wheat and can switch their buying to Russia, Ukraine, Australia, and other large exporters. Japan reacted quickly, canceling an order today for nearly 25,000 tons of wheat, Bloomberg News reported, and wheat futures dropped on the Chicago Board of Trade.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which is responsible for keeping unapproved GMOs out of the food supply, has begun testing the wheat. In a full-court PR press, the agency has also released a Q&A (PDF) and video to address the issue. Here are a few points to consider:

It’s probably too late to do much about this.

The U.S. has some 1,000 field trials for new gene-altered crops each year, most in multiple sites. The protocols for containing those genes are lax, argue such critics as the Center for Food Safety, which wants a moratorium on field testing of gene-altered crops. ”I would not be at all surprised if there are a number of experimental genes that have contaminated and are happily being passed along at low levels in the food supplies of various crops already, but nobody’s testing,” says Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. “It’s really a ‘don’t look, don’t tell’ situation. We just really don’t know.”

After all, this isn’t the first time....MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

29. If There Is Taxation Without Representation, Monsanto Is Being Represented and We're Being Taxed

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17998-if-there-is-taxation-without-representation-monsanto-is-being-represented-and-we-re-being-taxed

...According to www.salary.com, the average Washington lobbyist is getting paid over $100,000 a year to happily whisper sweet nothings into the willing ears of government officials in Washington -- so that said lobbyist's employer will get all kinds of tax breaks and perqs. And of course these government officials in Washington then go out of their way to represent only the folks with big bucks, not people like you and me or even the new Tea Party members -- and especially not the new Tea Party rank and file.

Are you currently paying your very own lobbyist $100,000 a year to represent you in Washington? If not, then you clearly have no representation.

And mega-corporate road-hogs such as the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity spend how much on buying their representation in Washington? According to Mother Jones Magazine, just these two groups alone paid out 96.7 million dollars in campaign contributions during the elections of 2012. And did you also pay out 96.7 million dollars as well, to get your representative elected? No? Then your representative owes you diddly. Sorry, but that's how it goes.

If We-the-People actually did have any representation in Washington, America would certainly not be in the hot mess that it is in now. We would all have good schools, a solid infrastructure and lots of housing and jobs, and with no outsourcing, no wars-for-profit, no bankster dirty tricks, no super-fund tax breaks for the wealthy 1% -- and definitely no more "trickle up."

If modern-day Americans had only still managed to maintain that feisty American historical spirit of "No taxation without representation!" that our brave ancestors fought so hard for, then Monsanto and the nuclear industry and Big Pharma and oil barons and banksters and Citizens United and the Koch brothers and Wall Street and War Street would not be running our government and owning it like they do. WE would be running it and owning it....

[Demeter]

30. The Russians Prove Small Scale Organic CAN Feed the World By Christina Sarich

http://www.nationofchange.org/russians-prove-small-scale-organic-can-feed-world-1369923601

If you’ve already been through an economic collapse, you might know a thing or two about how to feed your family with little money. More importantly, you might know how to do it without pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and GMO seed. On a total of about 20 million acres managed by over 35 million Russian families, Russians are carrying on an old-world technique, which we Americans might learn from. They are growing their own organic crops - and it’s working.

According to some statistics, they grow 92% of the entire countries’ potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of its fruit, and feed 71% of the entire population from privately owned, organic farms or house gardens all across the country. These aren’t huge Agro-farms run by pharmaceutical companies; these are small family farms and less-than-an-acre gardens.

A recent report from Agro-ecology and the Right to Food says that organic and sustainable small-scale farming could double food production in the parts of the world where hunger is the biggest issue. Within five to 10 years we could see a big jump in crop cultivation. It could also take the teeth out of GMO business in the US.

According to World Watch, we can also farm fish responsibly and feed the planet. Sustainable fish farms along with organic gardening are becoming the new agro-business...

[Demeter]

11. What About that OTHER Prince, You Say? At 500, Machiavelli's 'Prince' Still Inspires Love And Fear

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/05/27/185746692/may-2013-machiavelli-s-the-prince-500th-anniversary?ft=1&f=1001

The name is synonymous with political deceit, cynicism and the ruthless use of power. The Italian Renaissance writer called his most famous work, The Prince, a handbook for statesmen. (AN EXHIBIT IN ROME) celebrates the 500th anniversary of what is still considered one of the most influential political essays in Western literature. Even today, The Prince continues to both fascinate and stir controversy.

The Catholic Church was the book's first detractor, so it's only fitting that the exhibit at Rome's Vittoriano museum includes an item loaned by the Vatican. It's a wooden chest from the Holy Office, once known as the Inquisition, where the index of banned books was kept. But despite the ban, copies and translations of The Prince spread quickly throughout the known world of the time. It's the most translated book from the Italian language — beating even Dante's Divine Comedy, according to the exhibit curator, Alessandro Campi. He points to several display cases dedicated to what came to be known negatively as "Machiavellism."

"It all starts with the Elizabethans," says Campi. "There are several passages in Shakespeare and Marlowe that mention the Old Nick, a name for the Devil later applied also to Niccolo, the sinister Machiavel."

Pointers On How To Stay In Power

A politician, historian and philosopher in Renaissance Florence, Machiavelli wrote The Prince while he was virtually under house arrest. He had served in the Florentine Republic in key positions, as a diplomat and the official in charge of the city's military defense, until the Medici princes were restored to power in 1512. Later accused of conspiracy, he was arrested and tortured in prison. After he was released to his country home, politics remained Machiavelli's passion and he wrote what many scholars say is the first modern treatise on political science. Here are some of his suggestions on how political rulers can stay in power:

" My view is that it is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and, if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved."

"The promise given was a necessity of the past; the word broken is a necessity of the present."

"Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception."

Valdo Spini, a scholar and former member of parliament, says Machiavelli came close but never actually wrote the sentence "the end justifies the means." That quintessentially cynical concept, Spini says, was attributed to Machiavelli falsely by Antonio Possevino, a Jesuit priest who at the end of the 16th century wrote a satire of Machiavelli's work that tainted the writer's intent. "I do not think he is a kind of an apologist for dictatorship," Spini says of Machiavelli, "but he understood the deep forces that act in society and this is his modernity."

APOLOGIA AT LINK

[Demeter]

14. Unbelievable-28 Senate Democrats voted with the Republicans‏ TO CUT FOOD STAMPS

http://campaigns.dailykos.com/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=423

...please join Daily Kos and the Campaign for America’s Future by signing our petition to the 28 Senate Democrats who last week voted to cut food stamps—demanding they put low-income families ahead of corporate welfare. Click here to sign.

On May 21, the U.S. Senate blocked an amendment to reinstate $4.1 billion for food stamps.

But we can’t just blame GOP obstructionism. Twenty-eight Democratic senators joined all voting Republicans in putting corporate welfare for a handful of crop insurance companies ahead of low-income families struggling to make ends meet, by voting down this amendment.

As House Republicans push even more draconian cuts to food stamps, now is the time to take a stand. Please join Daily Kos and the Campaign for America’s Future by signing our petition to the 28 Senate Democrats, demanding they put low-income families ahead of corporate welfare.

Keep fighting,
Paul Hogarth, Daily Kos

[Demeter]

18. From the Mouths of Babes By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/opinion/from-the-mouths-of-babes.html?_r=0

Like many observers, I usually read reports about political goings-on with a sort of weary cynicism. Every once in a while, however, politicians do something so wrong, substantively and morally, that cynicism just won’t cut it; it’s time to get really angry instead. So it is with the ugly, destructive war against food stamps. The food stamp program — which these days actually uses debit cards, and is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — tries to provide modest but crucial aid to families in need. And the evidence is crystal clear both that the overwhelming majority of food stamp recipients really need the help, and that the program is highly successful at reducing “food insecurity,” in which families go hungry at least some of the time.

Food stamps have played an especially useful — indeed, almost heroic — role in recent years. In fact, they have done triple duty. First, as millions of workers lost their jobs through no fault of their own, many families turned to food stamps to help them get by — and while food aid is no substitute for a good job, it did significantly mitigate their misery. Food stamps were especially helpful to children who would otherwise be living in extreme poverty, defined as an income less than half the official poverty line. But there’s more. Why is our economy depressed? Because many players in the economy slashed spending at the same time, while relatively few players were willing to spend more. And because the economy is not like an individual household — your spending is my income, my spending is your income — the result was a general fall in incomes and plunge in employment. We desperately needed (and still need) public policies to promote higher spending on a temporary basis — and the expansion of food stamps, which helps families living on the edge and let them spend more on other necessities, is just such a policy. Indeed, estimates from the consulting firm Moody’s Analytics suggest that each dollar spent on food stamps in a depressed economy raises G.D.P. by about $1.70 — which means, by the way, that much of the money laid out to help families in need actually comes right back to the government in the form of higher revenue. Wait, we’re not done yet. Food stamps greatly reduce food insecurity among low-income children, which, in turn, greatly enhances their chances of doing well in school and growing up to be successful, productive adults. So food stamps are in a very real sense an investment in the nation’s future — an investment that in the long run almost surely reduces the budget deficit, because tomorrow’s adults will also be tomorrow’s taxpayers. So what do Republicans want to do with this paragon of programs? First, shrink it; then, effectively kill it.

The shrinking part comes from the latest farm bill released by the House Agriculture Committee (for historical reasons, the food stamp program is administered by the Agriculture Department). That bill would push about two million people off the program. You should bear in mind, by the way, that one effect of the sequester has been to pose a serious threat to a different but related program that provides nutritional aid to millions of pregnant mothers, infants, and children. Ensuring that the next generation grows up nutritionally deprived — now that’s what I call forward thinking. And why must food stamps be cut? We can’t afford it, say politicians like Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican of Tennessee, who backed his position with biblical quotations — and who also, it turns out, has personally received millions in farm subsidies over the years. These cuts are, however, just the beginning of the assault on food stamps. Remember, Representative Paul Ryan’s budget is still the official G.O.P. position on fiscal policy, and that budget calls for converting food stamps into a block grant program with sharply reduced spending. If this proposal had been in effect when the Great Recession struck, the food stamp program could not have expanded the way it did, which would have meant vastly more hardship, including a lot of outright hunger, for millions of Americans, and for children in particular.

Look, I understand the supposed rationale: We’re becoming a nation of takers, and doing stuff like feeding poor children and giving them adequate health care are just creating a culture of dependency — and that culture of dependency, not runaway bankers, somehow caused our economic crisis. But I wonder whether even Republicans really believe that story — or at least are confident enough in their diagnosis to justify policies that more or less literally take food from the mouths of hungry children. As I said, there are times when cynicism just doesn’t cut it; this is a time to get really, really angry.

[Demeter]

25. Obama pressures Congress to prevent student loan rate increase

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-pressures-congress-prevent-student-loan-rate-increase-142245722.html

President Barack Obama on Friday publicly called on Congress to prevent Stafford student loan interest rates from doubling this summer....

IN OTHER WORDS, HE JUST GAVE THEM THE GO-AHEAD TO SCREW OVER OUR HARD-WORKING, HOPEFUL YOUTH...

BUT NOT ONE PUBLIC WORD ABOUT FOOD STAMPS....HMMMM....GUESS THAT GOOSE IS ALREADY COOKED.

[Hugin]

53. Remember how the elderly, infirm, food stamp recipients, and teachers caused the financial crash

Don't forget Social Security and Medicare, too. Those lazy "Gravy Street" living Govt Workers had a hand in it.

Took it right down in 2008.

---> <---

[PassingFair]

93. Looks like mostly the usual third way and blue dog suspects. I'm a little surprised to see...

Tom Harkin's name on that list, though.


On edit:

The twenty eight.

Baucus, Bennet, Cardin, Carper, Coons, Donnelly, Durbin, Feinstein, Franken, Hagan, Harkin, Heinrich, Heitkamp, Johnson, Kaine, Klobuchar, Landrieu, Manchin, McCaskill, Mikulski, Nelson, Pryor, Rockefeller, Shaheen, Stabenow, Tester, Mark Udall and Warner:

[Demeter]

96. All of them fair game for primary opposition, IMO

Al Franken?

Sigh. Another illusion shattered.

[PassingFair]

99. Franken plays on the third way team quite often. But his presence on this list, along with Harkin...

suggests preferential legislation for their agricultural priorities.

[Demeter]

20. This Time is Not So Different: The Euro Crisis and the 1840s

http://carolabinder.blogspot.com/2013/05/this-time-is-not-so-different-euro.html

In the United States, the 1840s were "an era of fiscal crisis following a decade of fiscal exuberance," according to a paper by Arthur Grinath, JohnWallis, and Richard Sylla. This paper was written in 1997, but its insights into a sovereign debt crisis of long ago provide interesting parallels to today....In the 1820s and 1830s, state governments made large investments in canals, railroads, and banks. New York and Ohio were the first two states to start canal projects. At first, the expected revenue from the projects was low or uncertain, so New York and Ohio raised taxes to service the canal debt. But the Erie and Ohio canals were highly successful, so subsequent canal construction was financed without corresponding tax increases. New York, Ohio, and other states expected internal improvement projects to produce future revenue, so they didn't feel the need to raise taxes when they began new projects. States were easily able to issue bonds to domestic and foreign (especially British) investors to finance their projects:

“Both state borrowers and lenders, foreign and domestic, anticipated that states could tax land if their bank and transportation projects failed. After 1836, increasing land values and taxable acreage were the common factor underlying state fiscal policies, bank investments, and transportation improvements nationwide. Northeastern states knew they had large amounts of untaxed land, rising in value. It was a fiscal reserve against which they could borrow to finance extensions of their transportation systems. Western states, north and south, were in the midst of the greatest land boom in American history. If northwestern states were uncertain about just when transportation investments would generate revenues, they nonetheless anticipated that many more, and more valuable, acres could soon be taxed. States were thus confident that property tax proceeds would provide adequate fiscal resources to service the debts they incurred. Investors in state bonds concurred.”

State government bonds were considered safe assets because it seemed inconceivable that a state government could default-- their investments were expected to be profitable, and even if they weren't, the states had plenty of potential to increase their tax revenue, especially since land value was rising. Grinath et al. quote Illinois Governor Ford as saying "Mere possibilities appeared to be highly probable, and probabilities wore the livery of certainty itself.”

