Let's lose this war

War is supposed to be a way to get the economy going is it? That's the conventional wisdom I keep hearing in the United States. Yet somehow this $500,000,000 dollar a day operation isn't getting the job done.

In a recent conversation with a good friend visiting from New York, the topic of Germans knowing how to make capitalism work by doing it well and making the most out of the resulting vacation time associated with quality production came up.

My friend responds, "Well, they lost WWII and they had no military to focus on developing." In other words, the lack of a military economy allowed the country to focus on the sustainable goal of creating value-added jobs in production.

Viola.

Japan too. From ashes to economic tower of power. Is it time for America to lose a war now? Could it be that funneling $500m a day into the necessary technology to survive global warming could create a boom to manufacturing? To the entrepreneurial innovation the States are known and loved for?To the US economy?

Well, dumping $500m/day into corporations bent on destroying, with an unenforced mandate to rebuild a country they don't live in with dollars they are never forced to account for just isn't working. So is it time to give losing this war a try?

I say 'hell yeah.' Let's lose this one and see where it takes us.

gathering your personal information, selling it for a profit, subjecting it to security risks, then charging you for information about yourself

oh...and did I forget wasting your personal time and natural resources by facilitating the bombardment of your mailbox with relentless garbage offers from creditors of every sort?

You can stop that garbage coming in your mailbox and over your phones by filling out forms by the underfunded government institution charged with consumer advocacy.

Yet another 'pro-business' practice in the land of the free (to milk your butt for as much as I like 'cause I, corporate America, write the laws here) look to me like the definition of modern financial institution extortion.

Britannica defines extortion as:
extortion - n. - Unlawful exaction of money or property through intimidation or undue exercise of authority.

The only reason it's not extortion is because the corporations write their own laws, therefore it is lawful and, as many corporate law practices are in the States, completely unethical.

Gathering your personal financial information, selling it to any Russian mafia gangster who has a fax number at an incredible security risk - to as many entities as the information gathering entity wants to, then... in the greatest insult:

Selling you YOUR information back to you. It's like a parasite worm puking up the nutrients it's sucking out of your stomach and billing you for nutrients.

Yes, by law, you have access to your credit report at www.freecreditreport.com. And you think it's that easy? Try again. Since they only give you the tour once you've filled in too much information and invested too much time to turn back when you run into the inevitable demand for cc information, I am offering the following free tour as a service to you:

1. You must provide credit card information to enroll yourself in a subscription service you don't want but must remember to cancel within a period of time or you will then be billed by the service monthly.
2. You must provide a credit card. Many people with scores don't have a cc
3. After you are into your report you may think that's all the info out there on you: bull. The collection companies harvest tons more information than they show you.
4. One very important piece of info NOT included in the 'Free Trial' is your actual credit score. You must pay to find out what every landlord, employer with a snoop problem and others find out instantly about you.

It's pretty much a good example of an industry writing it's own laws running itself. You can thank the little known Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC ain't down with ME) of the US government for that. Their hilarious motto, "Ensuring a Safe and Sound National Banking System for All Americans." A little known entity with a big job, they're charge is 'regulating' the credit industry, essentially a high-level rubber stamping assignment.

If you're looking for a talking head apologist for the industry for your new dartboard, I suggest using the image of Julie Williams that leads this post. She's the stooge in charge of letting CC corps do as they like and has a fantastic time rapid blinking her eyes as she lies her way through Frontline interviews on their excellent expose "The Secret History of the Credit Card"

Eating alone in America

There's a beautiful scene between an American FBI agent working on a murder case in Bangkok and the story's narrator, who is the son of a successful Bangkok prostitute and an American service man he never knew.

The scene elaborately describes her eating a pint of ice cream right in front of him. He's so shocked by her rudeness, he is rendered speechless. (He also happens to be a Buddhist adept).

Not only is eating this freezer desert absurdly counter intuitive to his nature - the Thai respond to heat with hot foods, but far more inconceivable is that she is able to eat in front of another human being without offering and sharing. It's a beautiful scene.

Bangkok 8 is generally a fantastic written assessment of Western and Eastern values. Let it be known men in Thailand, despite being stupid, clumsy men like myself, do not go long without physical love - an act this Buddhist nation considers nothing more than "scratching an itch."

There is considerable pagination devoted to running parallels between insatiable Western consumption and it's ills, including the practice of Western adults shelving the actual practice of sex for the idea of sex. I'll get into my thoughts on Western masculinity when I'm feeling more controversial. Back to eating alone...

An acquaintance from Kosovo here in Minneapolis, when asked what he most missed about Europe, his response, not coincidentally I think: "I miss eating with neighbors. Every night someone would invite us over. Every night. Here no one shares."

