In Decaying Societies, Politics Become Theater

A 6/12/10 Move On Request: Your ideas for a better democracy - stating " Big corporations from Wall Street to Big Oil, backed by over 17,000 lobbyists in Washington, have been running roughshod over our democracy. For years they've been rigging the rules and fixing the system so that 98% of the country gets little or no say."

It's time to take our democracy back.

There is only one idea that stands the slightest chance of succeeding, and in fact, its omission is the Primary Cause of the “roughshod over our democracy”: Comprehension and application of Energy’s Evolutionary Stages - a Survival Requirement, as natural and necessary as breathing.

As GreenChipstocks’ article (6/12/10) asked: “Will the BP oil spill be an energy game-changer? ....It's the question everyone has; it's the question no one can answer…..Because honestly, no one knows... http://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/nicks-title/996

In a free country, why does no one know?

Going beyond the pre-kindergarten concept of energy (i.e., lack of comprehension of the nature and total interdependence of Space, Time, Mass, Matter, Gravity, Fields - with Energy) is a natural fundamental evolutionary survival requirement, a requirement as natural as breathing.

Imagine the consequences, if you did not know that breathing was required for survival.

On a larger scale, Energy is the breath of all Existence in the Universe. Without energy, not even space & time exist.

"Poverty in all its forms is the greatest single threat to peace, democracy, human rights, and the environment. It is a time bomb against the heart of liberty" World Trade Organization Director Mike Moore.

"Inadequate comprehension and application of Energy, in all its forms, in an increasingly complex and evolving civilization, is the single greatest causal factor of poverty - and the vehicle to self-destruct." Decatalyst

"As systems increase in complexity, their energy intensity and energy requirements to sustain life rise accordingly." Hydrocarbons ceased fitting the energy bill, became obsolete, years ago. Nobel Prize winner, Ilya Progogine
http://www.fuel2000.net

In Decaying Societies, Politics Become Theater
America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout by Chris Hedges