Gary Gorton, Stefan Lewellen, and Andrew Metrick define a safe asset as one that is information-insensitive. "To the extent that debt is information-insensitive, it can be used efficiently as collateral in financial transactions, a role in finance that is analogous to the role of money in commerce." Gorton elaborates on this idea in an interview with the Region magazine, explaining that debt is "easiest to trade if you’re sure that neither party knows anything about the payoff on the debt." In other words, "The depositors believe that the collateral has the feature that nobody has any private information about it. We can all just believe that it’s all AAA." ...In the 1830s, both the states and the investors in state bonds could "believe that it's all AAA" since, even if investment projects turned out not to generate much revenue, states had seemingly boundless untapped tax potential. Thus it was unnecessary for investors in state bonds to find information about the details of states' particular projects. State debt was information-insensitive, a useful property considering how slowly information traveled across the Atlantic in those days. No need to calculate probabilities when probabilities wear the "livery of certainty itself."

Gorton says that the few really big crisis events in history come from a regime switch in which debt that is information-insensitive becomes information-sensitive. This is precisely what happened in the U.S. states. During the early 1830s expansion and boom of 1835, state debt was information-insensitive, especially as ever-rising land prices promised a large and growing fiscal reserve. But as several domestic and external factors combined to bring about the panic of 1837 and collapse of 1839, the strength of the fiscal reserve was challenged. As land values and property taxes fell, the quality of state's canal, bank, and railroad investment projects suddenly mattered for their ability to service their debt. The situation is described in another paper by Wallis and Namsuk Kim:

In July of 1839, the Morris Canal and Banking Company of New Jersey defaulted on Indiana, and the state quickly was forced to curtail construction on its network of canals and railroads. By the autumn, Illinois and Michigan were forced to slow or stop construction when investment banks defaulted on their obligations to the states. Land sales and land values in these northwestern states had been rising steadily through the 1830s. When transportation construction stopped, land values and property tax revenues began falling and, by late 1839, it was apparent that these states would soon have trouble servicing their debts. In January of 1841, Indiana was the first state to default on interest payments.

COMPARISON TO MODERN GREECE IN THE EUROMESS

What ultimately happened in the United States was that the debt crisis forced a change in the structure of public finance. States initiated constitutional restrictions on debt issue and instituted requirements that new spending be matched by new tax increases. The debt crisis in the euro area is also likely to change the structure of public finance, but not in the same way. The United States is both a monetary union and a fiscal union, so even though the states adopted balanced budget amendments, the federal government could still do countercyclical fiscal policy. The euro area is a monetary union without a fiscal union, so it would be very costly for states to institute such restrictions on deficit spending. One possibility is that the euro area will become more of a fiscal and/or banking union; or there may be other changes in the structure of public finance that I can't foresee.



I'M INTRIGUED BY HOW THIS ANALYST MANAGES TO AVOID ANY MENTION OF THE CIVIL WAR. ONE WOULD THINK THAT DURING THE LITTLE DISPUTE OVER EVERYTHING THIS NATION IS, WE WOULD HAVE HAD SOME ECONOMIC EFFECT, AND VICE VERSA...

[Demeter]

23. Holder runs into roadblocks on off-the-record meetings on leaks

HAS THIS IDIOT NEVER HEARD OF THE TERM "ENTRAPMENT"?

"OFF THE RECORDS" IS ONLY GOOD WHEN YOUR ASS ISN'T IN THE SLING....

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/29/holder-runs-into-roadblocks-on-off-the-record-meetings-on-leaks/?on.cnn=2

Attorney General Eric Holder's plans to sit down with media representatives to discuss guidelines for handling investigations into leaks to the news media have run into trouble.

The Associated Press issued a statement Wednesday objecting to plans for the meetings to be off the record. "If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter," said Erin Madigan White, the AP's media relations manager.

The New York Times is taking the same position. "It isn't appropriate for us to attend an off-the-record meeting with the attorney general," executive editor Jill Abramson said in a statement.

Like the New York Times and the Associated Press, CNN will decline the invitation for an off-the-record meeting. A CNN spokesperson says if the meeting with the attorney general is on the record, CNN would plan to participate.

The Huffington Post's Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim, also said he will not attend unless the meeting is on the record. "A conversation specifically about the freedom of the press should be an open one. We have a responsibility not to betray that," Grim told CNN.

MORE FIGHTING WORDS AT LINK

[Demeter]

24. Eric Holder vs the media: What is ‘off the record’?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/eric-holder-vs-media-off-record-200639633.html

...Everyone knows somebody who is always starting sentences with “for the record,” like a narcissistic nod to a cosmic stenographer chronicling their every move. But just what does “off the record” mean? Is it always bad? Who are those unnamed "senior administration officials" you read so much about? And how can you sound smart at the bar if you’re unlucky enough to be trapped in a discussion of Beltway media jargon?

First, a bit of background: Holder called major outlets to come discuss the Justice Department’s handling of national security leaks. The invitation followed disclosures that the department had seized reporters’ telephone and email records and had even suggested one journalist, James Rosen of Fox News, had acted like a spy by doing his job.

But there was a catch: Holder said the details of the meeting would be “off the record”—could not be reported. Some rejected the overture, essentially arguing that the public should know what Holder had to say. (Yahoo News partner ABC News accepted his invitation.) Under heavy pressure, Holder relaxed the requirement enough to let those who attended describe in general terms what took place.

But anyone not steeped in reportorial jargon might be confused by how such ground rules are set. Since the Holder-media talks are sure to continue and because the issue is linked to the way reporters protect the identity of whistle-blowers, it’s worth giving the matter a second look.

Yahoo News reached out to a handful of reporters—including two who endured furious disputes with more than one White House over the definition of “off the record”—as well as some respected communications aides of both parties. These “hacks and flacks” offered guidance through this frequently murky terrain....

DEVELOPS AT LINK

[Demeter]

26. When Economic Prudence Is Seen As Folly By Paul Krugman

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16684-when-economic-prudence-is-seen-as-folly

Nicholas Crafts, an economics professor at the University of Warwick, wrote a really interesting article on the Vox blog recently about Britain's economic policy in the 1930s. The gist is that monetary policy drove recovery through the expectations channel; the Bank of England managed to credibly promise to be irresponsible — that is, to generate inflation.

But how did it do that? Mr. Crafts argues that this was possible for two reasons: the bank was not independent, but just an arm of the Treasury, and the Treasury had a known need to generate some inflation to bring down high debt levels.

This is very closely related to the economist Gauti Eggertsson's analysis of Japanese policy over the same period: there, too, the lack of central bank independence combined with a fiscal imperative made it possible to change monetary expectations in an unorthodox way, which was exactly what was needed (although they should have skipped the invading Manchuria part).

All of this reinforces the important point that — as I put it early in this crisis — we've entered a looking-glass world in which virtue is vice and prudence is folly, and in which doing the responsible thing is a recipe for economic failure....

HIS PRESCRIPTION AT LINK.

[Demeter]

27. The Best and Simplest Way to Fight Global Poverty By Matthew Yglesias

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/unconditional_cash_transfers_giving_money_to_the_poor_may_be_the_best_tool.html

Proof that giving cash to poor people, no strings attached, is an amazingly powerful tool for boosting incomes and promoting development.



Poverty is, fundamentally, a lack of money. So doesn’t it make sense that simply delivering cash to poor people can be an effective strategy for alleviating it?

Transferring money to poor Americans has been a much bigger success than most of us realize. When it comes to the global poor—the hundreds of millions of slum-dwellers and subsistence farmers who still populate the world—one might be more skeptical. Perhaps the problems facing these unfortunates are simply too profound and too complex to be addressed by anything other than complicated development schemes. Well, perhaps.

But there’s striking new evidence that helping the truly poor really is as simple as handing them money. Money with no strings attached not only directly raises the living standards of those who receive it, but it also increases hours worked and labor productivity, seemingly laying the groundwork for growth to come...

A SEMINAL PIECE--MUST READ!

[Demeter]

28. Actual US Poverty Twice Official Figure

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16693-actual-us-poverty-twice-official-figure

VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT AT LINK

[Demeter]

31. A Vision for Social Security By Richard (RJ) Eskow

http://www.nationofchange.org/vision-social-security-1369922964

...Social Security benefits lag far behind those of other developed countries. A new analysis of census data shows that elder poverty is much higher than we first realized. And yet the discussion in Washington is of cutting, not expanding, it. The number of impoverished seniors would rise sharply if that happened, or if the Medicare cuts currently under discussion became law. The numbers say that Social Security should be increased, not cut, and most Americans agree.

But the Social Security cutters, financed by billions and aided by their network of powerful friends in government and the media, are appealing to the human heart. That’s a bitter irony for a policy prescription that even their own consciences must recognize is heartless.

We ? Social Security

Social Security, one of the most popular and reliable programs in the United States, is under concerted attack from corporate and Wall Street interests. Both the Republicans and President Obama have proposed to cut it. The case against this ill-advised move has been made again and again. Polls, charts, graphs and logic have been deployed in support of a simple message: Social Security must be expanded, not reduced. So why – why, in the name of all that’s good and decent – aren’t we expanding Social Security? Why does the President’s proposed budget still include the “chained CPI,” which would raise taxes on the drowning middle class while cutting Social Security benefits?

There have been several proposals to expand Social Security. These proposals would also make it fiscally impregnable for the foreseeable future, as far as the actuarial eye can see. Why have they received so little press attention and political support? Maybe it’s a matter of heart, of soul, of vision. The Social Security Cutters are putting all they’ve got – personal and emotional, as well as financial – the fight against Social Security. They’ve created a narrative which is false, but is simple and internally coherent. Their vision can be summed up with these words: We can’t afford it. That’s not true. It’s time for a better vision, one which is more fiscally sound – and truer to our values as a society....Social Security is based on simple moral principles: children who lose one or both parents shouldn’t be forced to into child labor; disabled people shouldn’t be condemned to poverty; and people should be able to retire with financial security after a full working life. For nearly 75 years it was considered inhumane and a violation of our core social values to suggest taking these economic rights away...


EXPANSION ON THE THEME AT LINK

[Demeter]

32. The New Face of Poverty in America By Jim Hightower

http://www.nationofchange.org/new-face-poverty-america-1369921491

...Half a century after Washington declared its war on poverty, our cold reality is bleak. We’ve got nearly 50 million poor people and 51 million more who are “near poor.” Statistics vary, but between one in five and one in four American children now lives in poverty — the most grim reality for kids in any rich country.

And there’s no sign that the growth of poverty will reverse.

The face of American poverty, however, has changed somewhat. In the sixties, the poor had largely been born into it and were out of most people’s sight, tucked away in backwater rural counties and isolated urban ghettos. This kind of poverty persists, but today’s big jump in numbers comes from families that have been knocked down from a middle-class life. These folks are dismayed to find themselves among the long-term unemployed, grabbing at temporary low-paying jobs, and buying meager groceries with food stamps.

These are the new poor, but they also constitute a new demographic phenomenon: the suburban poor....

[Demeter]

33. Child Malnutrition Costs Global Economy Billions Yearly - Report By Jim Lobe

http://www.nationofchange.org/child-malnutrition-costs-global-economy-billions-yearly-report-1369923906

In addition to the serious health problems it causes, child malnutrition is costing the global economy tens of billions of dollars a year by depriving its victims of the ability to learn basic skills, according to a new report released Tuesday by Save the Children (STC).

Based on a multi-year study in four countries, the 23-page report found that chronically malnourished children – about one of every four children born today — are significantly less able to read, write a simple sentence, or perform basic arithmetic.

Those disabilities, as well as other cognitive problems related to malnutrition, translate into a 20-percent reduction in their average adult earnings, which in turn acts as an important brake on economic growth in the countries where they live, according to the report.

The report, “Food for Thought: Tackling Child Malnutrition to Unlock Potential and Boost Prosperity”, estimated the global impact of child malnutrition at 125 billion dollars a year by the time today’s children reach working age in 2030....

MORE

[Demeter]

43. No We Are Not Living Beyond Our Means By Robert Reich

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/17698-focus-no-we-are-not-living-beyond-our-means

Even as the economy slowly recovers from the worst downturn since the Great Depression, government-haters and deficit-hawks are sticking to their same story: Americans have lived beyond their means and must now learn to live within them. The reality is quite different: The means of most Americans haven't kept up with what the economy could and should provide. The economy is twice as large as it was three decades ago, and yet the typical American is earning about the same, adjusted for inflation. All the gains have been going to the top.

The notion that we can't afford to invest in the education of our young, or rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, or continue to provide Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, or expand health insurance is absurd. If the median wage had kept up with the overall economy, it would be over $90,000 today - and tax revenues would be more than adequate to cover all our needs. If the wealthy were paying the same marginal tax rate they were paying up to 1981, tax revenues would be far more.

Get it? The problem isn't that most Americans have been living too well. The problem is we haven't been living nearly as well as our growing economy should have allowed us to live. Widening inequality is the culprit. If President Obama is looking for a central theme for his second term, this is it.


UNFORTUNATELY, I DON'T THING POTUS IS LOOKING FOR ANY THEME OTHER THAN "DON'T BLAME ME" AND THE ECONOMY IS THE FARTHEST THING FROM HIS MIND.

[Demeter]

35. Until tomorrow...

Have a good evening, all!

[bread_and_roses]

37. Thanks for all the above, Demeter

I just scanned it .... even that's too much, but the value of the compendium increases exponentially with each layer ....

edit: - "too much" means "too much to bear - at least, for me. Nonetheless, and also therefore, my gratitude.

[jtuck004]

38. Machiavellism. One of the "dark triad". "nothing more than a mild form of psychopathy"

...
The Machiavellian personality is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, with a cynical disregard for morality and a focus on self-interest and deception.[9]
...
In 1998 McHoskey, Worzel, and Szyarto[13] claimed that Machiavellianism is nothing more than a mild form of psychopathy: aside from their relative severity, there is no difference between them. Delroy L. Paulhus and McHoskey debated these perspectives at a subsequent American Psychological Association (APA) conference, inspiring the famous Paulhus and Williams (2002) research on the "Dark Triad". Paulhus and Williams found enough behavioral, personality, and cognitive differences between the traits to suggest that they were different from each other; however, they concluded that further research was needed to elucidate how and why they overlap.
...

