Big Business

Dangling Angles: Rules, Lines And Floaters

Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
WORK-TO-KEEP-FREE-NARA-516190Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.
– George Orwell
 
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
– Albert Camus
 
It’s important to know thy keepers … because they certainly know you. Yes, they are watching, planning and plotting as you go about picking up the pieces of your daily dander. They are watching to make sure you remain occupied and don’t venture too close to the unmarked boundaries they have drawn. Go on and scoff all you want. Go ahead and laugh, too. It’s ok because that’s exactly what you’ve been programmed to do; when in doubt, keep on doubting.
You see, our lives are marked by rules to follow and lines not to cross. A friendly tip might suggest for you to be mindful of where you step. Step on the wrong toes or tread on the wrong flag and you will be crushed, most certainly. ‘Step on a crack, break your mother’s back’, remember? Yes, that’s how the life goes; ‘them’ is the rules. And, there are quite a few angles, as well. 

In Apathy We Trust (Never Mind The Drone)

Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
“I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference.”
– Jack Kerouac
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
– Thomas Jefferson

 

“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know” is an exasperated cry often heard by the apathetic and scared. “Run for your lives!” often punctuates a panic, and many are all to eager to comply. Children are admonished to heed the words ‘curiosity killed the cat’. Build a bomb shelter, stick your head in a hole in the ground and live to hide another day.

And then there’s denial … obstinate denial. ‘It can’t be true!’ we exclaim. We don’t want to believe that which is perfectly obvious because some how or another we may become implicated. So, we shake our head, close our eyes, cover our ears and refuse to listen, see, care, feel and most other than behaviors that characterize us as living and breathing human beings. In light of this, maybe it’s true, as a friend of mine is wont to say, that ‘the dead ask the best questions’ … simply because many of us don’t.

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Drive Me To The Occupation

Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
– Bob Dylan (The Times They Are A-Changin’)

 

Back when I was a teenager, I remember being eager to reach the legal age at which I could take the examination for a learner’s driving license. It wasn’t that I really thought I’d be driving, but I wanted the license just the same. It signified some rite of passage to me, I guess. License to go and be free.

A friend was kind enough to give me his copy of the ‘Driver Handbook’ published by the ‘Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles’ (read: road hogs) to help me study for the required exam. One of the first things I remember reading were the words “In the state of Florida, driving is a PRIVILEGE.” The words sort of jumped right off the page and blind-sided me (almost as unnerving as the way in which Florida Highway Troopers (read: stormtroopers) would suddenly appear, riding your rear bumper, their blue lights a blazing). Before even delineating how one attains this privilege, the handbook launched into a list of how said privileges could be taken away. Words like ‘suspended’, ‘revoked’ & ‘incarceration’ seemed menacing … purposely so.

I’m sure you will agree that teenagers quickly catch on to what the word privilege means, especially because they are always being threatened with having theirs taken away. It does seem fairly sadistic to teach children the value of ‘liberty’ by robbing it of them every now and then. It’s even more perverse when the exercise has less to do with education and more to do simply with authoritarian ‘control’.

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In For A Penny: Debtors’ Prison In The USA

Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma, Uncategorized , , , , , , ,
Debtors; Prison – Anywhere, USA

“A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”

– Mahatma Ghandi
 
“The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.”
– James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr.

 

I had a different post in mind for this week … until I read about the following news item that just made me sick:

Lisa Lindsay, a breast cancer survivor in Illinois, was arrested for a disputed $280 medical bill, which in fact she was told she did not have to pay. Nevertheless, the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and the next thing she knew, local State Troopers bombarded her home and hauled her off to jail in handcuffs. (Insert painful pregnant pause here) Yes, apparently in the United States of America – the home of the co-called ‘free’, debtors’ prisons, previously abolished in the 1830’s, are making a comeback.

You read this news item (links below) and you get the idea that there has to be more to this story. You get the feeling that the thousands of dollars that went into the arrest of this poor breast cancer survivor, over a billing error, just doesn’t make sense. But it’s true.