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HED20090324&articleId=12880

In decaying societies, politics become theater. The elite, who have hollowed out the democratic system to serve the corporate state, rule through image and presentation. They express indignation at AIG bonuses and empathy with a working class they have spent the last few decades disenfranchising, and make promises to desperate families that they know will never be fulfilled. Once the spotlights go on they read their lines with appropriate emotion. Once the lights go off, they make sure Goldman Sachs and a host of other large corporations have the hundreds of billions of dollars in losses they incurred playing casino capitalism repaid with taxpayer money.
We live in an age of moral nihilism. We have trashed our universities, turning them into vocational factories that produce corporate drones and chase after defense-related grants and funding. The humanities, the discipline that forces us to stand back and ask the broad moral questions of meaning and purpose, that challenges the validity of structures, that trains us to be self-reflective and critical of all cultural assumptions, have withered. Our press, which should promote such intellectual and moral questioning, confuses bread and circus with news and refuses to give a voice to critics who challenge not this bonus payment or that bailout but the pernicious superstructure of the corporate state itself. We kneel before a cult of the self, elaborately constructed by the architects of our consumer society, which dismisses compassion, sacrifice for the less fortunate, and honesty. The methods used to attain what we want, we are told by reality television programs, business schools and self-help gurus, are irrelevant. Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification. The capacity for manipulation is what is most highly prized. And our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse.
Theodor Adorno in 1967 wrote an essay called "Education After Auschwitz." He argued that the moral corruption that made the Holocaust possible remained "largely unchanged." He wrote that "the mechanisms that render people capable of such deeds" must be made visible. Schools had to teach more than skills. They had to teach values. If they did not, another Auschwitz was always possible.
"All political instruction finally should be centered upon the idea that Auschwitz should never happen again," he wrote. "This would be possible only when it devotes itself openly, without fear of offending any authorities, to this most important of problems. To do this, education must transform itself into sociology, that is, it must teach about the societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms."
Our elites are imploding. Their fraud and corruption are slowly being exposed as the disparity between their words and our reality becomes wider and more apparent. The rage that is bubbling up across the country will have to be countered by the elite with less subtle forms of control. But unless we grasp the "societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms" we will be cursed with a more ruthless form of corporate power, one that does away with artifice and the seduction of a consumer society and instead wields power through naked repression.
I had lunch a few days ago in Toronto with Henry Giroux, professor of English and cultural studies at McMaster University in Canada and who for many years was the Waterbury Chair Professor at Penn State. Giroux, who has been one of the most prescient and vocal critics of the corporate state and the systematic destruction of American education, was driven to the margins of academia because he kept asking the uncomfortable questions Adorno knew should be asked by university professors. He left the United States in 2004 for Canada.
"The emergence of what Eisenhower had called the military-industrial-academic complex had secured a grip on higher education that may have exceeded even what he had anticipated and most feared," Giroux, who wrote "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex," told me. "Universities, in general, especially following the events of 9/11, were under assault by Christian nationalists, reactionary neoconservatives and market fundamentalists for allegedly representing the weak link in the war on terrorism. Right-wing students were encouraged to spy on the classes of progressive professors, the corporate grip on the university was tightening as made clear not only in the emergence of business models of governance, but also in the money being pumped into research and programs that blatantly favored corporate interests. And at Penn State, where I was located at the time, the university had joined itself at the hip with corporate and military power. Put differently, corporate and Pentagon money was now funding research projects and increasingly knowledge was being militarized in the service of developing weapons of destruction, surveillance and death. Couple this assault with the fact that faculty were becoming irrelevant as an oppositional force. Many disappeared into discourses that threatened no one, some simply were too scared to raise critical issues in their classrooms for fear of being fired, and many simply no longer had the conviction to uphold the university as a democratic public sphere."
Frank Donoghue, the author of "The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities," details how liberal arts education has been dismantled. Any form of learning that is not strictly vocational has at best been marginalized and in many schools has been abolished. Students are steered away from asking the broad, disturbing questions that challenge the assumptions of the power elite or an economic system that serves the corporate state. This has led many bright graduates into the arms of corporate entities they do not examine morally or ethically. They accept the assumptions of corporate culture because they have never been taught to think.
Only 8 percent of U.S. college graduates now receive degrees in the humanities, about 110,000 students. Between 1970 and 2001, bachelor's degrees in English declined from 7.6 percent to 4 percent, as did degrees in foreign languages (2.4 percent to 1 percent), mathematics (3 percent to 1 percent), social science and history (18.4 percent to 10 percent). Bachelor's degrees in business, which promise the accumulation of wealth, have skyrocketed. Business majors since 1970-1971 have risen from 13.6 percent of the graduation population to 21.7 percent. Business has now replaced education, which has fallen from 21 percent to 8.2 percent, as the most popular major.
The values that sustain an open society have been crushed. A university, as John Ralston Saul writes, now "actively seeks students who suffer from the appropriate imbalance and then sets out to exaggerate it. Imagination, creativity, moral balance, knowledge, common sense, a social view-all these things wither. Competitiveness, having an ever-ready answer, a talent for manipulating situations-all these things are encouraged to grow. As a result amorality also grows; as does extreme aggressivity when they are questioned by outsiders; as does a confusion between the nature of good versus having a ready answer to all questions. Above all, what is encouraged is the growth of an undisciplined form of self-interest, in which winning is what counts."
This moral nihilism would have terrified Adorno. He knew that radical evil was possible only with the collaboration of a timid, cowed and confused population, a system of propaganda and a press that offered little more than spectacle and entertainment and an educational system that did not transmit transcendent values or nurture the capacity for individual conscience. He feared a culture that banished the anxieties and complexities of moral choice and embraced a childish hyper-masculinity, one championed by ruthless capitalists (think of the brutal backstabbing and deception cheered by TV shows like "Survivor") and Hollywood action heroes like the governor of California.
"This educational ideal of hardness, in which many may believe without reflecting about it, is utterly wrong," Adorno wrote. "The idea that virility consists in the maximum degree of endurance long ago became a screen-image for masochism that, as psychology has demonstrated, aligns itself all too easily with sadism."
Sadism is as much a part of popular culture as it is of corporate culture. It dominates pornography, runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs and is at the core of the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice. And it has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our lack of compassion for the homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed and the sick.
"The political and economic forces fuelling such crimes against humanity-whether they are unlawful wars, systemic torture, practiced indifference to chronic starvation and disease or genocidal acts-are always mediated by educational forces," Giroux said. "Resistance to such acts cannot take place without a degree of knowledge and self-reflection. We have to name these acts and transform moral outrage into concrete attempts to prevent such human violations from taking place in the first place."
The single most important quality needed to resist evil is moral autonomy. Moral autonomy, as Immanuel Kant wrote, is possible only through reflection, self-determination and the courage not to cooperate.
Moral autonomy is what the corporate state, with all its attacks on liberal institutions and "leftist" professors, has really set out to destroy. The corporate state holds up as our ideal what Adorno called "the manipulative character." The manipulative character has superb organizational skills and the inability to have authentic human experiences. He or she is an emotional cripple and driven by an overvalued realism. The manipulative character is a systems manager. He or she exclusively trained to sustain the corporate structure, which is why our elites are wasting mind-blowing amounts of our money on corporations like Goldman Sachs and AIG. "He makes a cult of action, activity, of so-called efficiency as such which reappears in the advertising image of the active person," Adorno wrote of this personality type. These manipulative characters, people like Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, AIG's Edward Liddy and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, along with most of our ruling class, have used corporate money and power to determine the narrow parameters of the debate in our classrooms, on the airwaves and in the halls of Congress while they looted the country.
"It is especially difficult to fight against it," warned Adorno, "because those manipulative people, who actually are incapable of true experience, for that very reason manifest an unresponsiveness that associates them with certain mentally ill or psychotic characters, namely schizoids."
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."
Global Research Articles by Chris Hedges