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad

Dang, I can think of some political piranhacondas that resemble that description. And they say they are on the good side...

[Demeter]

39. Thank you, jtuck. I hadn't heard of that before

Very educational.

[Demeter]

40. Julian Assange: Did Google Meet With Me to Report Back to the U.S. State Department About WikiLeaks

http://www.nationofchange.org/julian-assange-did-google-meet-me-report-back-us-state-department-about-wikileaks-1369927168

In this 40-minute web exclusive interview, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks discusses his more than 300 days in the Ecuadorean embassy, the U.S. Justice Department spying on journalists, the future of WikiLeaks and Visa’s financial blockade on WikiLeaks.

Watch our recent interview with Assange about the guilty plea of hacktivist Jeremy Hammond, the upcoming "show trial" for accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning, and his little-known meeting with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

VIDEO AT LINK

[Demeter]

41. Hammond, Manning, Assange and Obama’s Sledgehammer Against Dissent By Amy Goodman

http://www.nationofchange.org/hammond-manning-assange-and-obama-s-sledgehammer-against-dissent-1369921848

One cyberactivist’s federal case wrapped up this week, and another’s is set to begin. While these two young men, Jeremy Hammond and Bradley Manning, are the two who were charged, it is the growing menace of government and corporate secrecy that should be on trial:

Hammond was facing more than 30 years in prison, charged with hacking into the computers of a private security and intelligence firm called Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, when he agreed to a plea agreement of one count of computer hacking. Stratfor traffics in “geopolitical intelligence, economic, political and military forecasting,” according to its website. Yet, after Hammond and others released 5 million emails from Stratfor’s servers to WikiLeaks, it became clear that the firm engages in widespread spying on activists on behalf of corporations. Coca-Cola hired Stratfor to spy on the group PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Dow Chemical hired Stratfor to spy on the activists who were exposing Dow’s role in the cyanide chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, in 1984 that killed an estimated 8,000 and injured thousands more. Hammond is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 6. His lawyers have asked for time served—15 months, some of which was in solitary confinement. He faces 10 years.

Bradley Manning, meanwhile, will finally have his day in military court at Fort Meade, Md. He faces a slew of charges related to the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history. Manning pled guilty to mishandling the information, and acknowledged uploading hundreds of thousands of documents to the WikiLeaks website. But he denies the most serious charge, still pending, of “aiding the enemy.” Prosecutors are seeking life in prison; however, if Manning is found guilty, the judge could still impose the death penalty.

I DON'T THINK THEY ARE THAT STUPID--THAT COULD BE THE TIPPING POINT--DEMETER

Bradley Manning and Jeremy Hammond are among the highest profile in a series of cases that the Obama administration has been pursuing against whistle-blowers and journalists. Attorney Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and an attorney for WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, said in front of the courthouse after Hammond’s court appearance, “This is part of the sledgehammer of what the government is doing to people who expose corporate secrets, government secrets, and really the secrets of an empire.” Manning explained his actions and his motivation in a detailed statement in his pretrial proceedings. He said, “I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information ... it could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.” The first public release by WikiLeaks of the material provided by Manning was the video (titled by WikiLeaks) “Collateral Murder.” The grainy video, taken from an attack helicopter, shows the cold killing of a dozen men on the ground in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. Two of those killed by the U.S. Apache helicopter gunship were employees of the Reuters news agency, cameraman Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, a father of four. After their violent, senseless deaths, Reuters sought answers and filed Freedom of Information requests for material relating to the attack, which were denied. Manning saw the video when stationed in Iraq, and researched the background of the attack. He saved the video file. He explained in court, “I planned on providing this to the Reuters office in London to assist them in preventing events such as this in the future.”

Hammond and Manning, facing years in prison, have in common their connection to WikiLeaks and its founder, Assange. Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden about allegations of sexual misconduct—he has not been charged. After losing a fight against extradition in Britain, he was granted political asylum by the government of Ecuador, and has remained in Ecuador’s embassy in London since last June. It was a leaked Stratfor email that referenced a U.S. indictment against Assange, reading: “Not for Pub—We have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect.”

This all happens amidst recent revelations about the Obama administration’s extraordinary invasion of journalists’ privacy and the right to protect sources. The Associated Press revealed that the Justice Department had secretly obtained two months of telephone records of its reporters and editors in an effort to discover the source of a leak about a foiled bomb plot. Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, may actually be charged in a criminal conspiracy for allegedly receiving classified information from a source about North Korea. President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have used the Espionage Act six times to prosecute whistle-blowers—more than all previous presidents combined. Obama’s assault on journalism and his relentless war on whistle-blowers are serious threats to fundamental democratic principles on which this nation was founded. The job of journalists is to hold those in power accountable. Our job is to be the fourth estate, not “for the state.” Let us be.

[Demeter]

44. ACLU Criticizes Obama’s Likely FBI Director Nominee

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/aclu-criticizes-obamas-possible-fbi-director-nominee



The ACLU had some strong words of caution about President Barack Obama's reported pick for FBI Director, James Comey, accusing the former Justice Department official of "approving some of the worst abuses committed by the Bush administration."

The organization's full statement, released Thursday, is below:

"While the ACLU does not take official positions on nominations to appointed office, there are many questions regarding Comey's record that deserve careful scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee. As the second-highest ranked Justice Department official under John Ashcroft, Comey approved some of the worst abuses committed by the Bush administration. Specifically, the publicly available evidence indicates Comey signed off on enhanced interrogation techniques that constitute torture, including waterboarding. He also oversaw the indefinite detention without charge or trial of an American citizen picked up in the United States and then held for years in a military brig. Although Comey, despite tremendous pressure from the Bush White House, deserves credit for courageously stopping the reauthorization of a secret National Security Agency program, he reportedly approved programs that struck at the very core of who we all are as Americans.

"It's critical that the Senate ensures that the men and women of the FBI know that they have a leader who will demand adherence to the rule of law and will hold those accountable who do not, wherever he or she may find them."

[Demeter]

45. Il Principe by Niccolò Machiavelli

is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist. From correspondence a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus (About Principalities). However, the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. This was done with the permission of the Medici pope Clement VII, but "long before then, in fact since the first appearance of the Prince in manuscript, controversy had swirled about his writings".

Although it was written as if it were a traditional work in the "mirrors for princes" style, it is generally agreed that it was especially innovative. This is only partly because it was written in the Vernacular (Italian) rather than Latin, a practice which had become increasingly popular since the publication of Dante's Divine Comedy and other works of Renaissance literature.

The Prince is sometimes claimed to be one of the first works of modern philosophy, especially modern political philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal. It was also in direct conflict with the dominant Catholic and scholastic doctrines of the time concerning how to consider politics and ethics.

Although it is relatively short, the treatise is the most remembered of his works and the one most responsible for bringing the word "Machiavellian" into wide usage as a pejorative term. It also helped make "Old Nick" an English term for the devil, and even contributed to the modern negative connotations of the words "politics" and "politician" in western countries. In terms of subject matter it overlaps with the much longer Discourses on Livy, which was written a few years later. In its use of near contemporary Italians as examples of people who perpetrated criminal deeds for politics, another lesser-known work by Machiavelli which The Prince has been compared to is the Life of Castruccio Castracani.

The descriptions within The Prince have the general theme of accepting that the aims of princes—such as glory and survival—can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends.

Machiavelli's best-known book, Il Principe, contains a number of maxims concerning politics, but rather than the more traditional subject of a hereditary prince, it concentrates on the possibility of a "new prince". To retain power, the hereditary prince must carefully maintain the sociopolitical institutions to which the people are accustomed; whereas a new prince has the more difficult task in ruling, since he must first stabilize his newfound power in order to build an enduring political structure. He asserted that social benefits of stability and security could be achieved in the face of moral corruption. Aside from that, Machiavelli believed that public and private morality had to be understood as two different things in order to rule well. As a result, a ruler must be concerned not only with reputation, but also must be positively willing to act immorally at the right times. As a political scientist, Machiavelli emphasizes that occasional need for the methodical exercise of brute force or deceit.

Scholars often note that Machiavelli glorifies instrumentality in statebuilding—an approach embodied by the saying that "the ends justify the means". Violence may be necessary for the successful stabilisation of power and introduction of new legal institutions. Force may be used to eliminate political rivals, to coerce resistant populations, and to purge the community of other men strong enough of character to rule, who will inevitably attempt to replace the ruler. Machiavelli has become infamous for such political advice, ensuring that he would be remembered in history through the adjective, "Machiavellian".

Notwithstanding some mitigating themes, the Catholic Church banned The Prince, registering it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and humanists also viewed the book negatively. Among them was Erasmus of Rotterdam. As a treatise, its primary intellectual contribution to the history of political thought is the fundamental break between political realism and political idealism, because The Prince is a manual to acquiring and keeping political power. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli insisted that an imaginary ideal society is not a model by which a prince should orient himself.

Concerning the differences and similarities in Machiavelli's advice to ruthless and tyrannical princes in The Prince and his more republican exhortations in Discourses on Livy, many have concluded that The Prince, although written as advice for a monarchical prince, contains arguments for the superiority of republican regimes, similar to those found in the Discourses. In the 18th century the work was even called a satire, for example by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. More recently, commentators such as Leo Strauss and Harvey Mansfield have agreed that the Prince can be read as having a deliberate comical irony. Among commentators who have not seen the work as ironic, many still agree that the Prince is republican to some extent. Other interpretations include for example that of Antonio Gramsci, who argued that Machiavelli's audience for this work was not even the ruling class but the common people because the rulers already knew these methods through their education.

[Demeter]

46. Niccolò Machiavelli

Machiavelli's cenotaph in the Santa Croce Church in Florence

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli ( 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance.

He was for many years an official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He was a founder of modern political science, and more specifically political ethics.

He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is renowned in the Italian language. He was Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He wrote his masterpiece, The Prince, after the Medici had recovered power and he no longer held a position of responsibility in Florence.

His moral and ethical beliefs led to the creation of the word machiavellianism which has since been used to describe one of the three dark triad personalities in psychology. (see jtuck's post, above)

Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, the first son and third child of attorney Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli and his wife Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli. The Machiavelli family are believed to be descended from the old marquesses of Tuscany and to have produced thirteen Florentine Gonfalonieres of Justice, one of the offices of a group of nine citizens selected by drawing lots every two months, who formed the government, or Signoria. However he was never a full citizen of Florence, due to the nature of Florentine citizenship in that time, even under the republican regime.

Machiavelli was born in a tumultuous era—popes waged acquisitive wars against Italian city-states, and people and cities might fall from power at any time. Along with the pope and the major cities like Venice and Florence, foreign powers such as France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and even Switzerland battled for regional influence and control. Political-military alliances continually changed, featuring condottieri (mercenary leaders) who changed sides without warning, and the rise and fall of many short-lived governments.

Machiavelli was taught grammar, rhetoric, and Latin, and became a prolific Chef. It is thought that he did not learn Greek, even though Florence was at the time one of the centers of Greek scholarship in Europe. In 1494, Florence restored the republic—expelling the Medici family, who had ruled Florence for some sixty years. In June 1498, shortly after the execution of Savonarola, Machiavelli, at the age of 29, was elected as head of the second chancery. In July 1498, he was also made the secretary of the Dieci di Libertà e Pace. He was in a diplomatic council responsible for negotiation and military affairs. Between 1499 and 1512 he carried out several diplomatic missions: to the court of Louis XII in France; to the court of Ferdinand II of Aragón, in Spain; in Germany; and to the Papacy in Rome, in the Italian states. Moreover, from 1502 to 1503 he witnessed the brutal reality of the state-building methods of Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) and his father Pope Alexander VI, who were then engaged in the process of trying to bring a large part of central Italy under their possession. The pretext of defending Church interests was used as a partial justification by the Borgias.

Between 1503 and 1506 Machiavelli was responsible for the Florentine militia, including the City's defense. He distrusted mercenaries (a distrust he explained in his official reports and then later in his theoretical works), preferring a politically invested citizen-militia, a philosophy that bore fruit. His command of Florentine citizen-soldiers defeated Pisa in 1509. However, in August 1512 the Medici, helped by Pope Julius II, used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines at Prato. Piero Soderini resigned as Florentine head of state and left in exile. The Florentine city-state and the Republic were dissolved. Machiavelli was deprived of office in 1512 by the Medici. In 1513 he was accused of conspiracy, arrested, and imprisoned for a time. Despite having been subjected to torture ("with the rope", where the prisoner is hanged from his bound wrists, from the back, forcing the arms to bear the body's weight, thus dislocating the shoulders), he denied involvement and was released.

Machiavelli then retired to his estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina (near San Casciano in Val di Pesa), and devoted himself to study and to the writing of the political treatises that earned his intellectual place in the development of political philosophy and political conduct. Despairing of the opportunity to remain directly involved in political matters, after a time Machiavelli began to participate in intellectual groups in Florence and wrote several plays that (unlike his works on political theory) were both popular and widely known in his lifetime. Still politics remained his main passion, and to satisfy this interest he maintained a well-known correspondence with better politically connected friends, attempting to become involved once again in political life.


In a letter to Francesco Vettori, he described his exile:

When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.

Machiavelli died in 1527 at the age of 58. He was buried at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. An epitaph honoring him is inscribed on his monument. The Latin legend reads: TANTO NOMINI NULLUM PAR ELOGIUM ("so great a name (has) no adequate praise" or "no eulogy (would be appropriate to) such a great name&quot .

[Demeter]

47. His "Other" Work: Discourses on Livy

The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, often referred to simply as the "Discourses" or Discorsi, is nominally a discussion regarding the classical history of early Ancient Rome.

Machiavelli presents it as a series of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured.

It is a larger work than the Prince, and it more openly explains the advantages of republics, but it also contains many similar themes. Commentators disagree about how much the two works agree with each other. It includes early versions of the concept of checks and balances, and asserts the superiority of a republic over a principality. It became one of the central texts of republicanism, and has often been argued to be a superior work to the Prince.

