various verbiage

I first studied Nuclear Power back in 9th grade, when I came across Helen Caldicott’s 1978 screed, Nuclear Madness. In it she made the following points:

1. Nuclear power is ridiculously unsafe
2. Nuclear power is ridiculously inefficient
3. Nuclear power is ridiculously toxic
4. Nuclear power is ridiculously expensive

   -& the kicker-

5. Nuclear power creates Nuclear Bombs

I was horribly shocked, and quite convinced. But hey- I was in 9th grade, so WTF did I know?

Well, it turns out, this Medical Doctor had done her homework… so much so, that both Australia and New Zealand declared themselves “nuclear free zones”, & continue to create international incidents by denying US Battleships & Aircraft Carriers access to their harbors.

How’s that? Well, it turns-out:

1. Despite decades of blandishments, nuclear power is in fact considered by nature “unsafe”. When 60 Minutes interviewed the head of France’s Nuclear Energy Ministry, asking about how “safe” nuclear energy was, they were expecting blandishments about that very question… but to her credit, the Minister was honest. “Of course not. Nuclear power can never be safe. We do the best we can”. And the point being– sure, lots more people die daily from Coal use: from mining, to the lung problems caused by the smog when it burns… But in the end, no conceivable coal-based calamity could cause Chernobyl, nor Fukushima Daiichi, “second only to the Chernobyl accident in its severity“. Period. Full-stop. Have you seen what Chernobyl still looks like twenty years later?. And if Fukushima Daiichi continues to lose control of Reactors 1 &/or 3, we could have another stream of very similar horrific results…
2. Nuclear power is ridiculously inefficient: Would you believe, that the ‘modern’ nuclear plant is basically a steam engine? We’re harvesting amazingly powerful nuclear reactions, by letting them BOIL WATER??!!! And before you say “so WTF”, consider: the very best ‘teakettle’ exothermic reaction is at best 30% efficient, and in fact almost never achieves that efficiency… but at a rate of $6 Billion per reactor… which takes a minimum of 10 years to build, and even when in ‘perfect’ operation, needs to be taken-down every six months for a FULL YEAR of rebuilding… and then still have a ‘normal life’ of only a few decades. So after all that $$, time, etc investment, you get energy right? Yes, but also… Toxic Waste:
3. So- we have our ‘Teakettle power-plant’ process, kinda like coal, right? But lots more expensive, lots more finicky, are typically offline more than online, -&- don’t have a very long lifespan. No biggie– they’re still good investments, right? Which is why the Government still spends hugely to support them, & oil companies invest heavily in them (still)? Here’s the Problem: TOXIC WASTE. Even in a ‘perfectly operating plant’, all that ‘heated-up water’ becomes TOXIC WASTE, along with the metal water-containers, hundreds of miles of pipe per plant, and oh wait, the nuclear fuel itself. And we’re not talking coal-type ‘toxic waste’, ie dump it in a pond & it kills some ducks. We’re talking “Toxic Avenger”-style toxic waste, dump it in a pond & kill every single life-form (see “Chernobyl” pictures above)… for literally HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Even after the catastrophe of the ‘dust bowl’ in the mid-west, some of that soil is starting to come-back. In Chernobyl? One word: NEVER.
4. Nuclear power is ridiculously expensive: $6 Billion per plant. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!!! Where’s all the ‘Free Market’ Tea-Party Libertarians[sic], Grover Norquist & his “Americans for Tax Reform”, Koch neo-Birchers & their ilk?!! NOT ONE NUCLEAR PLANT WOULD EVER BE CREATED IF THE GOVERNMENT DIDN’T MASSIVELY SUBSIDIZE ITS CONSTRUCTION, OPERATION, ON-GOING MAINTENANCE, SPENT-FUEL DISPOSAL, & EVENTUAL DECOMMISSION COSTS. No other form of power gets such a ‘hands-on’ handout from the Government. Which is probably why Big Oil and their enablers like Halliburton are heavily invested in Nuclear Power– historically, they have never lost their ability to ‘feed at the taxpayers trough’. Hello Taxpayers– THAT’S OUR MONEY BEING SPENT ON NUCLEAR POWER!!! DON’T WE HAVE A SAY IN THAT?!!