Folks, something is very wrong in the United States of America. Something that defies all logic and what might be referred to as ‘humanity’. Something that should be an insult to all … but it’s not. Instead, its ‘business’ as usual. It seems the game of ‘life’ is really just a game of ‘Monopoly’ to the government and Big Business. No money? Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go …

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Our Saving Disgrace: Economic Sheep Dip

Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma , , , , , , , , ,
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled
on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles
in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
– Bob Dylan (A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall)

 

This morning I awoke to the sound of a hard rain washing away yesterday’s fog. I’m an American; I live in Greece.

In the ‘States’, yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday, in some respects a day that has become less about NFL football and more about big business and advertising. In Greece it was just a ‘lack of business’ as usual. While pre-game tail parties and the commercial brainwashing of Americans were in full swing, political theatrics were being played out by Greek technocrats and bureaucrats that have turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the will of the people.

And, all the while bankers and ‘big business’ continue to turn the screws on ‘we’ the sheep.

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Eat The Rich: Socioeconomics 101

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dialogues, Occupy Karma , , , , ,
Los_horrores_de_la_guerra
Just Another Black Friday

Them that’s got, shall get
them that’s not, shall lose
so the Bible said, and it still is news
mama may have, and papa may have
God bless’ the child,
that’s got his own, that’s got his own
– Billie Holiday, (God Bless The Child)

It’s funny how we build thoughts into ideas, concepts into crusades, mole hills into mountains, and pet peeves into perversions. We preach, we scorn, we rave and we rant. We stand on our soap boxes and express our outrage, spitting bile and brimstone in indignation at the very core ideas we embraced long ago, even those that have become part and parcel of what we call ‘humanity’.

For example, this past week we once again had the displeasure of experiencing another Black Friday, an appalling and dehumanizing ritual of consumerism promoted by ‘Big Business’ in the name of the almighty dollar. I’m not sure when this much-anticipated annual display of commercial beastliness became popularized, but it’s certainly become just another symbol of the decline of American ‘values‘ … and I don’t mean the Republican kind. It’s a perverse version of the ‘running of the bulls’ in which the ‘tall and the small’ get to displace their sanity and civility in the name of lethal consumerism. This year’s theme, by the way, was pepper spray.

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Lie To Me! Fabrications, Fables, Fairy Tales And Fibs

Jay Leonard Schwartz Defying Expectations, Dialogues, Occupy Karma , , , , , , , , ,
“He gives speeches, but they put him back in bed where he wrote his satire.”
– Brian Wilson, (He Gives Speeches)

 

I think it was in kindergarten when I remember being told the story of little George “I cannot tell a lie” Washington and the cherry tree he confessed to his father he had chopped down. Through this vignette, my classmates and I were admonished to always tell the truth. The only problem was that often told tale … is a lie, a fabricated fable of fibbing fiction. It was actually created by biographer, Mason Locke Weems, as an anecdote laudable to Washington’s character and as an “exemplary to his countrymen”. Nevertheless, this fractured fairy tale is almost as hallowed as the national anthem.

When I was 2 years old, the US Congress passed the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Resolution’ granting President Johnson the wanton power to take military action as he saw fit in Southeast Asia, ostensibly to combat the spread of communist aggression. The passage of the resolution, enabling Johnson to launch America full-tilt into the Vietnam war, was predicated on a fabricated set of events suggesting that American naval vessels had come under unprovoked attack by the North Vietnamese.

When I first heard the above tale, I remember being skeptical. I’m not sure why my ‘bullshit detector’ went off that day. Perhaps it was the result of a burgeoning character flaw or a latent psychic ability to perceive the teacher’s own insincerity in her own overly dramatic rendition of the fable. Some might say that my lack of gullibility at that tender age speaks volumes of my character or my perception of ethics. And, indeed early on I began to question my moral constitution. In retrospect, I was ‘loony’ to do so.

