The venice homeless folk do not look or usually act like the Skid Row hard core or maybe other LA ghetto areas where less lavish vistas and open spaces -- with this sun, sky, sea being there to heal and also feed the souls of those without cash or jobs.

The problem that is never openly addressed is not that the 'homeless' who do not have inside living quarters should not or cannot fairly share the use of public lands - the parks, sands, streets, and even dark corners of businesses at nite-time - but that when they do take over and use that space, they either do not have the means or courtesies or sanity to leave it as they found it.

And the ones w/o home to return to sleep then just park and stay anywhere they chose or find…. for extended times - stretching out their belongings beyond the usual personal-space-of-ordinary-folk.

The ones without personal living spaces indoors take over the public outdoor spaces for long periods of times or days or weeks or longer and others cannot share or use that space at all. It is a ‘take-over’ and a demand to be allowed to use that ‘space’ for longer than most people would temporarily stay.

The lack of hygiene and smell or uncleanliness when staying in these public spaces and often also left behind when homeless do leave a space, leaves other people unwilling to clean up after them or leave fear of contagions or unsanitary conditions left behind…if and when the un-home-d person does move from that spot.

Who has not seen a bus bench stop that is inaccessible to anyone but the 1 homeless person - that has strewn and spread out their belongings to insure that ONLY THEY have that space, and no one else would dare question that usurping or even ask to share the space ? Some of us have tried and been rudely and loudly beaten back.

Who has not called their city council to repeatedly plead for help for those homeless – those who take over a whole areas of sidewalk - with their waste, their stuff, their carts, their beddings, their food/drinks = some of which smells putrid or is spilled liquids or body wastes...all that is otherwise not common nor tolerated by civilized common people...and nothing was then done to remove or restrict that homeless person's monopolizing that area?

a whole 10 ft of it. unusable by anyone else but that ‘homeless’ insisting it is now theirs !

And who has wanted to quietly sit at a park or bench or grass or beach and not be asked for money or pot or anything - but just be able to be solitary with nature, or a book, or a friend, or rest their feet - instead of being part of someone else's neediness demands ? Or who has not grimaced at the smells or dank that accompanies the person who lives in the streets ?

And why are there not enough living spaces for those who do not have any social security / SSI incomes or food stamps and who then wander the neighborhoods instead in search of a toilet , or a spot behind a bush that belongs to a home of someone else, or tinkles behind a car when no one else is looking to urinate or drop a plastic baggie of their “stuff”…b.m. or rotted food ?

And why are some of the mentally insane or challenged or deranged or unable to be emotionally competent enough to get the necessary social services that may be available – so that they re refusing to live where they ARE offered an apt, that maybe not in the beach neighborhood of their preference !

Why do many w/o living resources only want to live in Venice or Mar Vista and not in Baldwin Hills or Inglewood or downtown or elsewhere ?

Who is it that is demanding a separate individualized Bill of Homeless Rights that pertain to those who have less or different to that which is common to all USA legalized citizens ?

Why is poverty and thus homelessness described as a worse victimized condition than having a serious medical problem that cannot be paid for ? or living in an apt with drunks, druggies or mean people that are not homeless but as difficult or dangerous ?

The sanitation of the poor and homeless by themselves and their self-proclaimed rescuers - some of which run silent non-profits and are thus NOT as poor as they pretend either… but that saint-i-fication of not having a living inside space is not always such an actual real image - but a lure and demand to 'get more' and 'hate them who have' and 'spite those who wont give more’.

Those who can't dont/ wont or for whatever godly reason are stuck in misery and poverty here in LA, in CA, in USA ...what makes these sufferers more angelic or better than anyone else elsewhere ? .... or suffering more than anyone stuck in a nursing home, or laying in a hospital bed, or living scared in another warring country or surviving barely at a working level class in a poorer nation ?

That is why other nationals laugh at our stories of poverty because they know and live within worse conditions and do not always ‘suffer’ or cry as much as Americans tend to do.

why is it that there is plenty of food continually brought down to feed the homeless in Venice ? By all kinds of groups and individuals who want to "help" the poor. And yet, much food and even clothes are thrown away - and uneaten, fed to the birds, left out in the sun to be bird dropped on , discarded by these same poor people - who are picky and choosey when not served as if in a restaurant ?