   -& the kicker-

5. Nuclear power is irretrievably wedded to Nuclear Bombs: Helen Caldicott took amazing amounts of ridicule for this statement… despite doing an amazing amount of research, interviewing nearly every prominent nuclear physicist of her day, she was still pilloried by the media, and everyone else. But know what? SHE WAS RIGHT. Now, nearly thirty years later, the big ‘open secret’ re nuclear power is– yes, with a reasonably straightforward refining step, nuclear waste can be refined into ‘weapons-grade’ uranium. Sure, it’s extremely inefficient, & prohibitively expensive… so in USA we don’t usually do it (& instead, most-often just leave ‘spent fuel rods’ laying-around in ‘cooling ponds’ outside of nuclear reactors… & oh yeah, outside of the containment vessels as well)… But consider the case of countries who don’t have easy access to nuclear fuel– remember all the brouhaha about Saddam & ‘yellow-cake’? He wanted nuclear power, & nobody would sell it to him. Or how about all the brouhaha re. Iran & it’s nuclear power efforts? You know why Israel wants to bomb those plants, right? Because within six months of their operation, Iran would have accumulated enough fissionable uranium to create a bomb. And why do we know this? Because when India bought its first nuclear power plant from Canada in the early 70′s, India was able to explode it’s first nuclear bomb in 1974… shocking the world, & the CIA who had claimed it would “take them decades to get the fuel”. Whoopsie, guys– should have asked your nuclear scientists. Canada, in a bit of embarrassment, “stopped nuclear dealings with India”. Gee, thanks.

BUT WHO NEEDS ALL THAT?!!
Ever hear of a ‘dirty bomb’? Just grab a glob of nuclear waste, stuff it in a suitcase with some C4- walla. Nuclear fallout everywhere, people dying and buildings forever uninhabitable. A terrorist wet dream. And hey- no need to even ‘find’ the spent fuel rods– just go digging in the ‘containment pools’ outside every single one of every single nuclear power plant in the USA, both in-operation and ‘decommissioned’!! Heck- crash a fricking 747 into them– the original design specs of those iconic nuclear towers were to withstand a 747 strike… and thank god for that. But nobody ever thought the ‘temporary containment pools’ would still contain spent fuel rods decades later (60 YEARS LATER?!!):

Thousands of tons of deadly reactor cores at San Onofre stand as the most concentrated lethal hazard anywhere in California, except of course, a similarly-sized and situated hot pile at Diablo Canyon, and a few much smaller piles scattered in several other places around the state. link

Want the NRC’s version?

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates that many of the nuclear power plants in the United States will be out of room in their spent fuel pools by 2015, most likely requiring the use of temporary storage of some kind. link

And consider– REGULAR NUCLEAR MATERIAL IS EXTREMELY RARE IN NATURE!!! WE HAVE CREATED THIS PROBLEM COMPLETELY OURSELVES!! This is NOT like coal, which is already there, & can get lit on fire underground for decades…

And when even the LA Times (not even remotely a ‘liberal rag’) agrees: Peter Bradford, a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member, made this comparison in a statement: “Counting on new nuclear reactors as a climate change solution is no more sensible than counting on an un-built dam to create a lake to fight a nearby forest fire.”

But none of that’s my Favorite Nuclear Disaster.
Here’s my favorite:
Picture a heady conclave of Big Oil/Extractive types, pooling mind-share & big bucks with the Koch Brothers’ array of astroturfing fake grassroots organizations. What’s their newest propaganda? Something anti-union? Anti-regulation? Anti-Global Warming science? Anti-Clean Air Act? No– (queue Twilight Zone music): THEY’RE ARGUING THAT NUCLEAR POWER IS ‘GREEN’!!!!
Calling Nuclear Power ‘Green’ because it “reduces Carbon” is like calling cyanide a ‘diet pill’ because it ‘reduces fat’. Yeah, gets rid of ‘thirty pounds of unsightly fat’, right off at the neck.

For anyone who doesn’t understand– there has never been a successfully tested, robust ‘solution’ for nuclear waste. Every single idea, from burying it underground, burning it at sea (Thank-you France! and Thank-you Greenpeace for your ongoing documentation of the massive sea-life die-offs occurring behind the French ‘nuke disposal’ ships to this day…), glassification, burying it in salt mines (cf Yucca Mountain boondoggle), or even ‘shooting it into the sun’ (no joke- this was expensively investigated during President Reagan’s term)… NONE OF THEM MAINTAIN CONTAINMENT SANS LEAKAGE FOR EVEN A SMALL FRACTION OF THE HALF-LIFES OF THE NUCLEAR MATERIAL.

