I am sorry to keep plaguing you all with more of the same ole posts. When it turns out no matter what products we use or buy, it seems to be a choice about not really having much choice. We are at the mercy of the manufacturers, and don’t have any say as to how products are made, packaged or sold. Someday we may be able to uninvent some of the things that have both, improved and hurt our lives and environment.
Category Archives: economics
A Review of “Utopia for Realists”
Hey everyone, a fellow blogger just posted a great read, and I thought you may enjoy it too. I don’t know how many of you know this blogger, he is intelligent, writes well and worth your time.
Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Yeah. Utopia for anything, any reason or topic always sounds good. Do you know how many descriptions like the one this book has here I’ve read over many decades from authors dating back centuries? Do you know how many were right or proven right? Yeah, I do. The answer would be NONE! Why? Cause no matter how brilliant they may seem or even be, these concepts and theories are little but pipe dreams. Fantasy. Let’s give the kids of the world some hope, some premise and promise, something to dedicate their lives too … and then not deliver. Again and again. Over and over.
An obvious example or two. One of the most obvious: Marx and Engels’ semi-brilliant (in theory) deconstruction of economic and political systems to even the playing field…
View original post 2,569 more words
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Four America’s And What Is Democracy?
Here is a long winded though really well written article I found. While I am fairly politically quiet, the following, explained a great deal of the conflicting attitudes in our country. Hope you enjoy, and have a nice day.
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What are we to do with all of that plastic!
A fellow blogger had this post and I’m sure if we were to work at things, we can overcome the massive piles of plastic waste we keep managing to create.
I’m afraid I don’t know the name of this blogger, but I have found many great scientific articles here. You should check them out.
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Is recycling a waste? Here’s the answer from a plastics expert
Another article to catch some attention. I am not able to add articles together, as I am no technogenius, so there will be a second post from a fellow blogger following this post.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/22/is-recycling-a-waste-heres-the-answer-from-a-plastics-expert.html
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Nurses and Patients Demand Equal Rights!!!
This is another issue that needs to be brought forward to the public. The treatment of everyone needs to be both fair and just. Those that are treated poorly have the right to say so, in this country. If those at the top of the pyramid don’t like the bad press, they should take more care, to prevent atrocious acts. Punishing those that speak out against unfair treatment, is why we have so many problems in our society. I urge others to help make this known!
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Baby Eating! – WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT! – PLEASE TAKE NOTE!
http://www.vice.com/video/issei-sagawa-part-1
DeadWAWIn China Shocking Footage
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Baby_farming
Mankind has been eating babies since before the dawn of civilization. The trading of infants as a food also dates back to before written records; however, it is generally believed that primitive man did not intentionally produce babies to eat, outside of a few isolated incidents.
Baby 20burger
A baby-burger for the fans of junk food.
The first records of actual baby farming appear in China in the 2rd century B.C.E. The baby farms are described as a relatively new concept, created in order to satisfy the demand for human flesh among the upper classes of Chinese society. Historically, Asiatic people have tended to eat more human flesh than other races. Older sources claim that Asians are biologically pre-desposed to cannibalism; however, most modern researchers have suggested the difference is mostly cultural.
Asian Baby Farming
You can also buy a baby marmelade, spread the marmelade on the bread and then enjoy eating it with the company of your friends
Baby farming quickly became common across all of China, particularly in the north-western areas, and remained so into the 20th century. In some periods, it is estimated that up to half of the babies born in China were consumed in some fashion.
Jonathan Swift is generally regarded as the inventor of baby farming in the West. For centuries, babies have been eaten in Europe, chiefly by Witches. However, like most baby eating, these acts should be classified as baby harvesting, if not baby stealing.
In his now famous Essay “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick”, written in 1729, Swift merely suggested baby harvesting to rid Ireland of its overpopulation, not setting up baby farms. Initially, many people were shocked by the suggestion of Swift, but his arguments in favor of baby eating won the day, and in 1733, the eating of Irish catholic infants under 1 year of age was legalized by Parliament.
For several years, baby eating remained a taboo activity; known baby eaters would often be shunned by polite society. In 1737, Swift wrote a letter to the then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole informing him of the sad state of affairs. Walpole was apparently moved by the letter, and convinced King George II to serve Irish baby at the Royal Christmas dinner that year. Within months, the Great English Baby-Eating Craze, as it would later be called, was in full swing. For the next 95 years, tens of thousands of Irish babies were devoured by the English Gentry every year, holding down the cost of land rental in Ireland and preventing widespread famine in that impoverished land.
In 1740, the first of many baby plantations was founded near Dublin with Jonathan Swift as the director. Despite the economic success of these baby farms, they only produced about 15% of the total infants consumed in Britain. The remaining 85% were mostly harvested unwanted infants, although a few Irish women did independently produce infants commercially. Baby farming remained restricted the Irish Catholics – selling a baby for the purpose of human consumption which was not both Catholic and Irish was punishable by death. Despite this restriction, some baby farming was introduced into Canada and South Africa.