Our Gifts to Our Children and Future Generations

Our Gifts to Our Children and Future Generations

Without a corporate bill of rights and science freedom:

1. Bill of Rights – (not government control) for Corporations and the Economic System (note, we the people have to live by a common sense bill of rights)
2. Science Freedom, specifically the energy sector.

See "Revisiting the Nature of Power" http://www.relaxspa.net/Revisiting_Power.htm

Which Possess the potential, the promise, of a future foretold a half century ago for today: Appleby's world, "a world where he never had to pay a power bill, where heating and cooling were free of energy costs, where his water was pure and veggies local and fresh, and where a four hour work day allowed him ample spare time to indulge in his writing fantasies. Outside, the air was fresh and the streets clean. Everyone had a job, and in this world-the real world-there were no clandestine powers holding back progress. All received a fair share for their efforts" An Impossible World? Excerpt from The Energy Solution Revolution by Brian O'Leary http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/04/impossible-world.html

Our Gifts to Our Children and Future Generations become:

Progressive Transportation










Full Retirement available at 105 years “may you enjoy your remaining hours of life, and enjoy all the things you have wanted to do after a century plus of ever more productive, cost/benefit-cutting, cubicle/labor slavery that maximized profits for our 2% golden greedy guts masters"

The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them

With the “trickle down” economic principle almost dried up, and the “waterfall up” principle at 98%, never in human history, have totalitarian feudal systems been so large and powerful as in “too big to fail” corporations, what NYTimes called 2% greedy guts, owning 98% of the world’s wealth, with total direction of scientific funding, no bill of rights, and only one goal: MAXIMIZE PROFITS


Through continued M&A (mergers & acquisitions), all competition is being destroyed. From milk cartels, to oil cartels, to agribusiness, to pharmaceuticals – all which are economic necessities for Life. With competition gone, price gouging (economic strangulation) to the hilt has become an ongoing standard operating procedure.

In my discussions with countless people, who still claim “capitalism” is the best, I ask “WHERE THE HELL DO YOU SEE ANYTHING RESEMBLING CAPITALISM OR DEMOCRACY OR SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING in the major players causing worldwide economic damage? The only goal these (Ralph Nader’s Term) Frankenstein CORPORATE monsters have is maximization of profits at all costs, including human. 'Capitalist Pig and Proud' seems oblivious to how many Americans are destroyed, lose their homes, their retirement savings, lose their jobs, go hungry, - or those working, continually having to increase productivity in spite of downsizing, while sacrificing benefits, insurance, and salary, as their bridges fall down and local governments run out of money even with DOUBLE TAXATION (selling services for which we continue to pay taxes, to private firms who charge hundreds of times more for the same services). THIS USED TO BE CALLED SURFDOM IN A FEUDAL SYSTEM, NOT FAR FROM ABJECT SLAVERY.