Many do eat and thank and move on, go back to their favored spots - where they beg or hide – or sleep - or buy or use drugs - or lay down or do whatever else they do to pass time, unto nite, when they find their sleep spot on a cardboard in warm LA [ as compared to most of USA in Feb] and then lay down w/blanket or friend.

Many survive tho not as imagined in magazines/TV who either over-inflate the images of poverty and sadness or underestimate the amount of goodies passed out on Venice beach walk.

It is not a great place to be - without a home base, a bed, a bathroom to use with others down the hall, a kitchen, running water and some safety from the others who want to bully or steal or harass – others down and out - out of their own distresses and craziness perhaps.

Remember, it is still different than homelessness elsewhere, in 80% of the rest of the world -where what these homeless already have is envied and wondered about, because poverty elsewhere is a daily lifestyle, tolerated and adapted and used in forming communities of the poor, with less anger and less envy and less demanding – wanting to have the same as those who live otherwise.

Been elsewhere to see that too ?

Been where no food is left uneaten or thrown away for birds or left to rot in sun ?

Been where all is recycled not by big companies but by the poor groups that scour thru garbage to make use of every little item possible ?

No marching bands with shiny instruments ...no fancy signs and smiles and phones in hands. No. Not the same as where the poor are actually caring and friendly with Each Other because they care, they survive, and see that they are a community. Not like this entitlement story here.

Looks like a bad extended case of the “I’ve Got Mine” disease.

I’ve got mine — screw the rest of you.

I’m drinking a cup of coffee right now, having boiled the water with natural gas. I’m not exactly sure where the fuel I used comes from, but my guess is that natural gas from various sources gets marketed and distributed together.

Therefore as I enjoy my coffee this morning, people in shale gas states now may have combustible household tap water and carcinogenic bathroom showers as a thank you for my convenience.

One of the hazards of environmental inquiry is to see horrors like this hiding behind pretty much everything I do and much of what I own, right down to the cotton socks on my feet. My question today is: How did I get to be so callous about it? And what should be done?

My most recent answer to the first part of this quandary is this:

* Step One is to see that I was born into a culture in which emotional callousness is a fundamental coping strategy.

* Step Two is to notice that approaches to solving the basic problems of living, which would be unthinkable if we were not so callous, are then baked into successive generations of technology, social norms, and institutions.

* Step Three (and it’s a short one) is seeing that it’s nearly impossible for an individual to live in a culture thus designed without also becoming callous.

* Step Four puts the whole thing on wheels: as conditions get worse and nearly every aspect of our culture holds in its shadow some kind of hell, the motivators are in place for yet more callousness leading to yet greater violations of sensibility in a self-reinforcing feedback loo


So that explains a lot about how we got where we are and why it’s so difficult to change: we’re living a callous morality, and we’re doing it on a global scale. Callous corporate ruthlessness has been part of the mix since these entities were first invented. Ships bearing cargoes of slaves, tea, and spices started the ball rolling, then coal, petroleum, tobacco and “unsafe-at-any-speed” car companies came to rule; when talking about profits before people, it’s nothing new.

Callous government has been with us even longer than callous corporations. Consequently, as these entities have come to dominate our lives, we have in response become callous as well. What’s also becoming apparent is that there are consequences to this trend, and that they are serious ones.

“It’s the law of the jungle! It’s a matter of survival!” I hear.

Yes, this is true. Cultures that are ruthlessly efficient in extracting resources and developing weapons have overrun and exterminated all others.

And now, I would argue, that game has played out. The idea that power naturally accrues to those who are most ruthless and myopic in the pursuit of their own short term gain, and that this is the best way to run human society, is about to hit a wall.

In the long run, callousness and consciousness do not support one another.

Although a certain toughness is required of everyone to meet the rigors of life, the tolerance for and even idealization of loss of feeling is not compatible with any sustainable form of human intelligence, since loss of feeling is a kind of loss of consciousness.

Because of this, callousness and power are also ultimately at odds with one another.

The emotional callousness currently endemic on the global corporate and political scene, as well as in our consumer culture, works a bit like leprosy. Contrary to popular belief, leprosy does not cause limbs to fall off. What happens is that the disease attacks the nerves, resulting in a loss of feeling.

Without the conscious feedback loop of feeling and physical sensation, nearly constant unintentional self-inflicted injuries result. Chronic infection and continuous scarring further the process, until disfigurement and deformity occur.


