GuidoWorld

Though the stock market has rebounded and the recession officially ended well over a year ago most people agree that the US economy is not in good shape. The remnants of the financial crisis and the “great recession” still linger as does a healthy amount of skepticism that things have actually improved.

Pretty much everyone is in agreement that the US is drowning in a sea of debt. Between consumer debt, government debt and residential and commercial mortgage debt it is pretty obvious that the entire economy is in peril of becoming bankrupt and unable to make their payments.

Likewise most people also agree that the job market is poor and too many people are unemployed or underemployed. Many point to the loss of manufacturing jobs to emerging nations as a root cause of the lack of jobs in the US.

The solutions to these problems fall into two camps. One camp focuses on the debt problem and feels that the consumer needs to act in fiscally responsible manner and pay off their credit card and mortgage debt. A majority of these people also feel that the government needs to curtail its debt and balance its budget. Often these same people claim that government is too big and too powerful and that its interventions only interfere with the free market system healing itself.

The other camp focuses on the poor job market and believes the US economy is in need of stimulus to get its economy functioning again. This crowd generally favors giving tax breaks to small and large businesses so that they have the funds to expand businesses, hire employees and successfully compete in the global economy. Many of this crowd also feels bail outs and stimulus packages may be necessary to stave off crises and create a business friendly environment enticing businesses to stay in the US and employ its own citizens. Leaders of this camp state that the only through printing more money can we have enough to pay off our debts while helping fund businesses to expand and hire new workers.

I myself have always been a frugal person who has viewed debt and the borrowing of money as reckless and not very smart. Yet, this does not prevent me from seeing the flaws in the paying down the debt solution offered by that anti-debt camp. Since wages in the US have not and show no signs of skyrocketing the only way for most consumers to reduce their debt is through saving their money and consuming less.

Economic experts are fond of saying that the consumer (through consumption) is responsible for 70% of the economy. Now, even if that percentage is a little high the fact remains our economy will have a hard time surviving if the consumer stops buying goods and services. By definition a consumer who is saving and paying off debt is one who is cutting back on the purchasing of goods and services. A contraction of money spent by the consumer will cause a contraction in the economy, which is by definition a recession.

Now some would say we need a lengthier recession in order to wring out the excesses if our economy (debt). These same people would state that this is the role of recession in the standard business cycle and that we just need to accept this fact. Yet, the problem with that logic is that our debt load is historically high and could take years if not decades to “wring out” of the system. In the meantime many people would lose their jobs, houses, go bankrupt, and suffer if not starve.

Also during this time of fiscal responsibility it would be hard for any new jobs to be created in a consumer service based economy. In an environment where the majority of Americans are cutting back on purchases, saving money and paying off debt who would want to open up a new or expand an existing business. In such an environment businesses close and lay off workers and anyone foolish enough to make what people aren’t buying will not stay in business long.

Likewise if the government were balancing its budget and paying down its mountain of debt the economy would continue to contract. A fiscally conservative government would not be able to stimulate the economy through giving money to businesses or consumers to encourage them to spend and create jobs.

The truth be told this has only been the case which our extreme debt crisis is only emphasizing. A fiscally responsible society in which its citizens saved their money and only bought what they needed would never be affluent or have enough jobs for its citizens. The majority of jobs that we have would never have existed if people only bought what they truly needed, or even lived inside their means. This is especially true of a modern society where automation and mass production reduce the number of employees needed to produce goods and services for people to consume.

The libertarian contention that a true free market capitalistic system based on supply and demand would cure all our ills including the lows of the business cycle are not rooted in the real world. Not only does it ignore human nature, the imbalances inherent in amassing capital and the complications caused by urban and global markets, but it just doesn’t take into consideration automation and the simple fact that we cannot provide 6 billion people with truly gainful employment.

Taking a look at the camp which advocates the printing of money and all other forms of stimulating the economy through fiscal stimuli, we find a host of new limitations to their solutions. First of all much of the bailouts are a continuation of the trickle down theory of economics which has greatly assisted in the creation of imbalances inherent in our debt laden society.

Since the 80’s the relative wealth of the majority of Americans has declined while an increasingly shrinking percentage of Americans are hoarding a larger and larger percentage of total wealth. An escalation or even a continuation of the rate of printing more money is likely to only enhance the gulf between the have’s and have nots.