Updates from the News (this is not about surface trivia, twiddledee winks and clothing styles of republicans or democrats all in bed with the same Masters, all pre-selected, chosen by big money, whence the public subsequently plays the extreme hyped-up and staged kindergarten "I choose" game, called Freedumbland Voting by our media controlled masters)



Sept 6, 2009 How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
I. MISTAKING BEAUTY FOR TRUTH It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that is, macroeconomics, the study of big-picture issues like recessions), Olivier Blanchard of M.I.T., now the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, declared that “the state of macro is good.” The battles of yesteryear, he said, were over, and there had been a “broad convergence of vision.” And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making.
Last year, everything came apart.
Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy.

Sept. 2, 2009 Productivity up 6.6%, Highest in 6 Years. Businesses Produce More with Fewer Workers
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/02/business/main5281537.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody AP) Worker productivity, the single biggest factor determining living standards, grew at the fastest pace in nearly six years in the spring while labor costs fell by the most in nine years, as companies slashed costs to survive the recession. But economists worry that such aggressive cuts will make it harder to mount a sustainable recovery. That's because the lack of wage growth and shortage of jobs will depress household incomes and make the prospects for a sustained rebound in consumer spending less likely. Consumer spending is critical to the recovery since it accounts for about 70 percent of total economic activity.

Sept 2,, 2009 Pfizer to Pay $2.3 Billion, Agrees to Criminal Plea By REUTERS NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/09/02/business/business-us-pfizer-settlement.html?scp=1&sq=Pfizer%20to%20Pay%20%242.3%20Billion,%20Agrees%20to%20Criminal%20Plea%20&st=cse Pfizer Inc agreed on Wednesday to plead guilty to a U.S. criminal charge relating to promotion of its now-withdrawn Bextra pain medicine and will pay a record $2.3 billion to settle allegations it improperly marketed 13 medicines.
The world's biggest drugmaker was slapped with the huge fines by the U.S. government after being deemed a repeat offender in pitching drugs to patients and doctors for unapproved uses. Pfizer pleaded guilty in 2004 to an earlier criminal charge of improper sales tactics and its practices have been under U.S. supervision since then.

August 20, 2009 Independent Farmers Feel Squeezed By Milk Cartel "We all worship at the altar of the free market — that's what we're taught as good Americans," Goodman said on the air. "But I don't know what is free about a handful of companies destroying competition, controlling the process from beginning to end." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112002639&ft=1&f=1006 Behind that pure, wholesome, nourishing glass of milk, there's an insurgency - by John Burnett "That's why we have reached, in my opinion, the point we have reached, where farm prices are so abysmal," Hardin says. "And we know the money is in the marketplace — we see what the consumer's paying for these dairy products. If the farmer would get a fair share of that, we wouldn't be having this discussion." Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose home state of Vermont has lost 32 dairy farms so far this year, has gone on the offensive. "Dean Foods controls about 90 percent of the milk supply in Michigan, 80 percent in Massachusetts, over 80 percent in Tennessee and 70 percent in northern New Jersey. That's not a free market." Sanders says.


Aug. 20, 2009—Oil Speculator: 'Capitalist Pig and Proud' Are Oil Traders to Blame for Your High Price at the Gas Pump? http://abcnews.go.com/Business/blaming-oil-speculators-high-gas-prices/story?id=8366397 By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
John Wesley McPherson, Jr. is an oil speculator. While most Americans were suffering last summer from an economic double whammy -- $4-a-gallon gas and a plunging stock market -- McPherson was profiting. And in the fall when oil prices plunged, McPherson cashed in again. Betting on oil is a very risky business. But get it right, like McPherson did, and there's a gusher of money to be made. In 2008, McPherson and the other principals of Sequoia Financial Advisory Services turned a 32.4 percent profit, according to International. Members of Congress and the trade group representing the major U.S. airlines have blamed speculators for run-ups in the price of crude.