I would argue that emotional callousness does pretty much the same thing, and although the inner disfigurement is more easily hidden, at least among others who are similarly afflicted and who thus have difficulty feeling what’s going on, the consequences of it are visible everywhere. I believe we are fooling ourselves in the often unexamined belief that loss of the feeling sense and the inner connection to reality it can provide would have any better practical outcomes for effective action in the world than loss of physical sensation does for the human body.


Of course, an unfeeling approach seems to work so well at first. Then again, so perhaps does heroin. However, the complications that loss of feelings so efficiently eliminates are, in fact, information. Feelings are an irreplaceable mechanism for inner guidance and course correction.

To the extent that we allow ourselves to become callous, we lose the holistic perspective feelings would otherwise provide. So, while emotional callousness can be compared to a kind of numbness, it also results in a kind of blindness.

Either way, depending on the degree of the emotional impairment, nearly constant unintentional self-inflicted injuries result.

If my supposition is correct, it seems likely that the erosion and deformity of the emotional potential of humanity would generate other self-reinforcing feedback loops.

On an individual level, disfiguring inner pain often results in further retraction from the feeling sense that would reveal its true nature and extent. The typical judgment is that it is simply too much. On aggregate, social pressures mount not to feel much, since one person’s emotions are likely to trigger and thus reveal another’s. Fortunately, we have the distractions, drugs, and prisons to handle it, or we wait until body systems fail under the stress and then treat the problem in the form of diseases.

A rather reliable indicator of numbness is the level of stimulation required to generate a response. Here our culture seems to up the ante with every passing year.

News flash: Callousness, glamorized by many images in the media as strong and “macho,” is actually form of cowardice.

To choose to be unfeeling on a consistent basis is to choose unconsciousness and death. When the people of a nation governed by democratic institutions embrace callousness as a coping strategy, that nation will be led by those who mirror this tendency.

In time, and often rather quickly, leaders who embody callousness as an ideal will destroy their nations. The law of leprous self-inflicted injury will work systemically to debilitate the nation and its capacity to respond effectively to emerging conditions.

This is exactly what we’re seeing.

If we cannot change course at this moment, it is because not enough people can feel what’s going on. Without feeling, there is neither information nor motivation.

So, it’s not resource depletion, peak oil, climate change, rising population, corporatocracy or environmental devastation that will be the cause of our demise. Nor is the problem a political stalemate or the stranded costs of our investments in useless, outmoded or destructive technology.

These are the not the problems, really: they are the symptoms.

Our callousness plays a causal role here, empowering all of these immanent threats to humanity. Change that and we start to change everything. And the beautiful thing is, we can change that.

We can begin right now by bravely choosing a path of feeling, promoting values and institutions that are consistent with the development of feeling, loudly and clearly proclaiming ourselves to be people of feeling, and recognizing that being a person of feeling requires living a life of profound integrity.

In consequence, as I continue my inner work to open the doors to the deeply informative world of feeling, I must also for example begin to divest myself my participation in forms of agriculture that poison the land and abuse those who work it, and I must shift away from forms of transportation that ruin the air and pollute land and sea.

The reason is, as I open those inner doorways, I feel my connection with all of these things. As incrementally as necessary and always compassionately, a person of feeling is required to connect precisely where the callous approach to living would disconnect.

This is how we heal the planet by healing ourselves, and this is also the wellspring from which we will draw our strength, our inspiration, and our motivation to continue our work in the world.

I mean crazy_inventor's. I thought the OP was mean.

If every person in LA county were taxed ten cents per day, we could raise 360 million per year.

That could build around 2400 apartment or condo units per year, assuming a cost of 150k per unit. We could house every single person in L.A. in around 12 years, assuming a household size of around 2 people.

That doesn't include having the resident pay any rent. If they were made to pay rent, we could house everyone a lot faster.

Once the homeless were housed, we could move on toward tackling the issue of substandard housing for poor and middle income people... by building more housing. We could even have the government build houses for sale. At some point, we'd hit a wall, where the private sector would produce better product at a better price, but we're not there yet.

this is the original author:

http://greenhandinitiative.blogspot.com/2011/05/self-inflicted-injury-of-emotional.html

Clifford Dean Scholz


I fully agree with it however, which is why I posted it.


re: building more homes being the solution

there's millions of empty houses due to the banks, also houses are routinely demolished by real estate agents corrupting city councils (often the same people - like here) to 'increase property values' for the houses they're selling.

they intentionally _create_ homelessness to increase their profits, and the to-big-to-jail banks are investing in rental properties creating a 'rental bubble' hitting people again after losing their homes to the banks when their only option is renting. even our rent has went up because if it.

re: why the corporate media ignores the causes of climate chaos and how their framing of tax-and-spend, consume more and private 'free markets' are best, while the too-big-to-jail banks with their 'free market' ideology goes un-noticed or mentioned

"under the present regime, media are more or less obliged to run adverts for planet-fucking vehicle sales, air travel, holiday cruises, [b]real estate development[/b], shopping etc."