The stated goal of expanding the money supply (printing money) is to stimulate the economy by making funds available for consumers and businesses to pay down their debt while providing businesses with the necessary funds to expand their operations and thereby hire employees.

Yet, many of the dynamics and repercussions of monetary expansion and bailouts only inflame the debt problem and make the monetary gulf amongst American’s more exaggerated. Let’s take a look at a few of the most obvious flaws and historical limitations of monetary expansion.

First it should be pointed out that we have been expanding the monetary supply for decades which has had the net result of depreciating the dollar and inflating the national debt through many different vehicles including the trade deficit.

When you add money to the overall pool of money in existence you are immediately making each dollar worth less. As the money supply grows each individual dollar losses some purchasing power. Imagine playing monopoly and you had $500 dollars and the bank totaled 10,000. In that case you would have one 20th or 5% of all the money available. In a game involving four of five people you’d be doing okay. Yet, if someone were to increase the banks total to 1,000,000 dollars your $500 would be far less impressive and you would now own about one two thousandth of the amount and no where near even one hundredth of one percent of the money available.

This is essentially what happens to our purchasing power as the money supply increases. The only people who immediately benefit from monetary expansion are those able to borrow money and those that lend the money. When the federal reserve prints money they and the banking system make money through the interest acquired by loaning the money out. Since the Fed is a private banking cartel which has a contract with our government we the taxpayers pay the interest that the government owes for the money being printed.

Currently we have interest rates at historically low levels whereby the money being printed is not very costly to a borrower. This allows wealthy people an opportunity to borrow a good portion of the money with little overhead. While this does present the opportunity for the wealthy to use this money for business expansion and job creation the reality is that the money is more often than not used for other purposes.

The money invested in business expansion could be used to build factories abroad where labor is cheaper and thereby not helping the US’s unemployment problem. Second, the money borrowed at low rates can be used to buy longer term US bonds or foreign bonds with higher yields. The borrower can then use a portion of the money borrowed to pay off the interest and use the higher yield of the bonds they purchased to generate a sizable profit.

The profit garnered through the higher yield bonds can be reported as earning by a corporation giving off the impression their business is improving and thereby entice investors to buy their stock which further increases their profits in a self perpetuating cycle of profit allowing corporate profits to surge despite low growth or even a decrease in earnings generated in their actual business.

Money printed by the Federal Reserve is money, we through our government, have to pay interest on. All printed dollars added to the money supply weaken the purchasing power of already existing money (by diluting the money supply) while increasing the amount of government, and hence, tax payer debt.

The goal of printing dollars is to stimulate economic growth. In an ideal situation you would gain more than a dollars worth of growth for every dollar printed. Yet, statistics have shown that this is not so. About two decades ago we created about a dollars worth of growth for every three dollars printed (borrowed). The relationship has deteriorated ever since and the last statistics I saw had us needing to print about $10 for every dollar of economic growth.

What the above paragraph says is that while printing money does in fact stimulate economic growth it causes a much more significant growth in debt. In other words for every dollar we print we are incurring more than a dollar’s worth of debt plus the interest owed to repay the Federal Reserve for their efforts.

The more money you print the less purchasing power the dollar has, which is what we mean when we say that the dollar is being devalued. What this means is the more dollars in circulation the more dollars you need to pay for the same item purchased before the money supply increased. This commonly referred to as inflation.

So while printing dollars may stimulate the economy it also causes inflation. Inflation causes a rise in the cost of living. So, unless workers wages are climbing faster than the rate of inflation, a rise in the money supply makes it harder for people to purchase things. Inflation making things more expensive has a tendency to slow down economic growth. So, in most situations one lowers interest rates to stimulate the economy. Yet, since our interest rates are already at historic lows (between 0 and .25%) we are unable to lower rates to stimulate our economy.

In essence we are currently trying to borrow our way out of debt. Yet, printing money causes more debt and makes it harder for people to pay off their debt. If things cost more people will have to spend more on basics such as food and shelter and use the rest to keep up with or hopefully pay down some of their debt. Inflation means more and more consumers will cut down on purchases and the number of people going bankrupt and having their homes go into foreclosure will increase. Businesses, likewise, will have a hard time paying off their debts and staying in business. Many of those not closing their doors will be forced to lay off workers in order to survive.

As the title of this post suggests we are in an economic Catch 22, where both cutting back on consumption and printing money (increasing debt) will cause more job unemployment and further contraction of the economy (recession or depression). At this point in time it seems that our policy makers are content to try and keep things afloat for as long as possible.