...There is some disagreement concerning how best to describe the unifying themes, if there are any, that can be found in Machiavelli's works, especially in the two major political works, The Prince and Discourses. Some commentators have described him as inconsistent, and perhaps as not even putting a high priority in consistency. Others such as Hans Baron have argued that his ideas must have changed dramatically over time. Some have argued that his conclusions are best understood as a product of his times, experiences and education. Others, such as Leo Strauss and Harvey Mansfield, have argued strongly that there is a very strong and deliberate consistency and distinctness, even arguing that this extends to all of Machiavelli's works including his comedies and letters.

Commentators such as Leo Strauss have gone so far as to name Machiavelli as the deliberate originator of modernity itself. Others have argued that Machiavelli is only a particularly interesting example of trends which were happening around him. In any case Machiavelli presented himself at various times as someone reminding Italians of the old virtues of the Romans and Greeks, and other times as someone promoting a completely new approach to politics.

That Machiavelli had a wide range of influences is in itself not controversial. Their relative importance is however a subject of on-going discussion. It is possible to summarize some of the main influences emphasized by different commentators. SEE LINK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli

[Demeter]

48. Child of the Renaissance / Forerunner of Humanism

Machiavelli is generally seen as being critical of Christianity as it existed in his time, specifically its effect upon politics, and also everyday life. In his opinion, Christianity, along with teleological Aristotelianism that the church had come to accept, allowed practical decisions to be guided too much by imaginary ideals and encouraged people to lazily leave events up to providence or, as he would put it, chance, luck or fortune. While Christianity sees modesty as a virtue and pride as sinful, Machiavelli took a more classical position, seeing ambition, spiritedness, and the pursuit of glory as good and natural things, and part of the virtue and prudence that good princes should have. Therefore, while it was traditional to say that leaders should have virtues, especially prudence, Machiavelli's use of the words virtù and prudenza was unusual for his time, implying a spirited and immodest ambition. Famously, Machiavelli argued that virtue and prudence can help a man control more of his future, in the place of allowing fortune to do so.

Najemy (1993) has argued that this same approach can be found in Machiavelli's approach to love and desire, as seen in his comedies and correspondence. Najemy shows how Machiavelli's friend Vettori argued against Machiavelli and cited a more traditional understanding of fortune.

On the other hand, humanism in Machiavelli's time meant that classical pre-Christian ideas about virtue and prudence, including the possibility of trying to control one's future, were not unique to him. But humanists did not go so far as to promote the extra glory of deliberately aiming to establish a new state, in defiance of traditions and laws.

While Machiavelli's approach had classical precedents, it has been argued that it did more than just bring back old ideas, and that Machiavelli was not a typical humanist. Strauss (1958) argues that the way Machiavelli combines classical ideas is new. While Xenophon and Plato also described realistic politics, and were closer to Machiavelli than Aristotle was, they, like Aristotle, also saw Philosophy as something higher than politics. Machiavelli was apparently a materialist who objected to explanations involving formal and final causation, or teleology.

Machiavelli's promotion of ambition among leaders while denying any higher standard meant that he encouraged risk taking, and innovation, most famously the founding of new modes and orders. His advice to prince was therefore certainly not limited to discussing how to maintain a state. It has been argued that Machiavelli's promotion of innovation led directly to the argument for progress as an aim of politics and civilization. But while a belief that humanity can control its own future, control nature, and "progress" has been long lasting, Machiavelli's followers, starting with his own friend Guicciardini, have tended to prefer peaceful progress through economic development, and not warlike progress. As Harvey Mansfield (1995, p. 74) wrote: "In attempting other, more regular and scientific modes of overcoming fortune, Machiavelli's successors formalized and emasculated his notion of virtue."

Machiavelli however, along with some of his classical predecessors, saw ambition and spiritedness, and therefore war, as inevitable and part of human nature.

Strauss concludes his 1958 Thoughts on Machiavelli by proposing that this promotion of progress leads directly to the modern arms race. Strauss argued that the unavoidable nature of such arms races, which have existed before modern times and led to the collapse of peaceful civilizations, provides us with both an explanation of what is most truly dangerous in Machiavelli's innovations, but also the way in which the aims of his apparently immoral innovation can be understood.

Religion

Machiavelli explains repeatedly that religion is man-made, and that the value of religion lies in its contribution to social order and the rules of morality must be dispensed if security required it. In The Prince, the Discourses, and in the Life of Castruccio Castracani, he describes "prophets," as he calls them, like Moses, Romulus, Cyrus the Great, and Theseus (he treats pagan and Christian patriarchs in the same way) as the greatest of new princes, the glorious and brutal founders of the most novel innovations in politics, and men whom Machiavelli assures us have always used a large amount of armed force and murder against their own people. He estimated that these sects last from 1666 to 3000 years each time, which, as pointed out by Leo Strauss, would mean that Christianity became due to start finishing about 150 years after Machiavelli. Machiavelli's concern with Christianity as a sect was that it makes men weak and inactive, delivering politics into the hands of cruel and wicked men without a fight.

While fear of God can be replaced by fear of the prince, if there is a strong enough prince, Machiavelli felt that having a religion is in any case especially essential to keeping a republic in order. For Machiavelli, a truly great prince can never be conventionally religious himself, but he should make his people religious if he can. According to Strauss (1958, pp. 226–227) he was not the first person to ever explain religion in this way, but his description of religion was novel because of the way he integrated this into his general account of princes.

Machiavelli's judgment that democracies need religion for practical political reasons was widespread among modern proponents of republics until approximately the time of the French revolution. This therefore represents a point of disagreement between himself and late modernity.

The positive side to factional and individual vice

Despite the classical precedents, which Machiavelli was not the only one to promote in his time, Machiavelli's realism and willingness to argue that good ends justify bad things, is seen as a critical stimulus towards some of the most important theories of modern politics.

Firstly, particularly in the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli is unusual in the positive side he sometimes seems to describe in factionalism in republics. For example quite early in the Discourses, (in Book I, chapter 4), a chapter title announces that the disunion of the plebs and senate in Rome "kept Rome free." That a community has different components whose interests must be balanced in any good regime is an idea with classical precedents, but Machiavelli's particularly extreme presentation is seen as a critical step towards the later political ideas of both a division of powers or checks and balances, ideas which lay behind the US constitution (and most modern constitutions).

Similarly, the modern economic argument for capitalism, and most modern forms of economics, was often stated in the form of "public virtue from private vices." Also in this case, even though there are classical precedents, Machiavelli's insistence on being both realistic and ambitious, not only admitting that vice exists but being willing to risk encouraging it, is a critical step on the path to this insight.

Mansfield however argues that Machiavelli's own aims have not been shared by those influenced by him. Machiavelli argued against seeing mere peace and economic growth as worthy aims on their own, if they would lead to what Mansfield calls the "taming of the prince."


IT THINK HE WOULD HAVE BENEFITED FROM SOME EXPOSURE TO THE CONCEPT OF "KARMA"

[Tansy_Gold]

59. Perhaps one of the most important quotes

of those you highlighted:

...in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal.

in terms of its relevance to much that we are seeing around us today.


"Effective truth" -- sometimes known in the vernacular as "reality" -- has been dismissed entirely by the ideologues in favor of a false common knowledge of what everyone knows to be "true." Nowhere is this more evident than in the way the right wing has embraced the "reality" of Ayn Rand's philosophy, a philosophy so out of touch with reality that it had to be proselytized via a novel whose polot relied heavily on elements of science fiction and ignored many elements of contemporary fact.

Most of those on the right -- perhaps not all, but certainly most -- find facing reality very difficult. That's why it's almost impossible to change their minds. They don't WANT to change. Reality is very frightening to them, either because it threatens their positions of privilege or because it reminds them of their own oppression by those of privilege.

[xchrom]

50. No, The American Consumer Is Not Back

http://www.businessinsider.com/roach-the-american-consumer-is-not-okay-2013-6

NEW HAVEN – The spin-doctors are hard at work talking up America’s subpar economic recovery. All eyes are on households. Thanks to falling unemployment, rising home values, and record stock prices, an emerging consensus of forecasters, market participants, and policymakers has now concluded that the American consumer is finally back.

Don’t believe it. First, consider the facts: Over the 21 quarters since the beginning of 2008, real (inflation-adjusted) personal consumption has risen at an average annual rate of just 0.9%. That is by far the most protracted period of weakness in real US consumer demand since the end of World War II – and a massive slowdown from the pre-crisis pace of 3.6% annual real consumption growth from 1996 to 2007.

With household consumption accounting for about 70% of the US economy, that 2.7-percentage-point gap between pre-crisis and post-crisis trends has been enough to knock 1.9 percentage points off the post-crisis trend in real GDP growth. Look no further for the cause of unacceptably high US unemployment.

To appreciate fully the unique character of this consumer-demand shortfall, trends over the past 21 quarters need to be broken down into two distinct sub-periods. First, there was a 2.2% annualized decline from the first quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009. This was crisis-driven carnage, highlighted by a 4.5% annualized collapse in the final two quarters of 2008.


Read more: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-s-over-hyped-consumer-recovery-by-stephen-s--roach#ixzz2UyGZPcq7

[xchrom]

51. i, of course, adore perfume bottles

[Demeter]

62. I have to admit, when this flea landed in my ear, I thought of X

and knew at least ONE person would get it!

I saw a rainbow this morning, as I was out doing the paper throwing before it got too awful. I think it's a good omen. Hoping you get a better week!

[xchrom]

64. When I worked in Marin and drove to & from

There to Oakland - I would occasionally see double rainbows - what a Treat that was.

Best to you Miss Demeter!

[xchrom]

52. How The Anxiety Epidemic In The American Workplace Is Ruining Your Health

http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-workforce-is-facing-an-anxiety-epidemic-2013-5

America is famously the most anxious nation in the world, with 31 percent of the country dealing with symptoms of anxiety, according to the World Health Organization.

While there are a host of factors that contribute to anxiety, our work culture plays a big role. It's where people spend most of their waking hours; and how we process our work lives has a dramatic affect on our well being.

"Surveys show that stress levels [in the US] have progressively increased over the past four decades," Paul J. Rosch, MD, Chairman of the Board of The American Institute of Stress, told the Atlantic's Maura Kelly.

Technology is a huge part of this trend, as it's completely transformed how we live and work. We're now connected 24/7, and the rapid pace of innovation means that almost any industry is constantly on the verge of being disrupted.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-workforce-is-facing-an-anxiety-epidemic-2013-5#ixzz2UyJFuZEp

[Demeter]

55. Pardon, your Cynicism is Showing!

Don't worry, Dilbert. If they REALLY need you, they will adapt (provided you are willing to work 24/7 for peanuts and vapor-stock options....)

[Demeter]

56. I'll be back tonight for more frivoling

Gotta make hay while it's not raining....

[DemReadingDU]

58. Matt Taibbi: Why Didn't the SEC Catch Madoff?

5/31/13 Matt Taibbi: Why Didn't the SEC Catch Madoff?

More and more embarrassing stories of keep leaking out the SEC, which is beginning to look somehow worse than corrupt – it's hard to find the right language exactly, but "aggressively clueless" comes pretty close to summing up the atmosphere that seems to be ruling the country's top financial gendarmes.

The most recent contribution to the broadening canvas of dysfunction and incompetence surrounding the SEC is a whistleblower complaint filed by 56-year-old Kathleen Furey, a senior lawyer who worked in the New York Regional Office (NYRO), the agency outpost with direct jurisdiction over Wall Street.

Furey's complaint is full of startling revelations about the SEC, but the most amazing of them is that Furey and the other 20-odd lawyers who worked in her unit at the NYRO were actually barred by a superior from bringing cases under two of the four main securities laws governing Wall Street, the Investment Advisors Act of 1940 and the Investment Company Act of 1940.

According to Furey, her group at the SEC's New York office, from a period stretching for over half a decade through December, 2008, did not as a matter of policy pursue cases against investment managers like Bernie Madoff. Furey says she was told flatly by her boss, Assistant Regional Director George Stepaniuk, that "We do not do IM cases."

Some background is necessary to explain the significance of this tale.

more...
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-didnt-the-sec-catch-madoff-it-might-have-been-policy-not-to-20130531

[Demeter]

61. Well, that would be W, and his cronies, perhaps the dishonorable Mayor himself?

We all know there is a two tier injustice system in this country....NOW! The question of how long has this been going on has yet to be answered. Or how badly.

Funny, we used to have journalists to ferret out these things, to serve a whistleblower conduits and agents of revenge. After all, Matt Taibbi cannot do it all himself, even with Greg Palast's help.

So Mr. Obama: turn back, oh Man, Forswear thy foolish ways!

(Sometimes I end up in jukebox mode, where every thought leads to a musical ditty).

[DemReadingDU]

60. Matt Taibbi: The Mad Science of the National Debt

5/22/13 Matt Taibbi: The Mad Science of the National Debt
With Congress gridlocked by the debt-ceiling debate, the Federal Reserve is conducting a radical experiment with the American economy

Welcome back to the dumb season. It's debt-ceiling time again.
We've been at this two years now. It was back in 2011 when the Republican Party, seized by anti-government furor, first locked on the lifting of the federal debt ceiling – an utterly routine governmental mechanism that allows the Treasury to borrow to pay for spending already approved by the entire Congress, Republicans included – as a place to hold a showdown over?.?.?.?government spending. That first battle resulted in a "Mutually Assured Destruction"-type stalemate, in which both parties agreed that if they couldn't reach a deal by New Year's Day 2013, a series of brutal, automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would take effect. At the time, it seemed unthinkable Congress would let that happen. By the time we passed that date, the thing that seemed unthinkable was the idea that Congress would ever make a deal. The cuts took effect in March and we were headed for a full-on fiscal crash on May 19th, when fate intervened to stop this stupidest-in-history blue-red catfight in its tracks, if only temporarily.

In early May, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that the federal government suddenly had enough cash on hand to stay afloat until "at least Labor Day." We were saved by, of all things, a record quarterly profit from the notorious state-seized mortgage-finance company Fannie Mae, which is paying the state $59 billion, enough to keep us in the black through the summer.