"Our whole conception of what the world is, what we are, what life is, has been captured by the corporate media machine and state education which manufactures a completely faked reality.

What we are presented with is a faked past and a faked future, and a faked present. The fact that the dots are never connected is deliberate. Everything must be kept fragmented and incoherent to keep the world’s ‘peasants’ confused and amused because they must not understand their situation.

TV is perfect, with it’s 2 minute meaningless sound bites and unconnected flashing imagery. There are no stories, in the traditional sense, any more, of what’s happening in the real world. Just fragments, like pieces of a shattering window carrying random reflections."

It's true - there are a lot of houses all over the place, but not in the city of LA where we need it. There are some vacancies, but the vacancy rate here is around 4%, and it's rare to find an empty house.

More importantly, even the empty houses are not available to the poor and homeless.

That is the fundamental problem - that housing isn't a right. There's no right to squat abandoned properties. But, that's a radical solution to a practical problem, and politically difficult to make into a reality. So I am making practical demand.

You say our homeless suck, because similarly poor or poorer people in other countries are nice to each other...

Maybe they just suck when they're dealing with you. Maybe they just read your negative vibe.

i see them helping each other out.

I also see them getting kicked out of the area by cops. You can't form a supportive community of poverty if the local people are preventing such a community from forming.

My feeling is that the romance of poverty is bullshit. it's just stressful, and the stress of homelessness could be eliminated for five grand per person, more or less. If they had a place to sleep, a place to shit, and a place to eat all within a single building, all your complaints would be nullified.

isn't this called 'neo-liberal'?

more taxes
more housing
more privatisation


- the best suggestions I can offer _within such narrowly framed parameters_ are:

living wage (a fair minimium wage - real cost-of-living increases)

sustainable employment (renewable energy projects - solar panels on every roof)

quality of life (smog - transition to public transportation - expand car-free areas)


- this is of course ignoring the 500 year and counting drought, no natural sources of nearby drinking water, whether a desert can support millions of people as fossil fuels run out, and ignoring the climate - the soon ariving deadly heat will make the area uninhabitable, ignoring the contamination of the ocean and the salt spray blowing inland leading to sharply rising cancer rates.

..all of these factors impact the quality of life calculation I myself would make

I've always wanted to visit LA, but if I did, it would be as a homeless person, traveling the poorest parts of the city, on bicycle carrying all my belongings with me *like I have in other states* but due to the above quality of life impacts, and earthquakes, I know I never will.

Neoliberal is less taxes, more privatization, guaranteed homelessness.

Thatcher started that in the UK by selling off public housing to the residents, basically make people into condo owners.

LA seems to have a perpetual housing shortage. There are 60,000 homeless in the county of Los Angeles right now. It's 0.6% of the population, and it includes people living in motels. (The motel voucher system is neoliberal - privatized public housing.)

The rents here are now rising faster than inflation, and rising faster than wages. The vacancy rate is around 4%, and seems to have been for a long time. One way to regulate the market is to build (or convert spaces into) more public housing.

some people say it's a shifting of tax burden to lower income groups mostly by the rich exploiting loopholes, subsidies, offshore havens, 501's, foundations and other evasion schemes.

but no matter how you slice it, *endless growth in an finite world* always seems to be a given..

I've been waiting for you to post for that picture ;)

It's not meant to be an insult, just thought it was amusing when I saw it.

What a miserable way to live, in selfishness and arrogance… and therefore removed from the essence of life… or giving a crap about it. How can there be any joy in that dim psychological wasteland?
Of course to those who have neither the experience or maturity or intelligence to see otherwise, the crass adolescent way, the painfully angry, demented way of vile dog eat dog brutality, is the only way.
And, of course it is the only way that a militarized, commercialized, dysfunctional society devoid of ecological awareness and expunged of human compassion, wants their captives to think.