I can corroborate. As a supplier of many a party and happy hour, you all - generally speaking - are a stingy bunch of human beings. This creates a certain lack of compassion among suppliers like myself - good heartedness turns sour. Then we all get jobs on Madison Avenue cynically making money on your gullibility when you could of bribed all us smart people with a little generosity please. A sad comment on our country, and more importantly you.

From what I understand, it's not the Thai or Europeans who are the exception in eating with their countrymen, it's us. I think it is a pitiful kind of existence that we can't share it on a basic level. I don't know if something was lost with the 'Get your own bag' Doritos campaign - maybe it was never there. Greed likely grew out of the (annoying as hell, completely dated mythology - god, how I hate Western American expansionist opensky, spread out industrialization, expansionist mythology) frontier days of super scrounging.

This doesn't mean There Will Be Blood wasn't a fantastic movie. It means I harbor serious antipathy for the main characters.

Whatever the reason, I find it a sad reminder that among the super abundance of the States, there's a poverty in our minds and imaginations on so low a level. It's pathetically juvenile for what is supposed to be an adult society. And this poverty manifests itself in the pettiness of our foreign policy, our Bushes and Hillarys.

Praise be to Obama: He appears to be the rare adult leader in a country of inexplicably successful children, many age 55 or more.

I find this lack of sharing lonely. We are one of the few places in the world where you will find truly lonely and isolated people in major population centers. It simply does not happen elsewhere. Canada doesn't count - and they're probably less lonely anyway. At least they found a way to share health care.

My guess is it's another melting pot hangover: Most countries are based on a shared ethnicity, implying a shared fate - what we call racism here in America - allowing a kind of participatory genealogy among the population. I think with all the possibility, prosperity and potential, America has sacrificed this type of human self-knowledge.

Eating alone, along with driving alone is a daily ritual exercise in self-alienation. What a waste of time and life. Now consider Americans eat 30% of their meals in the car. When do we stop paying to have our lives stolen from us?

The Gas Tank Challenge

I am instituting the Gas Tank Challenge for myself. I am filling up the tank of my ridiculously gas guzzling truck "my shadow" you might call it, and I am seeing how long I can go - exactly how many weeks and days that is - before I fill the greedy engine again.

To be sure Charlie loves a full tank. But I'm sick of gas. Using gas. Buying gas. Supporting George W. Bush and Dick Cheney with gas. Gas is boring. Gas is yesterday. Gas is what The Gas Tank Challenge seeks to avoid.

I encourage you to join me in my disdain for petromobility. Thank god Spring is coming. Yo' bike. My butt do exist.

PS> The next challenge is the PC Face Time Challenge. Reducing the number of hours you spend vis a vis your f-in computer screen. Progressively month after month. I'm beginning the timing now. Quality of life improvements and increased human face time, here I come.

HTML design of final site layout available to see

Please email the publisher for a sneak peak at the layout of the Creditland full site - to launch on Independence Day 2008. We are currently accepting applications for sponsors - and the new site has 7 news pages all with fabulous positioning for businesses interested in putting their ethics on display.

The temp site is hidden in plain site - so if you have a curious streak you want to itch - please send an email to tobin dot brogunier at creditland dot org for your preview.

I am also available to walk prospective sponsors and underwriters through the site myself - describing each section with some detail - to give the full picture of what this project will encompass as it heads towards launch on July 4.

Additionally an ad-kit is being prepared with rates, demographic information, and background and bio on the publisher. Please send email if you are interested in receiving this information.

Full Creditland site lauch: Independence Day 2008

The date for full site launch is July 4, 2008 - what better day to declare independence from predatory economics?

Phase One of the site: The 'Dear Tara' feature where readers write in their questions for a credit counselor - is looking to be about a month out.

Phase Two is the content build and testing phase. We will be looking for people who are interested in contributing their stories, logging in as users and testing out the architecture of the site.

Phase Three is Independence Day: This is the full site launch, and there's definitely gonna be a party.

Monsanto Mark

Here's a little politics: The guy working overtime to get Hillary elected president lobbies for Monsanto. Monsanto does things like sues dairies that DO NOT use their nasty, banned in every first world country but the United States, bovine milk production pussy udder milk hormone. Are they suing them for NOT using the drug? They wish! No they are suing because these small dairies deign to state the perfectly true statement, "Does not contain rBHT" on their packaging. Poor little Monsanto calls it slander - like their puss producing drug that drives cattle like machines and makes crappy tasting milk and creates all kinds of debilitating conditions in the drugged animals and artificially raises the competitive floor of the entire marketplace forcing farmers who would never touch the stuff to use it just to compete - like this here drug ain't no thing. Well, Hillary's main man - his career is defending these guys all over the world - where they are universally hated. Link and post the little clipart I did above as much as you like.