The best analogy I can think of is that we are in a skyscraper that is on fire. Without a means of putting the fire out we are deciding to try and out run the fire. Instead of jumping out the third story window, we are running up the stairs to higher floors as the fire chases up after us. Having no water we stack all the furniture we have to block the path of the fire allowing us to race up to higher floors hoping the fire burns itself out. Yet, the barriers we place in front of the fire (furniture = debt and inflation) is a known fuel for fires making it likely the fire will only quicken and strengthen. The higher we climb the less of a chance we have for a safe and successful leap from the inferno.

In sum having people focus on reducing consumption and reducing their debt will likely result in slowing down the economy even further resulting in increased unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy. While increasing the amount of debt through printing money and corporate bail outs will only increase the mountain of debt choking consumers and businesses. In such an environment business contraction and not expansion is likely and larger corporations can make money off money borrowed and if they do expand businesses it will be in countries or communities with cheap labor.

This post has gotten far too long, so in my next post I will explain why I think this Catch 22 exists and what should be done about it.

Jim Guido

There is little in life more illuminating and mysterious than words and language. I could and will spend many days exploring and describing the wonder and reality of words. In the last post I discussed some of the beauty of our ability to think of the possible and the world of desire born out of our sex drive. In this post I want to talk of the beauty and possibility or words and some of the ways this power is being abused in our modern world.

We use words with such ease that we have a hard time imagining human experience without words. At times it is difficult for us to imagine human thought without words, even though we do have wordless emotional reactions, as well as artistic and musical experiences which contain much meaning without verbal assistance.

Yet, at each moment words stand ready to articulate our experience and paint our world. It is common for us to place words in different categories. Words sometimes function as names for objects (nouns), actions (verbs), descriptions (adjectives), and our reactions to events (feelings and emotions). Words are able to represent both time and place (real or fictional).

Let me explain some of the reasons that I view words as colors with which I paint my world. It is a little deceptive when we say that many words simply name things and objects. As an example let’s take the word sofa. Most people when asked to imagine a sofa can conjure up a rather specific mental image. Yet, it is probable that in a roomful of ten people that there would be a sizable divergence of the image imagined.

In other words my ideal couch is likely somewhat to very different than yours. Of course, much of the variety might have to do with qualities rather than the essential nature of the couch. Differences in color, texture or materials would not truly contest the very definition of a sofa. Yet, once we get into differences of size, shape, contours and the like we begin to blur the edges of what a sofa really is.

In essence a sofa is not so much a specific thing as a group of objects of varying qualities that is defined by related words. A sofa is a sofa until it becomes a bed, recliner, chair, love seat, etc.

This is also true in the world of action and emotion. One is walking until it switches over to trotting, running, hopping, dancing, leaping or swaying. One is angry until one is able to be labeled as frustrated, enraged, agitated or testy.

Words are far less rigid than we usually regard them. The irony is that the larger and more abstract your vocabulary the more richly and accurately you can describe the world and your experience of it.
At first, perhaps, we saw an orange and recognized it by its color. We therefore called the fruit an orange, and helped others identify it by its color. In this case the specific object was an orange recognizable to us because of its distinctive color. Yet, the moment we separated the color orange into an abstract concept separate from the concrete object of the fruit called an orange we opened up an entire world of articulation and possibility previously closed to us.

Once orange became a quality (color) and not just a piece of fruit we were able to see orange in many other things. Orange could then be a highlight or a quality we see in a host of other things. Our perceptions, descriptions, and experiences of so many other things in the world became richer and more defined by our recognition of orange-ness.

This is not to say that we didn’t see the color orange in other things before we came across the fruit, but only to say that perception and language have a synergetic relationship in which progress in one arena allows increased clarity and definition in the other.

One can see an elm tree without it being named separately from the general group of trees. Yet, once we have identified what distinguishes an elm from an oak it makes it far easier for us to enrich our experience of both oaks and elms. So, often see without really recognizing the specific attributes of that experience. Words have such a vital role in what and how we experience.

I’m a big proponent of giving care to how we frame an event or experience. The words we choose to describe an event to ourselves as well as others can drastically affect our experiences and our view of life. There are limits to the freedom we have to frame things and this skill can be used as a form of denial, but if used wisely it can help us become a happier, wiser and more satisfied person.