But this reprieve is only for four months, and if anything, the latest stay of execution only underscores the utter randomness and imbecility of our political situation. If the one thing preventing Washington from seizing up in fatal gridlock for even a brief spell is a surprise burst of good fortune from a bailed-out financial zombie like Fannie Mae, we're screwed. The only thing that will rescue us from having to go through this over and over again from now until the end of time is for our increasingly polarized Congress to come to some broad agreement on tax hikes and spending cuts – the kind of routine deal that now seems politically impossible.

more...
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-mad-science-of-the-national-debt-20130522#ixzz2UM10x53J

[Demeter]

63. What Machiavelli started--an historical travelogue

Machiavelli's ideas had a profound impact on political leaders throughout the modern west, helped by the new technology of the printing press. During the first generations after Machiavelli, his main influence was in non-Republican governments. Pole reported that the Prince was spoken of highly by Thomas Cromwell in England and had influenced Henry VIII in his turn towards Protestantism, and in his tactics, for example during the Pilgrimage of Grace. A copy was also possessed by the Catholic king and emperor Charles V. In France, after an initially mixed reaction, Machiavelli came to be associated with Catherine de' Medici and the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. As Bireley reports, in the 16th century, Catholic writers "associated Machiavelli with the Protestants, whereas Protestant authors saw him as Italian and Catholic". In fact, he was apparently influencing both Catholic and Protestant kings.

One of the most important early works dedicated to criticism of Machiavelli, especially The Prince, was that of the Huguenot, Innocent Gentillet, whose work commonly referred to as Discourse against Machiavelli or Anti Machiavel was published in Geneva in 1576. He accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time by saying that his works were the "Koran of the courtiers", that "he is of no reputation in the court of France which hath not Machiavel's writings at the fingers ends". Another theme of Gentillet was more in the spirit of Machiavelli himself: he questioned the effectiveness of immoral strategies (just as Machiavelli had himself done, despite also explaining how they could sometimes work). This became the theme of much future political discourse in Europe during the 17th century. This includes the Catholic Counter Reformation writers summarised by Bireley: Giovanni Botero, Justus Lipsius, Carlo Scribani, Adam Contzen, Pedro de Ribadeneira, and Diego Saavedra Fajardo. These authors criticized Machiavelli, but also followed him in many ways. They accepted the need for a prince to be concerned with reputation, and even a need for cunning and deceit, but compared to Machiavelli, and like later modernist writers, they emphasized economic progress much more than the riskier ventures of war. These authors tended to cite Tacitus as their source for realist political advice, rather than Machiavelli, and this pretense came to be known as "Tacitism". "Black tacitism" was in support of princely rule, but "red tacitism" arguing the case for republics, more in the original spirit of Machiavelli himself, became increasingly important.

Francis Bacon argued the case for what would become modern science which would be based more upon real experience and experimentation, free from assumptions about metaphysics, and aimed at increasing control of nature. He named Machiavelli as a predecessor.

Modern materialist philosophy developed in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, starting in the generations after Machiavelli. This philosophy tended to be republican, more in the original spirit of Machiavellian, but as with the Catholic authors Machiavelli's realism and encouragement of using innovation to try to control one's own fortune were more accepted than his emphasis upon war and politics. Not only was innovative economics and politics a result, but also modern science, leading some commentators to say that the 18th century Enlightenment involved a "humanitarian" moderating of Machiavellianism.

The importance of Machiavelli's influence is notable in many important figures in this endeavor, for example Bodin, Francis Bacon, Algernon Sidney, Harrington, John Milton, Spinoza, Rousseau, Hume, Edward Gibbon, and Adam Smith. Although he was not always mentioned by name as an inspiration, due to his controversy, he is also thought to have been an influence for other major philosophers, such as Montaigne, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke and Montesquieu.

In the seventeenth century it was in England that Machiavelli's ideas were most substantially developed and adapted, and that republicanism came once more to life; and out of seventeenth-century English republicanism there were to emerge in the next century not only a theme of English political and historical reflection - of the writings of the Bolingbroke circle and of Gibbon and of early parliamentary radicals - but a stimulus to the Enlightenment in Scotland, on the Continent, and in America.

Scholars have argued that Machiavelli was a major indirect and direct influence upon the political thinking of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson followed Machiavelli's republicanism when they opposed what they saw as the emerging aristocracy that they feared Alexander Hamilton was creating with the Federalist Party. Hamilton learned from Machiavelli about the importance of foreign policy for domestic policy, but may have broken from him regarding how rapacious a republic needed to be in order to survive (George Washington was probably less influenced by Machiavelli). However, the Founding Father who perhaps most studied and valued Machiavelli as a political philosopher was John Adams, who profusely commented on the Italian's thought in his work, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.

In his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, John Adams praised Machiavelli, with Algernon Sidney and Montesquieu, as a philosophic defender of mixed government. For Adams, Machiavelli restored empirical reason to politics, while his analysis of factions was commendable. Adams likewise agreed with the Florentine that human nature was immutable and driven by passions. He also accepted Machiavelli's belief that all societies were subject to cyclical periods of growth and decay. For Adams, Machiavelli lacked only a clear understanding of the institutions necessary for good government.

Joseph Stalin read The Prince and annotated his own copy.

[Demeter]

65. Timeline of Niccolò Machiavelli From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This timeline lists important events relevant to the life of the Italian diplomat, writer and political philosopher Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469 – 1527).

Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469 of an old citizen family. Little is known about his life until 1498, when he was appointed secretary and second chancellor to the Florentine Republic. During his time of office his journeys included missions to Louis XII of France and to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I; he was with Cesare Borgia in the Romagna; and after watching the second Papal election of 1503 he accompanied Pope Julius II on his first campaign of conquest. In 1507, as chancellor of the newly appointed Nove di Milizia (Nine of the Militia), he organised an infantry force which fought at the capture of Pisa in 1509. Three years later it was defeated by the Holy League at Prato, the Medici returned to Florence, and Machiavelli was excluded from public life. After suffering imprisonment and torture, he retired to his farm near San Casciano, where he lived with his wife and six children and gave his time to study and writing. His works included The Prince; the Discourses on the First Decade of Livy; The Art of War and the comedy, Mandragola, a satire on seduction. In 1520, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII, 1523) secured him a commission to write a history of Florence, which he finished in 1525. After a brief return to public life, he died in 1527.

Timeline

(Dates in square brackets are conjectural)


Italy in 1494, before the invasion of Charles VIII of France.

1469

May 3: Birth in Florence of Niccolò di Bernardo Machiavelli to Bernardo and Bartolomea (née de' Nelli).

1471

August 6–9: Cardinal Francesco della Rovere is elected Pope as Sixtus IV.

1480s

1481

With his brother Totto, Machiavelli begins the school of Paolo da Ronciglione.[2]

1484

August 26–29: After the death of Pope Sixtus IV, the papal conclave elects Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cybo as Pope Innocent VIII.

1490s

1491

The Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola begins to win influence in Florence.

1492

April 9: Lorenzo de' Medici, the de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic dies, and his son Piero di Lorenzo (known as Piero the Unfortunate) becomes head of the Medici family.
August 11: Alexander VI elected pope.

1494

The Italian Wars begins when Charles VIII of France invades Italy with a 25,000 men strong army.
November: Piero and the Medici are expelled from Florence, when French troops enter the city.

1498

May 23: Savonarola is executed for heresy, after being excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI in May 1497.
June: Machiavelli is confirmed by the Great Council as second chancellor of the Republic.
July: Machiavelli is elected secretary to the Ten of War (La Guerra dei Dieci), the body that manages Florence's military matters.
November: On behalf of the Ten of War he is sent on his first diplomatic mission to Piombino.

1499

Report on the Pisan War, (Discorso della guerra di Pisa).
Mission to Caterina Sforza-Riario, ruler of Imola and Forlì.


1500

July: Machiavelli is sent on a six-month mission to King Louis XII of France. In France he also meets the Georges d'Amboise Cardinal of Rouen

1501

Marries Marietta Corsini.

1502

In the wake of the execution of Savonarola; Piero Soderini is elected gonfaloniere of the Florentine Republic for life by the Florentines, with the pretext of being given the mission to re-stabilise the republican institutions.

1503

Machiavelli publishes Description of the Manner in which Duke Valentio put Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Lord Pagola and the Duke of Gravina to Death (Italian: Descrizione del modo tenuto dal Duca Valentino nell' ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, il Signor Pagalo e il Duca di Gravina Orsini); Discourse about the Provision of Money (Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro), and On the method of dealing with the Rebellious Peoples of Val di Chiana (Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati).

For Machiavelli's plan to assert Florentine authority over Pisa, which was in revolt against Florence from 1502-1509, Leonardo da Vinci is consulted on a scheme to divert the river Arno around Pisa to the sea at Livorno

April: Machiavelli is sent on mission to Pandolfo Petrucci, ruler of Siena.
September: Election of Pope Pius III.
October: Machiavelli is sent on mission to the Papal court at Rome.
November: Election of Pope Julius II.

1504

Machiavelli's poem; The First Decade (Italian: Decennale primo) is published.

January: Machiavelli travels on his second mission to the court of Louis XII.
July: Second mission to Pandolfo Petrucci.

1506

Discourse on Florentine Military Preparation (Italian: Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze).

January: Recruits for the militia in the Mugello region, north of Florence.
August–October: Machiavelli's second mission to the Papal Court follows Pope Julius II from Viterbo to Orvieto, Perugia, Urbino, Cesena, and Imola.

1507

December: Sent on mission to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I in the County of Tyrol.

1508

Report on Germany (Italian: Rapporto delle cose dell' Alemagna).

1509

Report on Germany and the Emperor (Discorso sopra le cose della Magna e sopra lo imperatore).
The poem, The Second Decade (Decennale secondo); an update to Machiavelli's earlier work The First Decade (Decennale Primo) is published.

1510

June–September: Third mission to the court of Louis XII.[6]

1511

September: Machiavelli's fourth diplomatic mission to the court of Louis XII.[6]

1512

The Italian Wars continues, and after Spanish troops invade Florentine territory – and sacks Prato – Florence surrenders, Piero Soderini is deposed and goes into exile as the House of Medici returns to power. (See War of the League of Cambrai).

After April 1512

Description of German Affairs (Italian: Ritratto delle cose della Magna).[10]

After April 1512 and before August 1513

Description of French Affairs (Italian: Ritratto delle cose di Franca).[10]

November: Machiavelli is ousted from the Chancery and sentenced to a year's confinement within Florentine territory.

1513

February: Machiavelli is tried for conspiracy, tortured and imprisoned.
March–April: After his release Machiavelli retires to his farm at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, seven miles south of Florence.
March: The papal conclave elects Giovanni de' Medici as, Pope Leo X.
July: Machiavelli drafts The Prince (Italian: Il Principe).

1514 or later

Discourse or Dialogue on Our Language (Italian: Discorso o dialogo intorno alla nostra lingua).

1513

Machiavelli enters a discussion group – interested in literature and politics – meeting at Orti Oricellari, in Florence. He starts writing Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy (Italian: Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio), a commentary on the first ten books of Livy's History of Rome.

1515-1520

Writes the novella Belfagor arcidiavolo (published with Machiavelli's collected works in 1549).

Circa 1516

Manuscript copies of The Prince begin to circulate in and beyond Florence.

1517 or 1518

Machiavelli's version of Apuleius' The Golden Ass (Italian: 'L'asino d'oro), a satirical poem of eight chapters, written in terza rima. The poem concerns the theme of metamorphosis, and contains autobiographical, grotesque, and allegorical episodes.

1518

Writes a book on military organisation, The Art of War (Italian: Dell' Arte della guerra) and The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca (La vita di Castruccio Castracani da Luca), as well as a Summary of Lucca's system of government (Sommario delle cosse della città di Lucca). He is commissioned to write the history of Florence by Cardinal Giulio de' Medici (later elected as Pope Clement VII, in the Papal conclave, 1523).

1519 or 1520

Discourse on the Florentine Affairs After the Death of Lorenzo (Discorso delle cose fiorentine dopo la morte di Lorenzo).


1521

The Art of War is published.

1522

Advice to Raffaello Girolami (Memoriale a Raffaello Girolami)
Cardinal Adrian Florensz is elected Pope as Adrian VI.

1523

Cardinal Giulio de' Medici is elected Pope as Clement VII.

1524-1525

Clizia', a comedy by based upon a classical play by Plautus.

1525

Visits Rome to present his finished Florentine Histories (Italian:Istorie fiorentine) to Pope Clement. Machiavelli's satirical play The Mandrake (La Mandragola) is performed and acclaimed in Venice, which he later visits on a mission to settle a trade dispute for the Wool Guild of Florence.

1526

Report on the Fortifications of Florence (Relazione di una visita fatta per fortificare Firenze).

1527

May: The city of Rome is sacked by the Imperial Army of chiefly Germans and Spaniards under the Duke of Bourbon, during the War of the League of Cognac (see the Italian Wars). The Medici are expelled from Florence, where the Republic adopts a new constitution.

June 21: Machiavelli dies and is buried in the basilica of Santa Croce, Florence.

1530s

1531-1532

Posthumous publication of The Prince, Discourses on Livy, and Florentine Histories.

[jtuck004]

66. You Are About to Become Obsolete; Perhaps You Already Are (But You Don't Realize It Yet)

Technology has changed things a lot just in our lifetime, and chances are that it is going to change them much faster in just the next few years. I would like to think the outcome might be positive, but it seems too many people in this country have been brainwashed to think that greed-based capitalism is how things "should" be, which means that those who own the assets will continue to pocket profit which, were it invested in others, would very likely make them even richer. A Machiavellian mistake, as it were. But perhaps others, seeing the trends, will figure out (like Mother Jones and others tried to teach in the early part of the last century) that they can and should own the assets themselves, and be able to insulate themselves from what may well be a bleak future for many.

The site this comes from is run by a selfish libertarian with a bunch of follower types that post a lot of ill-thought out commentary, but he does provide some interesting analysis with nearly every jobs report, and occasionally a thought-provoking piece jumps up, like this one. In this case I think I agree with his conclusion more than the author's, but I will have to read the book to decide.

Robots Will Steal Your Job But That's OK.