April 15, 2009 The big business/big government axis of evil
By Chuck Baldwin http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/baldwin/090415
Self-proclaimed "conservatives" love to tout themselves as ardent supporters of the "free enterprise" system. In the name of "capitalism," they support any and every piece of legislation or governmental decision that caters to business — especially Big Business. Favorite policies of these folks include anything and everything that calls itself "free trade." Furthermore, these same "conservatives" will support just about anything and everything that is said to advance the so-called "global economy."
Needless to say, in the name of "free trade" millions of American jobs and thousands of American manufacturing plants have been outsourced to foreign countries and interests. And leading the charge for "free trade," outsourcing, and the "global economy" is the international cabal known as Big Business. But Big Business does not play this game alone. Joining Big Business is its pernicious partner, Big Government.
Together, Big Business and Big Government form a tyrannical tandem that is squeezing the breath out of our once-great republic. In fact, people need to understand that what is passing for "capitalism" in America today is nothing more than "Corporatism."

Aug. 28, 2009 Banks 'Too Big to Fail' Grow Even Bigger
Washington Post: Behemoths Born of the Bailout Reduce Consumer Choice, Tempt Corporate Moral Hazard The pursuit of profit was put ahead of the regard for safety, soundness and human life.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/28/politics/washingtonpost/main5271210.shtml (Washingtonpost.com) This story was written by Washington Post Staff Writer David Cho.

The new 21st Century Golden Rule for Advanced Civilizations: maximize profits, delete scientific facts and understanding Sept 7, 2009 U.S. Share of Worldwide Arms Market Grows http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?_r=1&hp
By THOM SHANKER WASHINGTON — Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.
The annual report was produced by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress. Regarded as the most detailed collection of unclassified global arms sales data available to the general public, it was delivered to the House and Senate on Friday in time for their return from the Labor Day recess.

August 11, 2009 FINDINGS The Earth Is Warming? Adjust the Thermostat
By JOHN TIERNEY Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/science/11tier.html?scp=1&sq=The%20Earth%20Is%20Warming?%20Adjust%20the%20Thermostat%20&st=cse

Aug 4th, 2009 (IANS) US firms look beyond India, China as offshoring surges
China News.Net - US companies are increasingly turning to offshoring their functions to achieve cost savings with small companies looking for new talent clusters beyond India, China and Eastern Europe, according to a new survey. The number of US companies with a corporate offshoring strategy in place more than doubled from 2005 to 2008, according to the fifth annual report on offshoring trends, published by Duke University in collaboration with the Conference Board, a nonprofit business research organization Monday. http://www.chinanews.net/story/527045

July 20, 2009— $23.7 Trillion to Fix Financial System? In New Report, Neil Barofsky Says It's Possible Government Could Spend $23.7 Trillion to Fix Financial System http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Politics/story?id=8127005&page=1 By MATTHEW JAFFE Sitting down? "The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a new report obtained Monday by ABC News on the government's efforts to fix the financial system.
Yes, $23.7 trillion. "The potential financial commitment the American taxpayers could be responsible for is of a size and scope that isn't even imaginable," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "If you spent a million dollars a day going back to the birth of Christ, that wouldn't even come close to just $1 trillion -- $23.7 trillion is a staggering figure."

July 19, 2009 Why Are Banks Raising Fees? As Citigroup and Bank of America Post Huge Profits, Why Are Bank Fees Going up? By Anthony Mason http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/19dimon.html?_r=1&hpw

July 19, 2009 In Washington, One Bank Chief Still Holds Sway By JACKIE CALMES and LOUISE STORY http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/19dimon.html?scp=1&sq=In%20Washington,%20One%20Bank%20Chief%20Still%20Holds%20Sway%20&st=cse

The Numerati

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It!

"To control the world, to manipulate our behavior -- what we buy, how we vote" -- through statistical mathematics, the mathematical modeling of humanity, WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST INCLUSION / COMPREHENSION OF HUMAN POTENTIAL (contemporary science cannot even comprehend evolutionary energy survival requirements) - will transform every aspect of our lives.