Describing a mountain view as majestic is far different than experiencing it as foreboding. Approaching a challenging task as an opportunity is far different than as a critical moment. I personally get excited rather than anxious when I have an opportunity to score the last basket in a game. Many on the other hand are paralyzed by the possibility of failure because of how they frame the situation to themselves. This is not to say that a person who looks at a challenge as an opportunity will always succeed, but only that the attitude of opportunity makes success more likely.

There is great power in the words we choose to articulate our experience. Even synonyms often harbor slight changes in meaning that can have a dramatic impact on the overall experience of a description.

Let’s go back to an image I used earlier and see words as carving out their own space. A sofa as I said is defined by the words that border it. It is a sofa until it becomes a love seat, longer or bench. Even though they are synonyms many would have a slightly different experience of a couch than a sofa.

The space of a sofa is defined by the words that border it. The more words related to sofa we have the more defined and specific the word sofa becomes. The other related words make its space smaller and more defined kind of like the increased number of pixels on a TV screen create the possibility of higher clarity and definition.

The larger your vocabulary and the reservoir of words available to you and the more clear and defined can be your experience and articulation. The more words at your disposal the more subtlety, nuance, and clarity available to you.

Each word is slightly different from every other word you know. Each new word is a new shade of color to paint your world and individualize your experience. Every word offers increased opportunity for clarity and definition, an opportunity for improved self-expression and for appreciation of your uniqueness.

One can still paint their world effectively with a smaller vocabulary just as one can be a great artist using a handful of colors or in the skilled use of a limited amount of variations in shades in pencil drawings. Yet, one cannot deny the possibilities inherent in a world of color as opposed to one in black and white.

Me, I enjoy words. I am fascinated by the endless expression and increased sense of intimacy words offer. I revel in the sense of personal growth and development I feel when I paint my world. I am overjoyed when I find a new phrase or description which resonates in you and seems to articulate a shared vision or experience.

The order of words like the order of notes totally changes the nature of the song being played. Words become sentences, sentences become paragraphs and paragraphs become stories. Each day is a new song, a new story and a new painting. Actually every day is a swarm of new songs, stories and paintings.

I feel so privileged to be able to share my words with you.

Jim Guido

PS Speaking of words and music, their has been a constant growth in the number of people visiting this site. Over the last three months traffic to this site has once again doubled from the previous three months. Also in this time period there has been an even larger growth spurt in the number of people listening to my songs and reading parts of my books. I would love to hear from more of you on how my art strikes you. Thanks.

It is interesting to note that when we talk about qualities of being human we often choose to frame these skills in a not so flattering manner. When we hail human beings for being at the top of the food chain we often point out that man’s ability to lie and deceive as one of the most distinguishing factors. A skill that allows him to rise to the top of the animal kingdom.

Man is not the only animal that can deceive or give false information as many animals protect themselves and survive through some manner of artifice. Some may play dead, others use camouflage while others will puff themselves up or pretend to be an harmless object in their environment. Yet, man uses deception in a wide array of circumstances and situations which often have nothing to do with survival. Man often lies for convenience, laziness, or even humor.

Yet the ability to lie and deceive is really a small subset of a more important and astounding ability and that is the ability to live in the possible and not be imprisoned in the actual. Living in the possible allows man to anticipate, plan, and project a future as well as a past.

This ability of playing with the possible allows him to invent, create, dream, empathize, sympathize, problem solve and love. This same ability is at the core of his appreciation of art, music, and his quest for truth.

Despite all these wonderful ramifications of man’s ability to seek and create the possible we still have a tendency to focus on the lying and deceptive aspects of the possible and are remiss to discuss the more positive aspects.

Another example of how we under value and in some ways demean a remarkable human trait is in our handling of the male sex drive. Being male, I’m focusing on the male sex drive though much of what I’m about to say could probably apply to the female sex drive.

The male sex drive is often thought of as being something of an evolutionary hurdle to overcome or a limitation. The sex drive which was necessary from an evolutionary stand point is now thought of being out of touch with our current life world. Men are often accused of being too obsessed with sex and that the male sex drive reduces females to dehumanized sex objects. Males with a strong sex drive are often referred to as Neanderthals which again implies that modern males need to overcome their innate sex drive to evolve and become a part of the modern world.

