The most significant piece of union-busting legislation passed in recent years is the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act of 2006. This is the law that is crushing the postal service. It requires them to pre-fund pensions 75 years out by 2016 – to the tune of $5-6 billion per year. No other firm has such stiff requirements. Add this to the other problems it faces – inability to adjust prices where it competes with UPS and FedEx, the subsidy of advertising and other junk mail by first class mail, and the natural slow-down it is facing as people more and more use the Internet to pay bills and correspond, and it’s looking bleak. But take out that pension requirement, and the USPS would be in much better shape, perhaps approaching solvency.
Continue reading “A future bailout in the making”
Author: Mark Tokarski
Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.
Since we have no carrots, we must use sticks
While remarkably successful at home in producing a dumbed-down population with a servile intellectual class, US propaganda has never been effective abroad. Consequently, it resorts to military attacks, the objective of which is to remove the virus of anti-American ideology from places by destroying the vessels that carry it. If US-style “capitalism,” which is nothing of the sort, could stand up to “socialism,” which is real, Vietnam, South and Central America, Iraq and Iran might have escaped the violence that was rained on them in past decades.
Translate Hillaryspeak. She’s saying that our message doesn’t play well. Her answer – throw more money at it.
The freedom to obey
Egypt went to the polls this week and elected a new legislative body. That body, of course, has no power. Nor will it ever – get real. A country whose population offers up a 78% unfavorable view of the United States (we did, after all, back their dictator and arm their military for the past thirty years) cannot possibly be allowed a true democratic government. Such a government would be anti-American. Not allowed. The militarily will continue to rule for the foreseeable future, and palliative remedies like meaningless elections will have to suffice.
However, Egyptian democracy in its current form is superior to the American version. After all, Egyptians are mostly aware that the election was for politicians who have no real power. Americans are mostly oblivious to that small detail.
It’s on
Facts don’t alter perceptions, do they
Political blogger Glenn Greenwald recently wrote about retired General Wesley Clark’s recollection of an officer telling him in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks that the then U.S. Secretary of Defense had issued a memo outlining a plan for regime change within five years in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. We play an excerpt of Clark’s comments and ask Greenwald to respond. “What struck me in listening to that video … is that if you go down that list of seven countries that he said the neocons had planned to basically change the governments of, you pretty much see that that vision, despite the perception that we have a Democratic president and therefore the neo-conservative movement is powerless, is pretty much being fulfilled,” Greenwald says.
In a thought-controlled society, surface features like a change of administration brought about with much excitement seem to indicate change. But only perceptions change. Obama=Bush=Obama. Elections do not matter.
What is the drug war really about?
Annual deaths caused in US by tobacco use: 443,000
Annual deaths caused by alcohol abuse: 75,000
Annual deaths due to illegal drug use: 17,000
Annual deaths due to FDA-approved drugs: 64,000
Annual deaths due to marijuana use: 0
Annual deaths due to execution for drug-related offenses: 1,000
Number of tobacco executives executed: 0
Number of pharmaceutical executives executed: Far too few.
All right then, armed with the facts, DEA, go get ’em!
A black festival
“Black Friday” is an interesting social phenomenon, the product of intense advertising throughout the year leading up to an orgasmic release the day after Thanksgiving. I can only speculate on why people behave this way, but the psychologists who are at the center of every successful advertising agency surely have insights worth sharing. I wish they would do so.
“Christmas” is more rational and less manipulative than Black Friday. It is a celebration of the beginning of return of the sun after the solstice. On the 21st of December it will reach its lowest level on the southern horizon, and for three days it appears not to move. On the 25th of December, barely perceptible, it begins its return. (Should not “on the third day he rose again” be “fourth”? What am I missing?)
Our ancestors, having lots of time, paid close attention to the sun, the moon and the stars. Lacking scientific knowledge, they worshiped them as gods. The sun (Zeus or Ra, Greek and Egyptian, and “Yahweh, from some Jewish tribes) became the supreme god over all, and the female moon Meres (Mary) and male Apollo (Paul) tagged along. The word “son” is used to describe the modern sun-god, Jesus. How can that be coincidental? Continue reading “A black festival”
The importance of Stalingrad
Last April I learned something startling, but which has since begun to make far more sense: Prior to the defeat of the Nazis at Stalingrad the US had no plans for confronting Hitler’s Fortress Europe. Our leaders were content to make peace with him.
Stalingrad so weakened his regime that plans were quickly made to invade. The Nazis were so diminished as a fighting force that many we encountered were old men and teenagers in uniform.
Continue reading “The importance of Stalingrad”
Montana lets out at 2:45 PM
Well, I have quite a bit of time between now and my flight at 11 AM tomorrow. Expect some posting here. I’m in Billings, Montana.
When I went to grade school here, as I learned many years later, the reason we were let out at 2:45 and not at 3:00, like Garfield School down the street, was that the nuns wanted to minimize our contact with public school kids. We did not know this, of course, but I did have the attitude that something bad was going on in that school one block away.
Continue reading “Montana lets out at 2:45 PM”
The only living Democrat in US
I have often been disrespectful of Democrats here, saying things like they are a poor excuse for a political party. That’s because I think they are a piss-poor excuse for a party and ought to just fold their tent and clear the way for something that this country has long needed: A second party.
I just spent the last hour and a half here in Billings, Montana walking the perimeter of Riverfront Park while listening to Governor Brian Schweitzer on my IPad. He hosted David Sirota’s morning talk show in Denver.
Continue reading “The only living Democrat in US”
Piece of Mindful 