...
You are about to become obsolete. You think you are special, unique, and that whatever it is that you are doing is impossible to replace. You are wrong. As we speak, millions of algorithms created by computer scientists are frantically running on servers all over the world, with one sole purpose: do whatever humans can do, but better. These algorithms are intelligent computer programs, permeating the substrate of our society. They make financial decisions, they predict the weather, they predict which countries will wage war next. Soon, there will be little left for us to do: machines will take over.
...
The book is divided into three parts. First, we will explore the topic of technological unemployment and its impact on work and society – I chose to focus on the US economy, but the same argument applies to most the industrialised world. In the second part we will look into the nature of work itself and the relationship between work and happiness. The last part is a bold attempt to provide some practical suggestions on how to deal with the issues presented in the first two parts. Doing a thorough examination of each section would require a monumental effort, possibly resulting in thousands of pages, far exceeding the purpose of this book. My intention is not to write a complete academic report, but rather to initiate a discussion about what I think will soon be one of the biggest challenges that we have to face as a society and as individuals. Too often we treat various issues as separate subjects, not realising the interconnected nature of our reality. This mistake has made us weak and vulnerable. Over the last 70 years, we have set the stage of our own demise. We have become increasingly discontent, the quality of our relationships have diminished, and we have lost track of what really matters. Today, as the comedian Louis CK has noted: “Everything is amazing, and nobody is happy!” It is time to take a step back and think about where we are going.

here

Another perspective, from a TED talk...

2 Billion Jobs to Disappear by 2030, here

Yesterday I was honored to be one of the featured speakers at the TEDxReset Conference in Istanbul, Turkey where I predicted that over 2 billion jobs will disappear by 2030. Since my 18-minute talk was about the rapidly shifting nature of colleges and higher education, I didn’t have time to explain how and why so many jobs would be going away. Because of all of the questions I received afterwards, I will do that here.
...
When I brought up the idea of 2 billion jobs disappearing (roughly 50% of all the jobs on the planet) it wasn’t intended as a doom and gloom outlook. Rather, it was intended as a wakeup call, letting the world know how quickly things are about to change, and letting academia know that much of the battle ahead will be taking place at their doorstep.

Here is a brief overview of five industries – where the jobs will be going away and the jobs that will likely replace at least some of them – over the coming decades.

[Demeter]

67. You know, science fiction dealt with this in the 50's

and there's plenty of work that we ought to be recompensed for but never have been.

Raising children, for one. And teaching them. Robots aren't going to teach children how to be humans.

Politics. The people should be paid for politics. Then they would participate. They used to be paid, by the political machinery. Now that doesn't happen for many but the lucky Chosen. Another example of 1% Elitism and starve the Body Politic.

Health, environment, city planning, services...too much of the necessary work is done for love, not money, and robots will nt be able to do it. People, however, cannot live without it.

And mechanized farming is going to need a lot of change if food quality is to improve. Robots of course don't need food, or care.

The emphasis must be focused on People, NOT Profits.

Midas World by Frederik Pohl may be the story I'm remembering, although I thought it was just a short story...maybe he reworked it.

[Demeter]

68. Radical Remaking of the Economy is Taking Root By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

http://www.nationofchange.org/radical-remaking-economy-taking-root-1369920872

It is time for the economy to work for the people, not the elites; it is time for economic democracy. As the school year ends, college students are coming home to a paucity of summer jobs and young adults are graduating into an economy with 27% underemployment and unemployment for them.This generation has inherited a failed economy. Not only do they graduate to lousy job prospects, but they also graduate with record high debts. There are solutions to the economic crisis they face – and it is a crisis. In fact, a coalition of students and the Roosevelt Institute developed a “New Deal” for youth to address the student debt crisis. We support free college or trade school education for high school grads, but, as Stiglitz says, we should at least be giving students very low cost loans. The slightly older Generation X is not doing well either. Members of GenX suffered losses amounting to 45% of median net worth between 2007 and 2010. As a result, they are facing a genuine chance of downward mobility and may never be able to retire. The older generations may have dodged a bullet, thanks to the fraud of austerity being exposed. Once again Obama’s constant attempts at a “Grand Bargain” that would cut Social Security and Medicare seem unlikely – for now. But, people need to remain vigilant because these cuts are really about privatization of both programs and a massive wealth transfer to Wall Street – an agenda of both parties, albeit using different rhetoric.

The young graduates and those still of working age will be suffering with significantly increased costs of health care, with much less coverage. The average cost for a family of four is already over $22,000 annually. Obama’s attack on the kind of healthcare all Americans should have, falsely labeling decent healthcare “Cadillac Plans,” is causing them to disappear and resulting in increased premiums, increased co-pays and less coverage. U.S. healthcare is now in a race to the bottom with new “bare bones” plans that will put many more Americans at risk for serious health problems as well as health-related bankruptcy. And, while Americans earn low wages and work without adequate healthcare, they also live in the only wealthy country in the world that does not guarantee paid vacation. According to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, even the average vacation time given in private employment – a total of 16 days – does not meet the minimum requirement in Europe, 19 days. On top of that Europeans get 5 to 13 paid national holidays, while there are none in the U.S.

Why is the United States so abusive to its people? At the root, it is because of deeply embedded corruption. Both the government and the economy are corrupted by the power of big business money. This was on display in the week’s news. United Republic published an excellent infographic that shows the pay-off for investing in “buying” the government. The Return on Investment is an extraordinary 77,500 percent for pharmaceutical companies. Oil companies had a return on investment of 5,900 percent, and multinational companies, 22,000 percent. Mother Jones exposed how Citigroup was able to write a law that allowed tax-payer funded banks to engage in risky trading practices. The law passed the House with the exact words drafted by Citi. And, the banks’ constant pressure on the Commodities Futures Trading Commission resulted in weak regulation of the derivatives market that puts the economy at risk.
At the Department of Justice, it has become evident that the decision that banks were too big to jail was based on no research, no evidence, nothing except a corrupt agency headed by a former corporate lawyer, Eric Holder, with the chief of enforcement, Lanny Breuer, leaving the DoJ in March and now earning $4 million a year at the same law firm where Holder was a partner before becoming attorney general. If big business can’t get what they want through Congress or the regulatory agencies, they fight on another playing field: trade policy and globalization. It is becoming evident that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a forum for transnational corporations to do an end run around governments. And as Joseph Stiglitz points out, globalization is also about hiding profits through manipulation of tax laws and hiding money in tax havens.

What has all this deep corruption of government and the economy created? According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in all developing countries, “inequality has increased by more over the past three years to the end of 2010 than in the previous twelve.” Now in the United States, the average executive of a publicly traded company’s income has risen to $9.7 million annually. And, corporate bullies like the CEO of Caterpillar are admired for keeping workers’ pay so low that many workers are on food stamps despite $66 billion in sales, generating $5.7 billion in profits last year. The CEO of Caterpillar, Doug Oberhelman, who pays himself $22 million, has been chosen to chair the National Association of Manufacturers. Shouldn’t these kinds of people be shunned rather than applauded? On top of this, over the last 60 years there has been a dramatic change in the tax system to a more regressive tax. Payroll taxes now make up 35 percent of all federal government tax receipts, up from 11 percent in 1950. Corporate income taxes, meanwhile, now make up less than 10 percent of federal revenue, down from about 26 percent in 1950. Again, the corruption of government by concentrated corporate power is the root cause.


SIGNS OF HOPE (OVERSEAS, OF COURSE) AT LINK

[Demeter]

69. Thousands in Mexico Protest Monsanto by Throwing a Carnival of Corn

http://www.alternet.org/activism/thousands-mexico-protest-monsanto-throwing-carnival-corn?akid=10509.227380.6y7rw5&rd=1&src=newsletter848532&t=12&paging=off

The Carnival of Corn was, at its core, a celebration of Mexican agricultural heritage -- and a rejection of the biotech corporation...On May 25, an estimated two million people across 50 countries participated in the global March Against Monsanto. Organizers estimate that these protests against the U.S.-based transnational biotech corporation were one of the largest days of coordinated action in history. Yet, despite the high level of coordination, the local actions were not all orchestrated by professional organizers — and nor were the resulting actions all traditional marches.

On Saturday, about 2,000 participants gathered in Mexico City for the Carnaval del Maíz, a “Carnival of Corn” to celebrate Mexico’s rich diversity of native corn, threatened by Monsanto’s plans to introduce a genetically modified variety of the crop. The fact that Mexico’s manifestation of the global March Against Monsanto took the form of a carnival is no coincidence. The current generation of Mexican activists is looking for new strategies to fight for social justice, and the March Against Monsanto provided an opportunity to fuse tradition and innovation into the building blocks for a global food revolution.

The beginnings of the action came from an unlikely source: a novice Mexico City activist named Thalía Güido. In early March, Güido found the “March Against Monsanto” Facebook page and learned there was to be a global protest on May 25...

[Demeter]

70. Back to the Land is Back in Vogue, and It Could Make You Happier

http://www.alternet.org/books/back-land-back-vogue-and-it-could-make-you-happier?akid=10512.227380.M5xhH-&rd=1&src=newsletter848683&t=12&paging=off

Radical homemakers have become a touchstone of the growing “homesteading” movement, which takes today’s ethos of frugality, self-sufficiency, and domestic DIY to its ultimate extreme.

[Demeter]

71. How Popular Resistance Can Defeat Corporate Power By Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers

http://www.alternet.org/activism/how-protest-corporate-power?akid=10512.227380.M5xhH-&rd=1&src=newsletter848683&t=10&paging=off

The broad movement for peace and social, economic and environmental justice is here and you should be part of it.
May 30, 2013 |


Two years ago, we announced October2011.org with an article called “History is Knocking.” We asked if the time might be right for a larger mass of people to rise up and occupy public space to challenge the corporate control of our government, a corrupt economy and US militarism. We were not certain what the answer would be, but six months later hundreds of thousands of you did rise up in Occupy encampments across the nation. Many more were inspired by the massive mobilizations to join the work on a broad variety of injustices in their communities.

Today we know that history is no longer knocking. History has opened the door and is standing in front of us. The broad movement for peace and social, economic and environmental justice is here and you should be part of it.

Today we announce the launch of a new platform to connect and build that mass popular resistance that is growing in the US, PopularResistance.org. It provides daily movement news and resources to keep you informed about actions and events and to provide you with tools for organizing in your community (See for example these two new Occucards on Corporate Media and Public Banking).

The vision of PopularResistance.org is to end the rule of money so that people’s needs and the protection of the planet come before corporate profits. The website puts forward a strategic framework to achieve this goal and links to 200 tactics that have proven effective – our two track philosophy is to protest and build, i.e. stop the machine and create a new world. This process will build a mass movement, first by creating solidarity among the movements currently working for transformative change; and, second by pulling key groups of people to the movement, thereby weakening the power structure.

To make this next phase effective, we need you to be involved in PopularResistance.org. We ask you to share this article with people in your community, people you work with across the country and people who you think should be involved; share it on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. We want this site to be the movement’s site and encourage you to use it: submit your projects to the calendar, send us your ideas, and share articles and tools. Many have already joined as contributors and more are being added.

We announce this new effort after a tremendously successful worldwide March Against Monsanto where more than two million people participated in protests in 52 countries and 457 cities. This shows the potential of the movement and the need for sites like PopularResistance.org to let people know what occurred because the corporate, mass media gave virtually no attention to these protests.

The Monsanto march showed the power of non-hierarchical organizing, allowing leadership to grow wherever it was, and the potential for solidarity across cities and nations of the world. Now, we need to build on this success. Two nonviolent activists from the Metta Center ask the question: Could the 2 million person worldwide, May 25 march against Monsanto be the equivalent of Gandhi’s Salt March? In other words, could this be a turning point in our challenge to corporate power? We think it could be, because opposition to Monsanto is really about bigger issues of corporate power and globalization that make corporations more powerful than governments.

To build on this momentum, our first campaign as PopularResistance.org will be to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We will stop the TPP and when we do, it will be a tremendous victory against a global corporate coup of transnational corporations. It will be a victory on which we will continue to build a mass movement against the rule of money and concentrated corporate power. Here is the strategy:

Educate and unify people by showing how every big issue of our times is affected by the TPP. The issues we care about will be made worse by the TPP. The TPP is not really a trade agreement at all, but rather it is a corporate end run around government on everything from Internet freedom to banking regulation; from worker rights to health care; from environmental protection and agriculture to consumer safety. The TPP will affect all of us in multiple ways. It is an issue that unites us in solidarity across issues and across nations.

Expose the corporate interests who have drafted the agreement. Three years of negotiations have been kept secret from the media, elected officials and the public while business interests like Monsanto, WalMart, Wall Street banks, massive pharmaceutical companies, Exxon-Mobil, BP - in all there are 600 corporate advisers - are helping to draft the TPP. The result is an agreement that puts profits ahead of the necessities of the people and the protection of the planet.

Stop “Fast Track,” now known as Trade Promotion Authority. The Obama administration knows it cannot pass the TPP if Congress plays its constitutional role by holding hearings, allowing witnesses to testify about the impact of the TPP and allowing amendments. The people know that the economic impact of NAFTA-like trade deals are bad for the economy.

Stop the TPP with protests at negotiations, corporate headquarters, in Washington, DC political offices and at home in congressional districts. Since the Battle of Seattle in 1999, the World Trade Organization has been stalled. When the people know what is in the TPP, they will stop this too and members of Congress who support it will be kicked out of office.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership can be stopped. Already, a movement is growing to stop it and we will work closely with that movement, adding to their excellent work and building a campaign. We expect this campaign to last for several months, perhaps the rest of the year. We need you to help: spread the word and be part of this historic effort to stop transnational corporate power.

This is why the TPP is so important. When we look at the resistance efforts of the last week, we recognize that all of these struggles would be made more difficult if the TPP becomes law:

Worker’s Rights: Today, Seattle became the seventh US city in which low-paid workers walked out of McDonalds, Wendy’s and other fast food restaurants demanding a living wage of $15 per hour. Thousands of women in Cambodia who work in garment factories held a sit-down strike this week despite being confronted by police wielding electric stun batons akin to cattle prods. WalMart workers launched their first sustained strike yesterday and are continuing to plan their June 7 Ride for Respect to the annual shareholders meeting. United Students Against Sweatshops is organizing at 180 colleges across the country and continues to protest sweat shops, unfair wages and industrial accidents. Under the TPP, laws protecting workers would be challenged with corporate lawsuits for lost profits.