In modern psychology the best they could do to acknowledge the positive aspects of the male sex drive is in the concept of sublimation. Yet, this positive use of the male sex drive is pretty limited. The following definition of sublimation will suffice to make this point.
[ trans. ] (esp. in psychoanalytic theory) divert or modify (an instinctual impulse) into a culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity : people who will sublimate sexuality into activities which help to build up and preserve civilization | he sublimates his hurt and anger into humor.

This definition implies that the male sex drive is a generally inferior instinctual impulse in need of being modified in order to become socially acceptable or beneficial. Yet, I would contend that just as lying and deceiving is a subset of the possible that the male sex drive is a subset of desire.

My sense of desire is fueled by and highly influenced by my sex drive. Desire is not a sublimation of my desire but rather my desire is an expression of my sex drive. The male sex drive has been a pervasive force in my life since early adolescence. Now, in my mid-fifties this force is lessening, but my sense of desire owes its existence and form to my sex drive.

It was my sex drive which propelled me towards intimacy. The intensity of desire that became the goal and joy of so much of my experience was born and maintained by the sex drive. I wanted to know, to savor and enjoy every pore of my lover. I wanted to know her every thought and wanted to please her in every sense that she pleased me. This desire, intensity and intimacy of the loved one became my template for all forms of desire and activity. My love of ideas, language, music and people in general is formed from that pervasive desire inherent in the male sex drive.

My love of life is an expression not a sublimation of the sex drive. The sex drive was not something to alter, redirect or channel. My sex drive was an atmosphere which imbued all of life with a sense of excitement. My sex drive was the catalyst propelling me towards being engaged and enraptured with life.

The longer I live the more awed I am by the very process of life itself and of human experience in particular. In this post I focused on two aspects of being human, the faculty of fiction or the possible and the male sex drive. Our experience of life, meaning and satisfaction are deeply steeped in both of these faculties.

In my next post I plan on talking about another amazing feature of human existence and that is the realm of words and language. Any discussion on words and language could go on forever, so I’ll try to center the discussion on my love of painting my world with words.

I”ll end with the lyrics of a song I wrote well over two decades ago which deals with some of the ideas expressed in this post. It is called Fictional Space and is to be found on my I Rock Therefore I am CD in the music section of this site.

Fictional Space

There’s something of the mind which plays off circumstance
Like a servant pampered king it can be wise of frivolous
Unencumbered one used for strategy of evasion
Place me straddled on this life

Vision gives me power and might
Bash their monstrous heads, the survivors scheme
Lovers engulfed orgasmic anticipation
The hunter laughs at the snap of the trap

Fictional space

There’s something that’s the style which I won’t represent
It’s a feeling of denial wan discouragement
Harlots of the soul lost in merriment
Visceral drives buried by excitement

Moments take pride in invention
Problems provoke awkward hesitation
Solution, look to friendly vistas
The future beckons the agile dancer

Fictional space

Make me alive set me on fire
Make me alive celluloid fire

Jim Guido

I can’t remember a time in which business and government weren’t thought of as being radically different and usually opposed to one another. Businesses labeled the government as intrusive and inefficient. The standard line was that government jobs and decisions wouldn’t survive in the real and competitive world of business.

If the government were a business, it was often said, the government would be out of business in no time. Government jobs were often characterized as “cushy” and had little need for productivity or efficiency.

The government was also viewed as a populist police force in which business success and progress was impeded by government’s policies and tax practices. Without government intervention the belief was “the sky was the limit” for the success and wealth of corporate America.

I’ll have to admit I never saw it that way, and as time has passed I think it is becoming increasingly apparent that there is little difference between government and business. In fact, in many ways the US government appears to be little more than a very large and powerful business enterprise.

Those acknowledging the more business friendly attitude of government throughout the years usually start by pointing out the increasing power and influence of special interest groups. Numerous trade policies, the destruction of the labor unions, and business friendly policies and tax laws are directly attributable to the monetary and legal influence of the business world acquired through the omnipresence of lobbyists in Washington.

The increased presence of the media through radio, newspapers, TV and the internet has made the success of political campaigns more dependent on highly expensive ad campaigns. The more elections are dependent on larger and larger funds the more crucial the role of campaign donations. Since wealth and business go hand in hand, it is easy to see how the role and importance of corporate America has become in national elections and even at times in local elections.