Which is probably why the US Army has been shooting it all over Iraq and Afghanistan. “Depleted uranium“.

God. Save. Us.

Here’s how it will happen:

1. Repubs Cut social programs -&- as many regulations as possible. Cut EPA. Eliminate Sesame Street(?!!). Cut Clean-Energy & Infrastructure (high-speed rail, etc, and the associated 100k+ jobs in development(!!))
2. Obama rolls-over, &/or makes equally controversial cuts [cf cutting heating oil subsidies to the poor, in one of the coldest winters on record!!]
3. Repubs threaten to Shut-down the Gov’t, by refusing to raise the Debt Ceiling, if they cannot get MORE cuts out of Obama. And thus, either:
   -> Repeat (#2) — Most Probable.
   -> Gov’t Shutdown — ie, “Obama grows a pair” scenario. Extremely Improbable.
4. Social Security, Medicare, &/or Gov’t payroll checks are slashed, & possibly delayed for weeks as well.
5. SOCIAL UNREST… eg “Old Fogies with Guns” on the march.

& lest you don’t ‘think it can happen here’-
This EXACT SAME PLAYBOOK happened during Clinton’s watch, with Speaker Newt Gingrich.
However that time, the President actually stood fast, didn’t make too-major cuts, and Gingrich actually shut-down the Gov’t. Since checks were just delayed, unstead of slashed, the social unrest wasn’t too bad…

But this time? It’s ALREADY HAPPENING!!!

…just check-out those links above…

Hello Americans– we have $Trillions to invade Iraq, but we’re going to sit-by and watch our own citizens FREEZE TO DEATH, during one of the worst Winters in the last 20years….
…and instead, we’re going to KILL SESAME STREET.
…this would be appalling, if it was Dadaist Theatre… But no, this is OUR GOVERNMENT.

Wow– Bernie Sanders has been standing-up for SIX 1/2 HOURS at this point, speaking TRUTH to POWER… [UPDATE: 8 1/2hrs Total!!!]
…& single-handedly SHUTTING-DOWN Obama’s utterly misguided “Tax Cuts for the Wealthy” ‘Compromise’[sic]… [or in the words of Pat Buchanan: "What Compromise? We Won Outright!"].

Oh & Btw-
Let’s hear a BIG FUCK-YOU to Harry “Monkeyboy” Reid–
After yet-another historically unprecedented number of Senate Filibusters by the Republicans, who’re so gleefully embracing this tactic that they just signed a statement saying they’d filibuster everything until they got their ‘Tax Cuts for the Rich’– just how many of those Rethug Senators had to stand-up & talk like Bernie is doing?

NOT. ONE.
NOT ONE FUCKING PISSANT REPUBLICAN HAD TO STAND-UP TO FILLIBUSTER… They just had to pass a note, “Um, we prefer to not invoke Cloture”, & Reid rolls-over like a FUCKING PUSSY.

But NOOO– Sanders can’t do that!! Reid makes Sanders Stand Up.

But know what?
JOKES’ ON THEM!!

…when even Slave-owning Racist Strom Thurmond had to read the phone book on his 24hr filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957… BERNIE CAME PREPARED!!!

Check This Shit Out:

“Why are Conservatives pushing for these tax cuts for wealthy, when even wealthiest say they don’t need or want it? Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Ben Cohn, all say they neither Want or Need more tax cuts!!

“So why are the Conservatives doing this? They’re not stupid- they know, once they get their tax cuts, that’s not sustainable, & will then scream for Cuts Cuts Cuts. And we know what they’ll cut- we heard it in the ‘Deficit Reduction Commission’– Reduce Social Security coverage 20% on the young, Raise Social Security age to 69, cut Medicare, cut Medicade… They’re even recommending increased interest on student loans- Our Country already has a very poor college grad rate & now they’ll make it even harder?
[NB: this Conservative strategic initiative is called "Starve the Beast", & was started by Reagan...]

“The rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, & middle class collapsing… While the Top 1% of Americans owns more wealth than lower 50% !!!

“Where 4 banks own more 52% of usa’s total econ output last yr;
63% of GDP

“Corporate Ceo’s are taking advantage & selling-out our young people… they told them you don’t want to work in a factory! You’ll work on a computer! So they outsourced the mfg jobs. And now they’re outsourcing the Computer/IT jobs too!