Housing Foreclosure: Activists conducted mass protests last week in Washington, DC to build awareness that in order to protect homeowners and end the economic collapse we need to prosecute the big banks and rewrite mortgages to their true value. Laws like the Homeowners Bill of Rights in Minnesota, which passed because of activist pressure, would be challenged under the TPP. Banks and mortgage lenders could sue in trade tribunals for lost profits, where the judges will often be corporate lawyers on leave from their job.

School Closings and Privatization: Communities who are protesting the closing and the privatization of schools will find the TPP favoring corporate schools over public schools. Indeed, there is strong opposition in the TPP to so-called “state-owned enterprises” which will also weaken public services like health care in favor of for-profit corporate interests.

Environmental Justice: Activists organizing for the fearless summer of protests against extreme excavation of radical energy will find their goals more difficult to achieve despite the intentional environmental destruction of “terracide” and tar sands waste that is piling up and so many other attacks on the environment. Existing trade laws have resulted in 450 suits by corporations against 89 governments, including the United States. Over $700 million has been paid to corporations under US trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties, about 70 percent of which are from challenges to natural resource and environmental policies. In other words, if a country decides to ban fracking or tar sands, the companies will sue for exorbitant lost profits.

Stopping Wall Street Financial Abuse: Protesters who want to see the big banks broken up, top officials at banks prosecuted or the regulation of the derivatives market will find the TPP makes these more unlikely. The TPP gives banks greater laxity to move money in and out of countries, stops regulation of banks and allows casino-style high risk investments to continue. Wall Street is using the TPP to weaken the already weak financial regulation of the big banks.

Getting Money Out of Politics: Last week in Los Angeles, 76.6 percentvoted to end corporate personhood. They joined 175 other cities calling for a constitutional amendment to end the rule of money. If the TPP goes through, we will look back on it as a move to corporate nationhood undermines democracy and makes corporation more powerful than nations.

Food and Agriculture: The opposition to Monsanto and genetically engineered foods will be more difficult. As Trade Justice for the New York Metro area points out: “Under the TPP, the sovereign right to control biotech foods will be delegated to BigAg – a world market concentrated in the hands of a few multinational players that will entirely circumvent the democratic process and political action. Pressure from US corporations in previous bilateral (two-nation) trade negotiations has already caused India, China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh to back down or remove their import restrictions on GMO’s. BigAg has also demanded that the US government use the proposed TPP to force other countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Peru, Chile, Malaysia and the Philippines to allow field testing of GMOs and remove any labeling restrictions that would disclose a product’s GMO content.”

These are just a few examples of current injustices people are working to end that will be made more difficult if there is a global corporate coup. We will write more on the Stop the TPP campaign in coming weeks. For now, begin to educate the people you know by sharing this article and urging them to sign up for the weekly newsletter here.

This weekend there are two events we want to highlight from our calendar. On Saturday, June 1, there will be a massive rally in support of whistleblower Bradley Manning. His court martial begins next week. In New York City, June 1 is Occupy Homecoming, as occupiers re-take Liberty Plaza (aka Zuccotti Park). The convergence begins at 9 AM and at 6 PM there will be a People’s Assembly. There are events planned for the days after that as well. Next week is the Public Banking conference in San Rafael, CA from June 2 to 5. There are lots more events on our calendar. Please add more if you know of or are planning events.

All of the ingredients for a mass popular resistance movement exist. People are suffering under an economy that favors wealth and makes it difficult for small businesses and entrepreneurs to operate; the government is corrupted by campaign money and is dysfunctional and unresponsive to people’s needs; the connection between all the key issues of the day and how progress is prevented by the rule of money is evident to many; and people are seeing there is a path that could lead to successful transformation of the government and economy. Now is the time to get involved and help make the potential a reality.

This article is produced in partnership with AlterNet and is based on the weekly newsletter of PopularResistance.org. You can sign up to receive the newsletter here.


Kevin Zeese, JD and Margaret Flowers, MD co-host Clearing the FOG on We Act Radio 1480 AM Washington, DC, co-direct Its Our Economy and are organizers of the Occupation of Washington, DC. Read other articles by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers.

[Demeter]

72. We Need to Address the Profound Stupidity That Afflicts America By William Boardman

YOU'RE A BETTER MAN THAN I AM, GUNGA DIN!

http://www.alternet.org/education/florida-school-example-american-stupidity?akid=10512.227380.M5xhH-&rd=1&src=newsletter848683&t=6&paging=off

THE COMPLETE AND UPDATED TALE OF THE HONORS STUDENT, THE SCIENCE EXPERIMENT AND THE HYSTERIA IN FLORIDA...

[kickysnana]

98. 'Functional stupidity': Is it smart to play dumb on the job?'

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/209654291.html

Mats Alvesson and André Spicer, professors of organization studies at Lund University, proposed in the Journal of Management Studies that companies with too many smart people risk having their workflow disrupted by workers who overanalyze everything and make repeated suggestions for alternatives.

The best team players, they concluded, are people who carry out their work without constantly questioning the processes or their bosses. They labeled this trait “functional stupidity.”...

[Demeter]

100. And what distinguishes the "functionally stupid" from robots, slaves or Nazis?

They get to go home to their real lives after their shift.

From the article:

...Chad Brinsfield, a professor in the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas. While “I’ve never seen a company that had a problem with too many smart people,” he said, he has encountered ones where executives encourage the employees to play dumb, often without realizing they’re doing so,

“There are subtle pressures exerted in organizations to go along with the flow — go along to get along — and if you speak up against something or don’t go along with the leaders’ thinking, they say things like, ‘You’re not a good fit’ or, ‘We have intellectual differences,’?” he said.

“I think that happens outside of conscious awareness most of the time,” he said. “Most leaders aren’t going to say, ‘I want to be surrounded by yes men.’ They’ll say, ‘I want people around me who will challenge me.’ That’s what they say. But subtly, they exert pressures on people to do just the opposite.”

[Demeter]

102. This article just gets better and better!

Nonetheless, the Swedish professors, who called their report “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations,” are convinced that stupidity has its place in the corporate world.

“We have shown that stupidity should not be rooted out of the organization completely,” they wrote. “It can be an important resource that organizations should cultivate, maintain and engineer.”

They did add a caveat: Functional stupidity can be disastrous when carried to extremes. As an example, they cite the banking crisis, after which many analysts said they knew that their companies were making risky investments but didn’t say anything.

This creates a conundrum of its own. If you see stupidity getting out of hand and raise the issue with your bosses (and thus disrupting workflow), aren’t you doing exactly what the premise behind functional stupidity says is counterproductive?

Well, duh.

GIVING NEW MEANING TO THE TERM "DUMB SWEDE".

COME TO THINK OF IT, I SAW A LOT OF THAT IN SWEDEN AND IN MY IN-LAWS....


THE SHRINKS CALL THIS "PASSIVE AGGRESSION" AND IT'S NOT CONSIDERED HEALTHY. IT CAN BE A COPING STRATEGY FOR THOSE WHO FEEL TRAPPED WITH NO EXIT OR RECOURSE, HOWEVER....

[Demeter]

73. U.S. stocks end positive May with thud SELL IN MAY AND GO AWAY!

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-lower-as-consumer-spending-falls-2013-05-31?siteid=YAHOOB

U.S. stocks fell sharply Friday afternoon as Wall Street closed another month of gains with a whimper after mixed economic reports.

“We’ve had a week of mediocre news for the United States; not a soft patch, not concerning, but certainly not inspiring,” said Jim Russell, senior equity strategist for U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Cincinnati.

“We would like to see a quiet summer, where the market marks some time and consolidates some recent gains,” added Russell of Wall Street’s advance...

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR...

[Demeter]

74. Losses wash over tech stocks at the close

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-netflix-among-advancers-as-techs-rise-2013-05-31?siteid=YAHOOB

[Demeter]

75. SAC redemptions grow, as Magnitude Capital joins in RUN ON A HEDGE

http://news.yahoo.com/sac-investor-magnitude-pull-money-cohens-fund-second-194112286.html

Investor redemptions from Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors continue to mount, with Magnitude Capital emerging as the latest outside investor asking to get money back from the $15 billion hedge fund. Magnitude Capital, a fund of hedge funds that manages $3.1 billion of client money, began redeeming funds in the first quarter of this year and intends to submit another withdrawal notice for the second quarter, according to a person with knowledge of the investment. Cohen's firm also recently received withdrawal requests from two large institutional investors, Blackstone Group LP and Ironwood Capital, as an insider trading probe focusing on Cohen's firm moves forward. SAC Capital's second-quarter redemption deadline is Monday June 3.

Magnitude's investors will have their money back from Cohen's hedge fund by the end of the year, according to that person and another person familiar with the investment....It was not immediately clear why Magnitude had decided to take back its money. The amount of money the firm has with SAC Capital also is not known.

Blackstone, which is the largest outside investor in Cohen's fund, has decided to redeem a significant portion of its roughly $550 million allocation to SAC, according to a letter from pension consulting firm Russell Investments, which Reuters earlier reported on. The letter said Blackstone decided to submit a redemption notice to SAC Capital after reviewing the terms of a $616 million agreement SAC Capital reached in March with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle allegations that the hedge fund's employees had engaged in insider trading in four stocks...The decision by Blackstone, which manages $46 billion in hedge fund investments for pensions, companies, foundations and wealthy individuals, is seen as critical to Cohen in his attempt to prevent all of his outside investors from fleeing. With $550 million in outside money invested in SAC Capital, Blackstone is Cohen's largest outside investor and one of his most loyal, having stayed with the fund throughout the long running insider trading investigation. Blackstone already has submitted a notice to redeem about $295 million in money invested in SAC Capital through of its investment funds. Blackstone is also expected to submit redemption notices for most of the remaining $255 million it manages for pensions and corporations in separately managed accounts, according to people familiar with the money manager.

Outside investors in SAC Capital account for roughly $6.75 billion of the $15 billion managed by Cohen. In the first quarter, outside investors told Cohen they intended to withdraw about $1.7 billion of that $6.75 billion by the end of the year...San Francisco-based Ironwood notified SAC last week it would be taking $100 million from the fund because of changes in access to information about the ongoing insider trading probe.

Even as the list of outside investors taking out money continues to grow, it is still unclear how other clients of the fund will proceed.

It is not clear for example what other large outside investors like Morgan Stanley and HSBC plan to do. HSBC declined to comment. Morgan Stanley did not return a request for comment.

Cohen himself has not been charged with wrongdoing, but the probe is seen as increasingly focusing on him and his firm. Earlier this month federal authorities issued grand jury subpoenas seeking testimony from Cohen and other executives at SAC.

"I think the pressure on the hedge fund to ultimately allow everyone to get their money out in a relatively short period of time is going to become an irresistible force that they're just going to have to cede to," said C. Evan Stewart, a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder in New York who specializes in securities litigation and regulatory enforcement matters.

[Demeter]

76. YOU KNOW WHAT BANKSTERS WOULD DO WITH ALL THAT SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY?

I was puzzled forever about what they would do with Social Security, if they could wrestle it away from us.

Well, they would first try to steal it in the stock and bond markets, and commodities, of course.

If that didn't work, they would sell us annuities.

Which is funny, because Social Security is EXACTLY like an annuity, without the slice off the top that would go to the financial firm administering it. With the OTHER major difference that if the financial firms' investments went awry, they could not, like the federal government, either print money or raise taxes from the general fund to maintain the dependents of those annuities.

No, they would have to beg for a bailout. So they could pay their executives.

Obviously, this lesson in Machiavellian thinking is taking effect! The end result would never justify those means, to be sure, for anyone EXCEPT the financial firms.

[Demeter]

77. Social Security and Medicare Reports Little Changed From 2012 By Dean Baker

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16709-social-security-and-medicare-reports-little-changed-from-2012

The projected shortfall in Medicare has fallen by almost 70 percent since 2008.

The 2013 Social Security and Medicare Trustees’ reports were little changed from 2012. The Social Security Trustees report showed a slightly larger shortfall over its 75-year planning horizon, with the projected shortfall rising from 2.67 percent of payroll in the 2012 report to 2.73 percent of payroll in the newest report. The reason for this small increase was the change in the 75 years covered with 2087 replacing 2012 in the projection period.

The projected date of trust fund depletion remained at 2033. After this date the program is projected to be able to pay slightly more than 75 percent of scheduled benefits if no changes are ever made. This ratio changes little over the remaining decades of the projection period.

The Medicare report had some positive news in that the projected shortfall dropped slightly from the 2012 report. In 2012 the projected shortfall was 1.35 percent of payroll. In the 2013 report it was down to 1.14 percent of payroll. The main reason for this decline is a slower rate for the projected growth in health care costs. The 2012 report assumed that per person Medicare expenditures would average $16,530 in 2021. The 2013 report assumes that per person expenses in 2021 will be just $16,276. This projection incorporates some of the slowdown in health care cost growth that we have seen over the last five years. The improvement in the trustees projections for Medicare over the last five years have been striking. In the 2008 report the trustees projected a shortfall equal to 3.54 percent of payroll. This means that projected shortfall has been reduced by almost 70 percent since 2008. This is in spite of the fact that the change in the projection period would have added at least 0.2 percentage points to the projected shortfall.

One item that is often missed in the discussion of these reports is that projections of higher future costs for these programs is accompanied by projections of higher wages. Both reports include explicit projections of real wage growth in their analysis. Over a long enough time, even modest wage growth will have a large impact on living standards.




AS IF THAT WILL HAPPEN! MORE DISCUSSION AT LLINK

[xchrom]

78. Austerity-weary Spaniards crave political change

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/02/uk-spain-politics-idUKBRE95105120130602


(Reuters) - Spaniards tired of spending cuts and allegations of high-level corruption want new parties to shake up the current political scene, according to an opinion poll published on Sunday.

In Spain, where 27 percent of the workforce is jobless owing to a painful recession, power has switched between the centre-right People's Party (PP) and the socialist PSOE since 1982. The country was ruled by dictator Francisco Franco for decades until his death in 1975.

Spaniards have become disenchanted with their politicians, especially since the ruling PP was accused of graft. They rank corruption as the country's second-biggest problem, behind unemployment.