Today, baby farming is limited to South-East Asia and North Korea. It was practiced in most of eastern Asia until the 20th century, but was either outlawed or rendered economically unfeasible by rising labor costs [no pun intended] and reduced demand for human flesh.
Gourmet babies are specially bred and raised infants, produced mainly in Laos, but formerly mostly in China.
Gourmet babies are often confused with celebrity babies, as both are far more expensive than regular babies. A celebrity baby is defined as the infant of a famous person sold for human consumption, whereas a gourmet baby is a specially bred infants who parents are, in all likelihood, not well known.
Gourmet babies are always raised on licensed baby plantations, while a celebrity baby is almost never grown on a baby farm. Despite the setback to this industry by the outlawing of baby farming in China, the gourmet baby industry has grown rapidly in recent years, while the baby farming industry as a whole has significantly contracted.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Baby_farming
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Sausalito councillors may limit bike tourism
Sausalito councillors may limit bike tourism
CC BY 1.0 Lloyd Alter, from the Sausalito ferry after bike ride
When I first rented a bike from Blazing Saddles in San Francisco and rode over the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito, I thought I had died and gone to heaven, it was the most beautiful ride I had done in my life. There was a song in my head that I adapted to “I wanna live in Sausalito.” I continued to tour Mill Valley, then on to Tiburon where I missed the ferry by one minute because I had stopped for ice cream, and then pedaled back to Sausalito and caught the ferry there. I did the trip again with my daughter, although that time we just went to Sausalito, spent a lot of money on lunch and took the ferry back. It is a truly glorious experience that everyone should do. I never even took out my camera until I got on the ferry, hence this bridge shot is my only photo.
http://abc7news.com/video/embed/?pid=554603
Except if Sausalito councilwoman Linda Pfeifer has her way, you won’t be able to what I did. She says that there are too many of us and that the town is being overrun with tourists on bikes. She tells ABC “That’s 1,000 rental bikes a day coming into our small town, and it’s just unsustainable to have those numbers exponentially increase every year.”
Ted is right. There are thousands of tourists of all kinds coming into Sausalito on a nice day, most in big cars and taking up a lot of space in big parking lots that are all over. They spend money and have big trunks on their cars to put stuff, but cyclists spend money too, and have big stomachs to fill after the ride. They pay for their ferry ride home, too.
Councilwoman Pfeifer says cycling is dangerous: “We’re trying to ensure that people, who our our guests, will have good memories, not sad memories of bicycle accidents”. But perhaps there might be fewer accidents if she put a limit on cars, not bikes.
The ride to Sausalito is a truly transcendent experience that everyone should put on that horrible list. Councilwoman Pfeifer should try it and who knows, she might change her mind.
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Are Politics Profitable? Who Makes How Much? For What?
When this country was founded, it was decided Senators, Representatives, Congress as well as the President and Vice President would receive monetary compensation for the time spent working for the people of the new United States.
Do you think our government officials are really doing for us as their pay would suggest?
Salaries, shown for US Senators and Representatives. Also shown: salaries adjusted to 2014 US Dollars.
Year Salary per diem/annum Percent
Adjustment
1789 $6 per diem
1795 $6 per diem only Representatives
$7 per diem only Senators
1796 $6 per diem
1815 $1,500 per annum
1817 $6 per diem only Representatives
$7 per diem only Senators
1818 $8 per diem
1855 $3,000 per annum
1865 $5,000 per annum
1871 $7,500 per annum
1874 $5,000 per annum
1907 $7,500 per annum
1925 $10,000 per annum
1932 $9,000 per annum
1933 $8,500 per annum
1934 (2/1) $9,000 per annum
1934 (7/1) $9,500 per annum
1935 $10,000 per annum
1947 $12,500 per annum
1955 $22,500 per annum
1965 $30,000 per annum
1969 $42,500 per annum
1975 $44,600 per annum
1977 $57,500 per annum
1979 $60,662.50 per annum
1982 $69,800 per annum only Representatives
1983 $69,800 per annum only Senators
1984 $72,600 per annum
1985 $75,100 per annum
1987 (1/1) $77,400 per annum
1987 (2/4) $89,500 per annum
1990 (2/1) $96,600 per annum only Representatives
1990 (2/1) $98,400 per annum only Senators
1991 (1/1) $125,100 per annum only Representatives
1991 (1/1) $101,900 per annum only Senators
1991 (8/14) $125,100 per annum only Senators
1992 $129,500 per annum 3.5%
1993 $133,600 per annum 3.2%
1998 $136,700 per annum 2.3%
2000 $141,300 per annum 3.4%
2001 $145,100 per annum 2.7%
2002 $150,000 per annum 3.4%
2003 $154,700 per annum 3.1%
2004 $158,100 per annum 2.2%
2005 $162,100 per annum 2.5%
2006 $165,200 per annum 1.9%
2008 $169,300 per annum 2.5%
2009-2014 $174,000 per annum 2.8%
Additional pay schedule for Senate and House positions:
SCHEDULE 6–VICE PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Position Salary
Vice President $233,000
Delegates to the House of Representatives $174,000
Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico $174,000
President pro tempore of the Senate $193,400