In a democracy the existence and survival of politicians is dependent on their being elected and the more elections are dominated by donations and monetary issues the more politicians are dependent on the support of business (corporate America). This reality has made it difficult for those opposed to the priorities and political platforms of the wealthiest of American’s to get sufficiently funding for their campaigns or get and stay elected.

Though these realities are difficult to ignore many still believe that mavericks and populist candidates can and do exist and get elected. Without media coverage no candidate can win a national campaign. Those few families who own the major media outlets are amongst the wealthiest people in the nation. Believing that these people do not protect their interests and influence the coverage produced by their employees is quite wishful thinking.

In most cases it takes money to attract money. Our entire political system is becoming increasingly dominated by wealthy people both as supporters and as candidates. This is not to say that the wealthiest candidate will win an election but more accurately that one will not become a national candidate without being wealthy or a friend of wealth. The majority of national candidates entered politics with a good deal of money while some were not themselves wealthy but found ways to get the support and backing of wealthy donors.

In other words as time marches on the national political scene in the US is being dominated by wealthy US businessmen and lawyers. Those running our country, Congress and the state legislatures and their governors are wealthy American businessmen.

When one has spent their entire professional careers being a successful businessman do you think they change their methods, practices and priorities once they become elected? Yesterdays corporate heads are today’s national political leaders and cabinet members. Those who govern today were yesterdays business leaders, and those few national leaders who weren’t business leaders before getting into office become wealthy business leaders when they leave office. If that doesn’t show you their loyalties and priorities than nothing will.

Our government is a business, a very large and powerful business. The old saw that business is efficient and government is inefficient should after all the recent bailouts be proven to be false. American businesses have not been efficient or successful for decades. Corporate America has been the recipient and beneficiaries of empire. For every story or invention and business integrity you can find you can find dozens of exploitation, piracy, intimidation, recklessness and the like as the source of success. We were a nation blessed with great and ample natural resources and a military will and ambition to use the resources and talents of the entire globe.

Our government is in debt, but so is corporate America. Taxpayers have been the only thing that has kept our government from defaulting and going bankrupt and the same could be said for corporate America.

Our government is a business it makes money directly and indirectly through its intricate and mutually beneficial relationships with corporate America. Most people now admit that our government has entered wars for purely economic reasons and not for political ideals such as freedom and human rights.

Our government is highly dependent on our military to maintain our role and position as the reigning superpower. One could make quite a strong argument that our military and the business of war are vital to our economic survival. Not only is war important in protecting our economic interests such as oil in the middle east, but our economy would probably fall apart if we decreased our domestic and international dominance in sales of arms and military hardware.

It is interesting to note that the largest media outlets in the US all have high stakes in the arms and munitions industry.

More and more people are becoming aware of the fact that the Federal Reserve is not a federal agency but a private banking cartel. This corporation through its contract with the US government is able to print money and highly alter the value of the dollar. In some direct and more often indirect means this private corporation is able to use and abuse tax payer money.

Yet, the government under the guise of representing the people is doing the same thing. They are a business and all of the major players are businessmen who are protecting the monetary interests of themselves and their friends through the use of tax payer money. The same people who promised workers retirement funds and reneged on those promises are now making decisions on social security and other tax monies they took out of our paychecks.

Tomorrow many Americans will go to the polls and exercise their right to vote. I myself am a voter in search of a candidate. I have no desire to support or enable a corrupt system which does not represent my interests or values. I have no interest in maintaining “business” as usual.

Our government and our society in general is far too dependent on the world of money. This makes us dependent on all the ways money is generated in the world. Money is power and security, it is the only currency we officially recognize. A society dependent on money is dependent on making sure that it is involved in the largest and most lucrative industries all over the planet.

Our government being a business must tolerate and exploit all the arenas of wealth. As long as many of the best prospects of monetary growth are provided by unseemly activities and industries we must condone and partake in those activities.

We must war and promote conflict to support our arms economy, and even torture and use shameless propaganda. We must hide and understate dangers such as the gulf spill and the air quality of New York City following 9/11 to keep commerce flowing. We must lie to people regarding our true interests in foreign lands that harbor valuable products such as oil, heroin and cocaine, while at the same time exaggerate the potential harms of nations not playing by our economic rules and conditions (Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Panama, etc.).

I guess many of you will not agree with the last paragraph and view it as cynical or exaggerated. Maybe I am wrong or am over stating the dark side of economics. Yet, it does seem logical to me that the wealthiest nation on the planet can only maintain that position by leading in the marketplace. A nation whose values and business practices were above or opposed to the functioning of the real economy would soon lose its position.