"In a primitive tooth and claw society you have survival of the fittest. But as technology progresses it makes the Power, Greed, Controller, Killer, instincts so destructive that you eventually have survival of nobody at all, except maybe a few cave men. Either evolution weeds out the Power, Greed, Controller, Killer instincts or everybody ends up dead. Either moral evolution goes hand in hand with technological evolution and connects with scientific survival requirements for evolving, living systems, or we're doomed."

Today, with the science of energy stagnated and petrified, stunting education and wisdom, it is no wonder the masses are 'flag freaking' toward their own self destruction, rather than flag waving toward an unlimited, unbounded, prosperous future for all.

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension would eliminate the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity

Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when devoid of a Bill of Rights for Human Life, devoid of scientific parameters necessary for Life's evolution, sustainability, and survival.

The Numerati
The Book Blurb: A captivating look at how a global math elite is predicting and altering our behavior -- at work, at the mall, and in bed
Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the twenty-first century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior -- what we buy, how we vote -- without our even realizing it.In this tour de force of original reporting and analysis, journalist Stephen Baker provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we're all entering -- and to the people controlling that world. The Numerati have infiltrated every realm of human affairs, profiling us as workers, shoppers, patients, voters, potential terrorists -- and lovers. The implications are vast. Our privacy evaporates. Our bosses can monitor and measure our every move (then reward or punish us). Politicians can find the swing voters among us, by plunking us all into new political groupings with names like "Hearth Keepers" and "Crossing Guards." It can sound scary. But the Numerati can also work on our behalf, diagnosing an illness before we're aware of the symptoms, or even helping us find our soul mate. Surprising, enlightening, and deeply relevant, The Numerati shows how a powerful new endeavor -- the mathematical modeling of humanity -- will transform every aspect of our lives.

Freedumb Freedumb, Read All About It!

Imposing grip on American news media (new term: Politically Correct - do as I say or you do not work, i.e., eat/live - throughout history, many oppressive regimes have used this standard )

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization."

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.



NYT April 23, 2008
Imposing grip on American news media
Murdoch Moving to Buy Newsday for $580 Million
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and TIM ARANGO
Rupert Murdoch is moving to tighten his already-imposing grip on American news media, striking a tentative deal to buy his third New York-based paper, Newsday, and getting his first chance to appoint the top editor of The Wall Street Journal, after the resignation of the editor on Tuesday.
His $580 million bid for Newsday and his urgency in remaking The Journal worry his competitors and cause angst in many newsrooms, including his own. And both moves are vintage Rupert Murdoch, a man who operates his sprawling News Corporation like an old-style media mogul, making big bets on old and new media — bankrolling the new Fox Business Network, aggressively pursuing a deal for Yahoo, and buying Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Journal, for far more than analysts thought it was worth. And that was just in the last year.
His first love, however, remains newspapers. The purchase of Newsday from the Tribune Company would put Mr. Murdoch in control of 3 of the nation’s 10 largest-circulation papers (the others being The Journal and The New York Post). Owning Newsday, which is based on Long Island, would also open an eastern front in the long-running battle for New York tabloid supremacy and, by combining some operations, could allow News Corporation to end decades of heavy losses by The Post.
But the agreement is far from final as competing bidders consider their positions. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News, the archrival of The Post, will make a counteroffer next week, according to people involved in the bidding who would not be identified because of the confidentiality of the talks. Representatives of another bidder, the Observer Media Group, publisher of The New York Observer, plan to meet in a few days with Cablevision — which had dropped out of the bidding — to discuss a joint offer.
People in both the News and Observer camps say they were shocked to learn of the handshake deal with Mr. Murdoch, first reported by The Chicago Tribune and The Journal, because they had been assured by Tribune’s bankers that they had until next week to submit offers. In addition, a takeover of Newsday by News Corporation, which also owns two New York City television stations, could face trouble with regulators.
Like other newspaper companies, Tribune has suffered heavy losses in advertising revenue and faces nearly $1 billion a year in debt service costs, forcing it to make plans to sell the Chicago Cubs and assets like Newsday. The company took on most of its debt load last year when it went private in a deal that put Samuel Zell, who made billions in real estate, in control.
News Corporation and Tribune Company declined to comment on any of the moves.
The resignation of Marcus W. Brauchli from The Journal was less shocking, if only because Mr. Brauchli was appointed by the previous owners of the paper. Since he bought Dow Jones in December for $5.2 billion, Mr. Murdoch has moved swiftly to remake the stately paper, calling for shorter articles and more coverage of politics, culture and even sports — and fewer business articles on the front page.
Mr. Brauchli’s colleagues and friends say he championed some of the changes and acted as a brake on others. But they say it was increasingly clear that much of the direction was being set by Mr. Murdoch and the publisher he installed, Robert J. Thomson, who oversees news operations and has none of the usual business duties of a publisher. Editors and reporters say Mr. Brauchli’s authority was being undercut... Full Text