“Here’s the CEO of GE: ‘there’s 5x as many smart people in China as America, who’re willing to work for much less… And 3x as many in India! We need to be in China! China China China! We want to be a Chinese company!”
“Here’s the CEO of Chamber of Commerce: “its to the benefit of Business to Outsource!”
“Here’s Carly Fiori: “there is no job that is a ‘God Given Right’

“…& yet- when these Company’s need bailing out, they don’t go to China- they beg the AMERICAN TAXPAYER!!

“So now our Manufacturing jobs are decimated– from 17M Manufacturing jobs when GW Bush started office, to 11M when he left… and a total of 600k total job loss– how can we say ‘Tax Cuts for the Wealthy’ creates jobs?!

“We can’t buy anything made in USA, in stores, Walmart… it all says ‘Made in China’!

“& it’s not just the disasterous trade policies pushed by Chamber of
Commerce, etc… it’s the Crooks on Wall Street lobbying to repeal Glass Steagall!!
“Wall Street Banks were originally designed to ‘Create Affordable Loans for Business’… but now? Wall Street is operating on a Business Model based on fraud, dishonesty… Understanding they will never get caught, & can do pretty much anything they want, & get bailed out

“Wall Street destroyed this economy-
healthcare goes up, you can’t send kid to college
& they nearly destroyed the world economy…

And THEY GOT BIGGER!!! They were “too big to Fail”, & now they’re BIGGER?!!

“Look at how much the top Banks have grown since 2008:
JPMorgan: 51%
Wells Fargo: 41%
Bank of America: 138% !!!

“If we are serious to help the middle class, we need to return to the idea of Teddy Roosevelt: Trust Busting.
He believed it’s bad for the country when a handful of entities have a stranglehold on the economy

“We’re supposed to be living in a competitive economy, free market capitalism. This is not!! No single financial institution should be so large that its failure would be catastrophic for our economy, our taxpayers, & even the world economy!

“On Oct 15 2008- Alan Greenspan, the Architect of Deeregulation(!!) admitted: “if they’re too big to fail, they’re too big… We broke up Standard Oil, & over time they grew into even stronger players.”

“Wall Street’s lobbysts are all over this place, you can’t walk down the hall in Congress without tripping over them…. and we’re going to have to fight them every step of the way–
“But we need to BREAK THOSE BANKS UP!!
Paul Volcker supports it!
Even heads of Fed in Dallas, Chicago, agree!!

“Plus the issue of Usury- look at nearly all religions, they’re universal in their rejection, disgust, of the immorality of Usury.
“But look– those Big Companies and Banks paid MUCH LESS INTEREST than they charge to us Workers!

Bank Bailout: <1% interest

Loans for Workers: >25-30% interest(!!!)

“Anything over 20% interest is usury, it’s not ‘providing affordable loans to job creators’
“But instead– the Marquette Decision allowed Credit-Card Companies to dodge State interest rate limits, so they all moved to Delaware!

“We tolerated the thievery of the Big Banks, & we bailed them out… they needed Welfare to survive!!
& now they’re bigger and more successful & even wealthier than ever!!

“WHEN IS IT THE MIDDLE-CLASSES’ TURN???”

THANK GOD FOR BERNIE SANDERS.

BERNIE SANDERS FOR PRESIDENT!!!

…some Notes from Krugman:

“with Republican policy makers seeing economic hardship as the path to election glory,” they would be “opposed to any actions taken by the Federal Reserve that would make the economy better.” In short, their real fear is not that Fed actions will be harmful, it is that they might succeed.

Hence the axis of depression. No doubt some of Mr. Bernanke’s critics are motivated by sincere intellectual conviction, but the core reason for the attack on the Fed is self-interest, pure and simple. China and Germany want America to stay uncompetitive; Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House. link

Here’s the thing: Mr. Obama still has immense power, if he chooses to use it. At home, he has the veto pen, control of the Senate and the bully pulpit. He still has substantial executive authority to act on things like mortgage relief — there are billions of dollars not yet spent, not to mention the enormous leverage the government has via its ownership of Fannie and Freddie. Abroad, he still leads the world’s greatest economic power — and one area where he surely would get bipartisan support would be taking a tougher stand on China and other international bad actors.