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Grievously Lost In The Political Dialogue

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dialogues, Occupy Karma , , , , , , ,
Face_of_Statue_of_Liberty
I was doing time in the universal mind. I was feeling fine. 
I was turning keys, I was setting people free. 
I was doing all right. 
Then you came along, with a suitcase and a song. Turned my head around. 
Now I’m so alone, just looking for a home in every place I see. 
I’m the freedom man. That’s how lucky I am. 
– The Doors, Universal Mind 

Suffice it to say that I am my own worst enemy. “Don’t discuss sports, politics or religion”, I’ve often been told over and over by those who espouse mediocrity in the name of gaining more followers and building readership. “Stay away from socially sensitive topics”, I’ve been admonished. “Tell your story”, I’ve been told. “Fair enough”, I’ve answered, yielding a pensive pregnant pause, a harbinger of rebuttal. “However”, the boom is lowered, “as the conversations of my life manifest on a daily basis, and I seem to exist on a day to day basis”, I smile, “then all I can really do is share with you all how twisted some of these conversations are.” Yes, it’s easy to get lost in the discussion, and in my doing so you will learn volumes about who I am. “So let’s start with politics” he says as a groan is heard escaping somewhere from the bowels of a ‘platitude’ just north of hell.

It’s difficult to know where the conversation began. Most likely I pissed someone off as usual merely because I stated my opinion, which to be honest was probably more an exercise of my playing the devil’s advocate than my speaking from the depths of my own conviction. Nevertheless, despite my incessant ‘teasing the cat with a bit of string’ at some point my feelings in earnest do tend rise to the fore, meeting the occasion head on. Now mind you, I’m not a politician, nor am I really a student of politics. But I do know where I stand and on what soapbox my heart bleeds. There are some issues over which I become incensed, inflamed, stupefied, and just down right outraged … but never indignant.

This particular conversation occurred between ‘Heart Bleeder’ and ‘Freedom Man’, the former a so called Liberal, the latter a self-possessed Libertarian. Now, I do have a bone to pick with Libertarians, especially the ones who claim ‘liberty and freedom’ and apparently suggest that they know what the framers of the constitution originally had in mind, which is apparently what we all seem to have forgotten over the years. Yeah, I almost forgot they ‘love them some guns’ and think that in a true free market, a little hamburger shack opened in a formerly abandoned ‘Fotomat’ booth will be able to compete with McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s. In other words, they don’t have a clue, but celebrate their right to live in denial anyway.

The conversation is joined already in progress. Trust me, you haven’t missed much…

Freedom Man:
So the question is for whose benefit will said regulations and statutes in reality be composed, especially given the fact that they are written by politicians beholden to Big Business?
Heart Bleeder:
If you are answering your own question, what’s the point in asking? Still, the obvious answer is to dispense with ‘Big Business’ and its corruptive influence and power.

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Not Born On The Fourth Of July

Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma , , , , , ,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
– Francis Scott Key, The Star Spangled Spammer
 
Today is Independence Day for the United States of America. It’s also two days before my birthday. I thought I’d just mention that. Yes, I could have been a Yankee Doodle Dandy, born on the 4th of July. My mom had gone into the hospital on the day with contractions. I once asked her about being in labor on the holiday, but she just claimed she had remembered being sick with nausea, and throwing up—while a trailer for the film, Mutiny On The Bounty, was being shown on TV.
 
Meanwhile, a little rambunctious bouncing baby boy, yet to be born, bided his time and stayed put, opting to be fashionably late. Mutiny on Bounty, indeed! 
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Duck, Cover, Kiss Your Butt Goodbye. Really!

Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma , , ,
“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.” 
– Ronald Reagan
Yesterday, there were a couple news articles that caught my attention. The first was about residents from Fukushima nuclear disaster area who have radioactive urine. I don’t know about you, but that makes my hair stand on end. It’s just one more reason why I’m happy I don’t have a microwave oven and am trying to limit my mobile phone use. Really.
The other troubling news item was an article suggesting that US nuclear evacuation plans haven’t been updated to account for population growth. It seems that according to statistics based on the US Census information, urban populations around nuclear power plant facilities have ballooned 450 percent. So what that means is that if you live in an area near a nuclear power plant and your regular drive home from work is a slow, painful and maddening exercise of slowly crawling along with bumper to bumper ‘stop and go’ congested rush hour traffic … well, then you already know what your evacuation route driving conditions will be in the event of a nuclear accident, such as a meltdown. Seriously. Really.
If you are one of those types that like to wave off ‘doom and gloom‘ scenarios dismissing them as ‘what if’ fantasies, then I guess I need to remind you of the disasters at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima disasters. Yes, nuclear power plants are not the fool-proof safe facilities that governments and industries purport them to be. Really.