Let me just give you a few quick examples of our media’s complicity in seemingly protecting the interests of the wealthy, special interests groups, and donors. It is common knowledge that some of our nations largest campaign contributors are wealthy people from foreign nations who return favors with campaign contributions. One only has to think of the concerns that were expressed when it was revealed that many of Bill Clinton’s largest campaign contributions were coming from Chinese and Asian businessman.

Our media presents the situation in Israel in quite a different way than most of the world press. While most nations are horrified at the way the Palestinians are being treated, are press stands alone in viewing the actions of the Israelis with sympathy and support. The Palestinians are a captive people cut off from the world. Over a 100 Palestinians are killed for every Israeli and many of the Israelis are killed by friendly fire. They have no air force or organized army and have little access to arms. Israel is major player in world arms sales and has sophisticated technology such as drone planes and robotic gun fire run by soldiers in underground bunkers.

President Carter recently said that the Palestinians live “in a cage”. Reports of kids being killed by soldiers and robot fire for just moving “too close” to restricted areas is fairly common. Though being one of, if not, the most impoverished people on the planet the Israelis are currently burning their olive trees during their harvest season which is their most important crop as well as having social and religious importance.

While most of the world describes the situation as a genocide being conducted on the Palestinians our press and president still talks of Israel’s right to protect themselves and label the Palestinians as terrorists not victims. And, of course, since Palestine is not recognized as a nation and has no official or recognized army than any military action can be technically defined as terrorism.

It would appear to me that Israel’s sizable economic relationship with us coupled with its sizable and influential lobby makes them hard to criticize. In our own nation there are many wealthy political donors who are sympathetic to the nation of Israel and would not back any candidate who was critical of any actions of the Israeli government. All in all there is a lot to be gained by a politicians and the media going soft on Israel and a lot to lose by presenting some of the views accepted as fact in most of the world including our allies in Europe.

I began the last paragraph by starting out saying that it appears to me, and then went on to explain my perceptions and my reasons for my perceptions. The point is that when our priority is wealth and money truth is at least secondary and possible an obstacle. A salesman will often emphasize the strengths of his product while minimize or distract someone from recognizing the weaknesses of the product. In some cases salesman may even go so far as to totally misrepresent a product to get a sale.

When money is primary truth is at least secondary, which means when we are being treated as a consumer we can be fairly assured that we are not getting an accurate picture of the situation. Long ago we stopped being referred to and treated as citizens and have since been handled as consumers. As voters we are consumers of politics and politicians have become products we believe in and vote for.

We are a proud society. We are proud of being capitalist and proud of being a democracy. Improvements in our quality of life and our standard of living have been largely acquired through our economic system. Yet, now money is no longer a tool or a vehicle, but has become synonymous with the system itself.

And now for something completely different!

Here are a few miscellaneous thoughts and a couple of jokes I made up.

What do you call a Rastafarian percussionist?
The dreaded drummer

When gladiolas wilt do they become sadiolas?

A man is divorcing his wife for emotional abandonment. In court the man tells the judge that his wife spends all her time doing crafts such as sewing, quilting and embroidering. He states that she never cleans the house and when he comes home from work she never has dinner ready.

His final statement before the judge is that his wife seldom comes to bed and if fact the previous night he got no sleep due to the noise of the sewing machine whirring away as she worked on a quilt well into the morning hours.
After hearing this the judge turned to the wife and asked “how do you plead”?

The wife smiled and responded, “Quilting as charged your honor.”

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Let’s look at the difference between the words here and (t)here. As you can see the only difference is the initial (T).

In physics (T) stands for time in many equations. And in the real world the difference between here and there is essentially time. Here is now and in the present. To get there takes time, even if it is just to look over there. Hence, here is now and there is not now.

Now lets take a look at the difference between here and where.

Here and (W)here.

Again the difference is one letter in this case the initial W of where.

It is interesting to note that the letter W is the first letter of most question words. Who, What, Where, When, Why and Which are all examples. How does not begin with a w but ends with one. It is hard to think of a question word that does not begin with the letter W.
A question is an uncertainty, and the difference between here and there involves going
from a known place called here to an unknown or uncertain place referred to as where.

So this observation is neither here nor there, but I’m here and you’re where?

Jim Guido