But none of this will matter unless the president can find it within himself to use his power, to actually take a stand. And the signs aren’t good. link

My immediate thought was, why not ask for a pony, too? After all, the G.O.P. isn’t interested in helping the economy as long as a Democrat is in the White House. Indeed, far from being willing to help Mr. Bernanke’s efforts, Republicans are trying to bully the Fed itself into giving up completely on trying to reduce unemployment.

And on matters fiscal, the G.O.P. program is to do almost exactly the opposite of what Mr. Bernanke called for. On one side, Republicans oppose just about everything that might reduce structural deficits: they demand that the Bush tax cuts be made permanent while demagoguing efforts to limit the rise in Medicare costs, which are essential to any attempts to get the budget under control. On the other, the G.O.P. opposes anything that might help sustain demand in a depressed economy — even aid to small businesses, which the party claims to love.

Right now, in particular, Republicans are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits — an action that will both cause immense hardship and drain purchasing power from an already sputtering economy. But there’s no point appealing to the better angels of their nature; America just doesn’t work that way anymore.

And opposition for the sake of opposition isn’t limited to economic policy. Politics, they used to tell us, stops at the water’s edge — but that was then.

These days, national security experts are tearing their hair out over the decision of Senate Republicans to block a desperately needed new strategic arms treaty [EDIT: Isn't this the "Party of Reagan"? Who passed TWO Strategic Nuclear Limitation Treaties? SALT1 & SALT2?!!!]. And everyone knows that these Republicans oppose the treaty, not because of legitimate objections, but simply because it’s an Obama administration initiative; if sabotaging the president endangers the nation, so be it.

How does this end? Mr. Obama is still talking about bipartisan outreach, and maybe if he caves in sufficiently he can avoid a federal shutdown this spring. But any respite would be only temporary; again, the G.O.P. is just not interested in helping a Democrat govern.

My sense is that most Americans still don’t understand this reality. They still imagine that when push comes to shove, our politicians will come together to do what’s necessary. But that was another country.

It’s hard to see how this situation is resolved without a major crisis of some kind. Mr. Simpson may or may not get the blood bath he craves this April, but there will be blood sooner or later. And we can only hope that the nation that emerges from that blood bath is still one we recognize. link

Perfectly Said:

“Hello Mr. President, here’s how you FIX this SHIT”:

Beautiful.

But Nope, He won’t do it…
…but at least we know what could have worked…

And so– C’est La vie any Dem majorities in Congress, come Nov ’10…
…& then c’est la vie anything other than:

The only bright spot?
If/when the “Tea Party” candidates ‘take over’ Congress, and all of this economic dysfunction accelerates, maybe all that ‘populist anger’ will be directed less towards ‘Birth Certificates’ & more towards “Jobs Now!!!”

Sheeeit.

President Reagan’s former Office of Management and Budget Director, David Stockman, recently wrote:

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

Now note– this is one of REAGAN’s Top People!! And even he has an issue with the modern GOP/”Conservative” Party!!

Because– this makes no sense. How could GOP’ers, who demand so stridently that budgets be balanced, & ie. “no passing down debts to our grandchildren”, absolutely INSIST that the Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy– ie, for families making $250k and above– be maintained… without campaigning for any corresponding CUT in Government Spending? In fact, for any Democrat proposal, the GOP always demands cuts… which are correspondingly always on the ‘Social Services’ side… (which includes “special interests” such as Police and Teachers, btw), but NEVER on the ‘Defense Spending’ side, which is by far & away the biggest chunk of the budget, -&- the biggest sector of Budgetary Growth in the past 10years…

Well– here’s an explanation by Martin Wolf, the Chief Economics commentator of the Financial Times (a very CONSERVATIVE publication, btw… or at least what passes for “Conservative” in Britain): “The political genius of supply-side economics“:

To understand modern Republican thinking on fiscal policy, we need to go back to perhaps the most politically brilliant (albeit economically unconvincing) idea in the history of fiscal policy: “supply-side economics” [ie, also called "Trickle-Down" Theory, or "Voodoo Economics"]. Supply-side economics liberated conservatives from any need to insist on fiscal rectitude and balanced budgets. Supply-side economics said that one could cut taxes and balance budgets, because incentive effects would generate new activity and so higher revenue.
How did supply-side economics bring these benefits? First, it allowed conservatives to ignore deficits [cf. Cheney, "Reagan proved, deficits don't matter"]. They could argue that, whatever the impact of the tax cuts in the short run, they would bring the budget back into balance, in the longer run. Second, the theory gave an economic justification – the argument from incentives – for lowering taxes on politically important supporters. Finally, if deficits did not, in fact, disappear, conservatives could fall back on the “starve the beast” theory: deficits would create a fiscal crisis that would force the government to cut spending and even destroy the hated welfare state.
True, the theory that cuts would pay for themselves has proved altogether wrong. That this might well be the case was evident: cutting tax rates from, say, 30 per cent to zero would unambiguously reduce revenue to zero. This is not to argue there were no incentive effects. But they were not large enough to offset the fiscal impact of the cuts (see, on this, Wikipedia and a nice chart from Paul Krugman).
Indeed, Greg Mankiw, no less, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, has responded to the view that broad-based tax cuts would pay for themselves, as follows: “I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don’t.”

So– Chief Economists under both Reagan -and- Bush W. say, basically, DEFICITS DO MATTER.

But Who is listening?

Do we really think the broken Senate is going to make a difference? Even with 60 votes, every single piece of significant legislation is either ignored (350+ House Bills simply discarded in latest Congress Session), or Filibustered (most Filibusters ever recorded in history, latest Congress Session)… Details here.

And do we really think Obama is going to make a difference? I mean, I can understand most Campaign Promises are hyperbolic, but really- why so many Issues -&- People ‘thrown under a bus’?! Perhaps Obama was simply ‘center-right’ &/or Corporatist all along…? or more likely, he’s simply a Situational Conformist:

What Obama does by his nature is find the middle ground. As an excellent innate politician, he will find the political center of any field and rush to it. That’s where elections are won – the center. So, that’s why he sounded so progressive during the primaries, because that was the center of the left. And why he sounded like such a reformer during the general election because the great majority of Americans desperately wanted change.
Right now, Obama perceives the center of the country to be somewhere between Dick Cheney and Harry Reid. Do you know where that leaves him? Joe Lieberman. That’s why we’re in the sorry shape we’re in now.

Maybe we should just giggle, & watch Colbert’s version of “Trickle Down”…

From Huffpost:

It is a truly remarkable feat, in just one year’s time, to turn the fear and anger voters felt in 2006 and 2008 at a Republican Party that had destroyed the economy, redistributed massive amounts of wealth from the middle class to the richest of the rich and the biggest of big businesses, and waged a trillion-dollar war in the wrong country, into populist rage at whatever Democrat voters can cast their ballot against.

Stupid NeoCon Trick #(billions & billions):
“I don’t NEED that, so WTF do i gotta PAY for it (taxes, etc)”

& at first, that sounds Reasonable, eh?
Sure, you’re a Guy– you ain’t gonna get Pregnant, right?
You don’t drive thru that tunnel, or across that bridge– so fuck them!
“If they can’t stand the heat {can’t pay for prenatal care, etc}, then THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE GOTTEN {pregnant, etc}.”

HERE’S THE THING–

1. You use the freeway system, eh?
2. Ever call a Cop, b/c someone sketchy was in your neighborhood? (or worse– you needed them b/c Something Bad Happened?)
3. Ever need the Fire Department?

Even the Richest MOFO needs the rest of us– they don’t do their own dishes, clean their toilets… they can just import undocumented labor, right? But what about plumbing? Okay, they sneak-in skilled undocumented labor…
…but what do they connect their pipes to? Municipal Water Supply?

They can ‘think’ they’re truly Self-Reliant, but unless they’re COMPLETELY OFF THE GRID, it’s just SLOPPY THINKING & INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY
…& if they CONTINUE to keep claiming all these things, AFTER being ‘schooled’–
then they’re just INTELLECTUALLY VIOLENT… ie completely REPREHENSIBLE, & ACTIVELY TEARING-DOWN THE SOCIAL CONTRACT.

PS– know what’s really hilarious?
99.99% of these “Go it Alone” types would DIE IN 1 WEEK if stuck in the wilderness…
…true ‘Survivor’ types really do know, understand, & appreciate our Interconnectedness…

…but not the Modern NeoConservative Movement, definitely NOT when it comes to TAXES.

“MORAL VIRTUE = SPENDING ALL MY $$ ON *MYSELF*” is their ethos…

I would really LOVE to see these types really do “Go Galt”… put ‘em in a plastic bubble, & watch them devolve into chaos & cannibalism… much faster than you’d ever expect, I’ll bet…