White House Offers Grim Outlook for Medicare

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).
As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

March 25, 2008
White House Offers Grim Outlook for Medicare
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration issued a grim report on the financial outlook for Medicare and Social Security on Tuesday, but said that, by two important measures, the condition of the programs had not deteriorated since last spring.
The new reports, like those issued last April, said that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund would be exhausted in 2019, while Social Security’s reserves would be depleted in 2041.
“Medicare poses a far greater financial challenge,” said Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., the managing trustee of Medicare and Social Security.
The reports may put pressure on the presidential candidates to say what they would do to rein in health costs and to shore up the programs, which serve more than 50 million people. The candidates have largely avoided these questions, but the next president will not be able to escape them.
The trustees said that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund would pay out more in benefits than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues this year. Social Security costs will exceed tax revenues starting in 2017, they said. The government will then have to draw on assets of the Social Security trust fund — - special government bonds — to meet its obligations to retirees.
The first of the 76 million baby boomers began receiving Social Security retirement benefits this year. The number of beneficiaries will grow much faster than the number of workers paying taxes, creating financial difficulties for the program. Social Security would still receive tax revenues and could pay 78 percent of promised benefits if the trust fund ran out of money in 2041 as predicted, the trustees said.
The Democratic candidates for president have set forth detailed proposals to provide health insurance for all Americans, but have said less about how they would finance the costs of Medicare, for people who are 65 and older or disabled. Efforts to squeeze even modest savings from that program typically provoke a frenzy of lobbying on Capitol Hill.
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, one of two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, said the trustees’ report “should give Americans confidence that we can keep Social Security strong for future generations if we come together and address its real but manageable long-term cash flow issue.”
“As president,” Mr. Obama said, “I will reduce costs in the Medicare program by enacting reforms to lower the price of prescription drugs, ending the subsidies for private insurers in the Medicare Advantage program and focusing resources on prevention and effective chronic disease management.”
Aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is also seeking the Democratic nomination, had no immediate comment on the report.
Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has described Medicare as a “fiscal train wreck.” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain, said the trustees’ reports reinforced the need to get health costs under control.
Medicare has a separate trust fund to pay for doctors’ services and other outpatient care. The trustees foresee a steep increase in those costs, but said the trust fund would not run out of money because, under federal law, it had access to whatever general revenue were needed. In addition, beneficiaries’ premiums can be adjusted each year to cover about 25 percent of the expected costs of this part of Medicare, known as Part B.
The standard premium for Part B has increased 64 percent in the last five years and is now $96.40 a month. Under the formula set by existing law, the premium will stay at that level in 2009 and 2010, the trustees said.
But the report, prepared by government actuaries and economists, said these projections were unrealistic because they assumed that Medicare payments to doctors would be cut by more than 10 percent in July and by an additional 5 percent in January 2009 and in each of the next seven years, for a cumulative reduction of about 40 percent.
In fact, Congress usually intervenes to block such cuts and, in recent years, has approved small increases for doctors, thus increasing the costs of Part B and the premiums charged to beneficiaries.
President Bush set forth his vision for Medicare in February, in a budget that proposed savings of more than $180 billion in the next five years. The House and the Senate rejected those proposals in budget blueprints adopted earlier this month.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the reports reflected policy decisions made by Mr. Bush early in his administration. The president inherited a budget surplus, but, rather than using it to shore up Social Security and Medicare, she said, he squandered much of it on “tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”
Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, said the reports showed that the looming crisis in entitlement programs “is not a phony issue, as some Democrats have stated, but a very real problem that is on our doorstep.”