Majority leader and minority leader of the Senate $193,400
Majority leader and minority leader of the House of Representatives $193,400
Speaker of the House of Representatives $223,500
Salaries of Members of Congress: Recent Actions and Historical Tables on Senate.gov, Accessed March 2014
Executive Order 13655 of December 23, 2013, Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay. Office of Personnel Management
– Pay & Leave – SALARIES & WAGES – Executive Order for 2014 Pay Schedules
Nearly One in Five Members of Congress Gets Paid Twice
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/nearly-one-in-five-members-of-congress-gets-paid-twice-20130627
The practice of piling a pension atop a paycheck is legal, if unsavory to many. Taxpayer groups and some conservatives have condemned the practice as “double-dipping”; they say elected officials shouldn’t simultaneously draw a public pension while cashing a government paycheck, because taxpayers ultimately foot at least part of the bill for both. “You’re paying them twice,” says Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.Fixed pensions are a fading memory for most American workers, who are still smarting from losses to their 401(k)s during the credit crisis—even if those accounts have since recovered. The fact that federal lawmakers can draw large retirement payments atop generous taxpayer-funded salaries only helps fuel the widespread sense that the ruling class in Washington puts its own interests first.
UNCOMMON RICHES
Many states and municipalities forbid the practice of retiring and then taking a full-time job within the same governmental system. But those rules don’t apply to members of Congress when they are drawing a federal paycheck and, typically, a state or local pension. “It’s a hard nut to crack as far as addressing it, because it’s different jurisdictions,” Ellis says. And federal lawmakers who have served before on the state level can garner gold-plated retirement benefits, because state legislators often write their own generous rules to allow earlier retirement or fatter pensions.
NEED VS. WANT
Those collecting pensions range from some of the poorest in Congress to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., whom the Center for Responsive Politics ranked as the third-wealthiest senator in 2011. (His net worth was between $79.6 million and $120.8 million.)
That didn’t prevent Blumenthal from cashing his annual $47,000 state pension, even as Connecticut’s depleted pension fund has struggled. A 2012 study by the Pew Center on the States said the state had barely half the money it needed to pay its long-term retirement obligations, the third-worst ratio in the nation.
Blumenthal bristles when asked about whether his personal wealth and congressional salary allow him to forgo the pension. “The benefits I’m receiving from the state were earned over more than two decades of public service, and they’re two separate entities, two separate governments, and … they’re being paid according to law,” he says. “I’m not going to comment as to any aspect of my financial disclosure. I would just say, I seek to give back through public service and other ways such as the charitable contributions that my wife and I make.”
Feinstein is the second-wealthiest lawmaker to draw a pension, according to CRP’s rankings, which estimate the California Democrat’s net worth at between $42.8 million and $98.7 million. Her pension, worth $54,925 in 2012, is from her time as mayor of San Francisco. She has collected about $850,000 in retirement benefits since she joined the Senate two decades ago. Feinstein declined to comment for this story.
Feinstein is hardly the longest-tenured congressional pensioner. That honor falls to 90-year-old Rep. Ralph Hall, the oldest member of the House, who spent a decade in the Texas Legislature before taking a seat in Congress in 1981. The Republican (who was a Democrat until 2004) has been collecting a Texas state pension ever since. In those 32 years he earned some $1.3 million in retirement benefits. (Many years in the 1980s he didn’t list specific amounts; this analysis presumes his pension remained flat during those years.) His 2012 pension was $65,748. “I didn’t write the law,” Hall said in a statement. “I complied with the law, and I contributed as was allowed under the law during my official service in Texas.”
Not every member of Congress who is eligible for a pension chooses to collect. Rep. Chris Gibson, R-N.Y., a retired Army colonel who won his seat in 2010, says he writes a check every month for his full military pension, minus taxes owed, to the U.S. Treasury. It was a decision he came to jointly with his wife. “The salary that we get as a congressman is very generous,” Gibson says. “We did not want to double-dip on the taxpayers in a time of fiscal challenge.”
The Gibsons aren’t rich by congressional standards. They hold no stocks, bonds, or mutual funds—only a single bank account with between $100,000 and $250,000. It earned less than $1,000 in interest last year. Still, he declined to judge his better-off colleagues who are collecting twice. “It’s a personal decision people have to make,” he says.
Rep. William Keating of Massachusetts, who pulled $110,743 from his pension in 2012—second-largest of any Democrat—donates all of it, after taxes, to a nonprofit that assists child-abuse victims. “The work done by the caring professionals there is priceless,” Keating, a former legislator and district attorney, said in a statement.
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