Seventy-nine percent consider the current parties to all be the same and 70 percent want new ones to be formed so they have more options when they vote, the Metroscopia poll found.

[xchrom]

79. Insight - Nordic nations grapple with 'austerity lite'

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/02/uk-nordics-welfare-insight-idUKBRE95104S20130602

(Reuters) - When Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt celebrated his 45th birthday, his finance minister gave him a framed graph showing the tax burden falling to 45 percent of GDP for the first time in decades. It still hangs in his office.

The gift reflected the celebratory mood of a centre-right government boosting economic growth while reducing taxes and cutting unemployment and sickness benefits, shrinking a welfare state that is among the most generous in the world.

Three years later, engulfed in the worst riots in decades, that optimism is questioned. The torching of cars and battles with masked youths from poor immigrant suburbs has exposed another side of Sweden's welfare reform.

Still, given globalisation and the need to be competitive, the fact that people live longer and that state finances need to be kept sound, Sweden and other Nordic states face more reforms, a lite version of austerity forced on many European nations.

[Demeter]

89. I call BS on this

That last paragraph is a total crock:

"Still, given globalisation and the need to be competitive, the fact that people live longer and that state finances need to be kept sound, Sweden and other Nordic states face more reforms, a lite version of austerity forced on many European nations."

WHY does Sweden need to be competitive, when it was in fact superior? For profits? Whose profits? Not Sweden's.

Since when were their state finances unsound? Since they started mass unemployment due to cutting the welfare state?

It's not how much one pays in taxes, but how much one receives from the taxes, that counts.

All we in the US get is misery at home and abroad: war, drones, the resulting blowback terrorism from abroad and at home, malnutrition, illness, ignorance, broken bridges, highways etc.

Not to mention complete contempt from the 1% who robbed us of our property, futures, liberties and rights. And a totally broken government with no rule of law or justice.

[xchrom]

80. Protests Show Turks Can't Tolerate Erdogan Anymore

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/protests-show-turks-cant-tolerate-erdogan-anymore/276447/


A man wears a makeshift gas mask during protests in Turkey on May 31, 2013 (AP)

In the early afternoon Friday, Turkish police surrounded a peaceful group of protesters, and, shortly after the end of Friday prayers, began to volley a slew of tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. The protesters had been camped in Gezi Park -- a small leafy park wedged near the bustling Taksim square -- for days to prevent the ripping out of trees to make way for the building of a shopping mall.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has chastised the protests, claiming that the hundreds of people were unfamiliar with Ottoman history, and that the projects would continue unabated. In turn, the police have been using tear gas to forcibly evict the protesters camped in the park. As the use of force has escalated, the protests have morphed from an occupy style movement into a larger-scale rebuke of the AKP's heavy-handed rule. The protests have now spread to Kocaeli, Edirne, Afyon, Eskisehir, Bodrum, Antalya, Aydin, Trabzon, Mugla, Mersin, Ankara, Adana, and Konya.

Despite having its genesis in the Gezi Park movement, the dynamics of the protests now reflect many of the fundamental antagonisms in Turkey's imperfect democracy. Erdogan's divisive rhetoric and his penchant for authoritarian rule have steadily eroded the party's support from small constituencies that it could once count on. While the AKP's voter base is often simplistically assumed to be religious conservatives, the truth of the matter is that AKP supporters include a small number of liberals eager to do away with the undemocratic constitution, a business sector happy with the party's handling of the economy, nationalists who are pleased with what they perceive as Turkey's re-emergence as a global power, Turkish Islamists obsessed with the proliferation of Ottomania (a growing desire among the Turkish population to reconnect and reacquaint themselves with the country's imperial past), and some members of Turkey's Kurdish minority who are pleased with AKP's democratic reforms.

Of these interests, the only group to leave the party en mass during the AKP's rule has been the handful liberals that bounce from party to party in search of greater freedoms. Turkey's main opposition, the Republican People's Party (CHP), ostensibly represents the secular segments of Turkish society but has failed to expand their political base beyond the country's western coast.

[Demeter]

90. Thanks for the Photo, X!

Very ingenious design there. I'm always on the lookout for stuff like that. Who knows, we might need it someday (soon).

[xchrom]

92. sure. i'm very interested in turkey.

it's always promoted as an economic tiger -- one would think there would be a content populace -- as we hear of it.

not so much, eh?

will this become a turkish spring? it's looking like it.

[Demeter]

95. Especially with cranberry sauce

I'm sorry, my stomach growled.

[xchrom]

101. Now I want a turkey sandwich. Nt

[Demeter]

103. Lunchtime!

I've got some nice deli turkey, the expensive kind. Come on over!

[xchrom]

104. Yum! Lemme get my handbag! Nt

[xchrom]

81. Desperate Unemployed Italian Workers Are Turning To The Illegal Recycling Business

http://www.businessinsider.com/unemployed-italians-turn-to-2013-6


A placard reading, "R like: Ri-Maflow, Re-use, Recycle, Revenue... Revolution!" displayed at the entrance of the Maflow plant on May 16, 2013, near Milan. A total of 330 workers at the factory were let go between 2010 and 2012 before it shut down.

A group of Italian factory workers who lost their jobs at an auto component maker due to the recession have taken over their disused factory near Milan and are planning to set up a recycling business as they struggle for dignity.

"We were considered rejects in society and we recycled ourselves," said Gigi Malabarba, an unemployed man who has joined the initiative.

Their unusual project is illegal but tolerated by local authorities and the owner of the site, a company belonging to banking giant UniCredit.

As Italy's longest post-war economic crisis drags on, theirs is a desperate measure for a desperate time in which there are precious few other jobs.


Read more: ?key=YXJ0aWNsZT02NTIxZjUxYjI4M2IxMDUwNmUzYzgwZDUyYmQ4MDRiZiZvd25lcj0xYjhjMzM1YzkwMmFjNGFiMTI4ZWU4ZWQ3NzNiZWUwNCZub25jZT00ZjBlZGM3Mi0xNmY0LTQzYjAtYjIyYy00NzliZDZhM2ViYTcmcHVibGlzaGVyPThjMDBmYmVlNjFkNWJjZjBjNjA5MmQ4YjkyZWJiY2Ex#ixzz2V3crAeKh

[xchrom]

82. The Sub-Prime Mortgage Market Is Heating Up Again

http://www.businessinsider.com/sub-prime-mortgage-market-is-heating-up-2013-6



America's sub-prime mortgage market is beginning to reheat, leading investors to warn of the possibility of a renewed financial crisis.

Demand for sub-prime mortgage bonds, which are not backed by US government-controlled mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, has surged since the start of last year, as yields on treasury bonds remain low.

Returns jumped 41pc last year, and have climbed a further 12.7pc this year, according to data from Barclays.

The demand has led to fears that investors could be taking risks so big that they will pave the way for a repeat of the financial collapse.


Read more: ?key=YXJ0aWNsZT1lNTg0NTQ4Y2FlZTFmODNmOTMzZWJhOWU4ZDliZDdmNiZvd25lcj05NTg4MGQwMzZjNDllMmViMGNmYjM5ZTJjNDk2MDFlZCZub25jZT0yZjMyNmVkNi0zMzUxLTRjMzAtYTc0Zi0xYzNjOWJjM2Y5MTUmcHVibGlzaGVyPThjMDBmYmVlNjFkNWJjZjBjNjA5MmQ4YjkyZWJiY2Ex#ixzz2V3e36b8G

[xchrom]

83. The New Economic Frontier Is a Chance for Community Resilience

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/01-0

There’s a TV advert I remember from the 1980s that has stuck with me. It features a recently unemployed man telling his wife that he and his friend are “going it alone”, that “the bank says yes”, and that they are going to set up their own business. I think the ad was for a car or something. It captured the spirit prevalent during that decade, where business was the new frontier, anything was possible, and there were no limits.

I’m starting a brewery. I don’t know much about brewing, but with other driven and skilled people from the place I live we’re going to do it. We’re not going it alone, though: we are bringing our community along with us and inviting their support. We don’t need the bank, thank you very much, we have a local person investing in us, and plan to do a community-share launch so that the community gets the chance to invest in us, too. I think our brewery also captures a spirit that’s increasingly prevalent.

It is the spirit in which we don’t wait for an imaginary cavalry to come riding to our economic rescue, a spirit visible across the country in the explosion of local food businesses, pop-up shops, craft breweries, crowdfunding, community energy projects, and the revival of independent record shops. It’s a different, more suitable approach to economic regeneration than most, recognising that anything is possible, but within the limits of energy scarcity, austerity, and the reality of living on a finite planet.

Our brewery is part of a wider story. My town, Totnes in Devon, where it will be sited, is the UK’s first ‘Transition Town’ (there are now thousands around the world), a project I, along with others, initiated in 2005. It’s an experiment that shows a more localised and lower-carbon economy can be an opportunity for huge creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.

[xchrom]

84. Those Old Colonial Lusts

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/01-2



That old colonial impulse keeps coming back. This past week, Britain and France pushed the rest of the European Union to lift the arms embargo in Syria – which in plain English means outright military intervention in that nation’s civil war.

Let’s recall that Britain once ruled a quarter of the earth’s surface and most of its oceans. France ruled much of West Africa, the Sahara and, after Word War I, what are today Syria and Lebanon. Britain ruled much of the rest of the Mideast.

Well, they’re back! France and Britain took the lead in attacking Libya and overthrowing its long-time leader and former ally, Muammar Ghadaffi. They now dominate Libya’s oil – a major source of energy for Europe. France just sent troops to protect its mining interests in former colonies, Mali and Niger.

Britain, which has invaded Afghanistan four times, is maintaining its troops there even though the war to dominate Afghanistan looks lost. Now, Britain has its sights set on reasserting its influence in Mesopotamia. France, Syria’s former colonial ruler, is championing plans to overthrow Syria’s government and reassert its domination of Lebanon, which it created during the colonial era.

[xchrom]

85. Demographic Corrections: Census Downsizes German Population

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-census-finds-smaller-population-and-fewer-foreigners-in-germany-a-903083.html


Germany has been making false assumptions for decades -- at least when it comes to the number of the country's residents, foreigners and dwellings.

These are the main results of a census conducted on May 9, 2011 and released Friday in Berlin. They represent the first concrete figures on a number of demographic issues available since German reunification in 1990. The last census in the former West Germany was in 1987, while the last one in the former East Germany dates back to 1981.

Whereas Germany's population was previously estimated to be 81.7 million, the census lowers this figure to 80.2 million, a difference of 1.5 million people, or some 1.8 percent of the population.

The lion's share of this difference comes from a correction in the number of foreign citizens living in Germany, with the term denoting inhabitants who do not hold German passports. The census lowers this figure from 7.3 million to 6.2 million, a 14.9 percent drop.

[xchrom]

87. Anti-Capitalist Protest: 'Blockupy' Surrounds ECB in Frankfurt

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/blockupy-protest-surrounds-european-central-bank-in-frankfurt-a-902981.html

An estimated 2,500 supporters of the anti-capitalist group "Blockupy" demonstrated in the German financial capital of Frankfurt on Friday, blocking access to the European Central Bank (ECB) in protest of euro-crisis austerity policies.

Banging on drums and carrying signs that read slogans such as "Block the ECB -- Fight Capitalism and Austerity" and "Humanity before Profit," the demonstrators cut off roads leading into the downtown financial district.

"The business operations of the ECB have been successfully hindered," a spokeswoman said, according to the German news agency DPA. "We are making Europe-wide resistance to devastating policies of poverty visible."

The European Blockupy movement, which formed after the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, is critical of euro-zone leaders' approach to the debt crisis. Forcing struggling countries to raise taxes and implement tough austerity measures has only served to deepen the Continent-wide recession, they allege.

[Demeter]

91. If Tansy hasn't started Monday's SMW by the time I get back from the "real world"

I'll post some more stuff. Otherwise, see you all Monday!

[xchrom]

94. Local economies, global responsibility: A vision for the next great American century

http://grist.org/living/local-economies-global-responsibility-a-vision-for-the-next-great-american-century/

?w=250&h=166
The future economy will enjoy a strong rebirth of re-skilling, crafts, and self-provisioning, opening space for traditional jobs like blacksmithing.

If we manage well, we can achieve a higher quality of life both individually and socially. Life in America the Possible will tend strongly in these directions:

Relocalization: Economic and social life will be rooted in the community and the region. More production will be local and regional, with shorter, less-complex supply chains, especially but not only in food supply. Enterprises will be more committed to the long-term well-being of employees and the viability of their communities and will be supported by local, complementary currencies and local financial institutions. People will live closer to work, walk more, and travel less. Energy production will be distributed and decentralized, and predominantly renewable. Socially, community bonds will be strong; connections to neighbors will be genuine and unpretentious; civic associations and community service groups plentiful; support for teachers and caregivers high. Personal security, tolerance of difference, and empathy will be high. Local governance will stress participatory, direct, and deliberative democracy. Citizens will be seized with the responsibility to manage and extend the commons — the valuable assets that belong to everyone – through community land trusts and otherwise.

New business models: Locally owned businesses, including worker-, customer-, and community-owned firms, will be prominent. So, too, will hybrid business models such as profit/nonprofit and public/private hybrids. Cooperation will moderate competition. Investments will promote import-substitution. Business incubators will help entrepreneurs with arranging finance, technical assistance, and other support. Enterprises of all types will stress environmental and social responsibility.

Plenitude: Consumerism will be supplanted by the search for abundance in things that truly bring happiness and joy – family, friends, the natural world, meaningful work. Status and recognition will go to those who earn trust and provide needed services to the community. Individuals and communities will enjoy a strong rebirth of re-skilling, crafts, and self-provisioning. Overconsumption will be considered vulgar and will be replaced by new investment in civic culture, natural amenities, ecological restoration, education, and community development.

[Demeter]

97. It depends on where you are

Last edited Sun Jun 2, 2013, 12:03 PM - Edit history (1)

SEE KICKYSANA'S "FUNCTIONAL STUPIDITY" ARTICLE ABOVE!

[Demeter]

105. My sister has arrived safely from back East

and I will be AWOL a lot as we try to deal with some family business. Have a good week, all!

I'm calling it a wrap for me.