And they have plenty of propaganda to confirm their bloody propaganda.

I haven’t seen it in a while, but I suppose that murder (punctuated by the consumption of flesh) is still the most popular pastime of mainstream media, including video games. Oh what joy. How low can we go. No need to wonder who ate all those trillions of dead cheeseburgers.

No, that is not true selfishness, which would at least be in the interest of the perpetrator… it is the stench of stupidity at its most putrid.

Neoliberalism is a lot of things, but in public services, I think it's fundamentally about the return of economic liberalism or laissez faire, but in the current political context of a mixed economy that's rescued capitalism from collapse.

Capitalism's end through a revolution of the proletariat and impoverished people seemed close at hand during the Great Depression and other depressions, so the more progressive capitalists like Keynes and FDR created social welfare programs to mitigate the poverty and created a middle class. The middle class increased consumption, driving growth. The social welfare programs prevented revolt.

Neoliberalism's main belief is that unregulated markets are best for society, however, pragmatic capitalists see that social programs work, and seek to replicate them as privatized institutions which are "regulated" by the government, paid for largely by taxes, but services provided by private companies. There's a link for their arguments below.[1]

Public services which have been entirely or partially privatized include:
- prisons
- military
- public schools
- public housing
- trash collection
- paramedics
- utilities: telecom, gas, water, electricity
- healthcare
- daycare, both child and adult
- and increasingly, work within the government, to the point where there are desks inside city hall where non-city-employees are doing IT work, electrical, accounting, etc.

By inserting businesses into the provision of public services, the capitalists seek to exert some control over these public services, as well as extract a guaranteed profit. The typical way the companies get contracts is by underbidding each other, or cronyism; to achieve this, the typical strategy is to is push down wages and benefits for the person doing the work, while raising wages for the manager who knows the system in the city, who can lobby the city to keep the service privatized.

Traditionally, privatized services were provided by for-profit companies, but now it seems like more of these services are provided by non-profit organizations. I don't know why this is, but I suspect it's easier to push for privatization if a billionaire can provide money to the service.

For example, charter schools tend to be nonprofits, and billionaires like Bill Gates funnel money into them, increasing the total amount spent on education. The charter school ends up looking more appealing to parents, and enroll in the school. The school gets the tax revenues to operate. The school may or may not have better outcomes. To the parent and community, there's little difference, but to the teachers it means less jobs security, less control, and probably less compensation.

Another example is nonprofit housing, which is aggressively being privatized into nonprofit housing corporations. There's a consensus that public housing has failed, and the government is tearing it down. Contracts are given to nonprofits to rebulid or build affordable housing. The financing seems to be arranged by large banks like Goldman Sachs. They take investors. The tenants pay rent based on their income, and the government makes up the difference between the rent and some nominal market price for rent (or something else). The investors make a return on their investment.[2]

Aside from nonprofit housing, there is for-profit affordable housing with Section 8 vouchers.[3]

If we clear away the fog of neoliberal ideology, and look at the reality, it's obvious what is happening. Costs of public services are going to rise, just as they have in telecom, prisons, healthcare, etc. If the cost doesn't rise, services will decline as they do with Section 8 targeted housing. If services don't decline, then wages will be lowered, as they are in trash collection and daycare. The profit motive will extract proft from wherever it can.

The cost is payed by the taxpayer, and by the community at large. When the cost doesn't rise but service declines, it depresses conditions in the community; consider the impact of bad section 8 housing upon the tenants and community. If wages drop, it means that the community has less money to spend, and may even have to give welfare benefits to the employees.

Beyond the simple expenses is the issue of control. Capitalist enterprises are not larger than government overall, but many are larger than individual city and county governments. So, they don't just bid for contracts - they engage in politics, lobbying, campaigning, and so forth. Traditionally, workers have been mobilized into politics by unions, and sometimes they cut deals with the employers. Today, the corporations engage in politics directly, paying their employees (or not paying them) to campaign for selected politicians. They bypass the union, or don't have a union. Control will allow them to grow.

Regarding growth - yes, I think that neoliberalism will drive growth, due largely to the profit motive. With the nonprofit model, they can put money into the operation, to grow operations without government consent, to gain political favor with the community, which will then demand that the new services be paid for by taxes in the future. The charter schools are doing this with their "co-location" demands - they want access to buildings owned by their competing public schools.

That said, I don't think increasing the supply of housing would be driven by neoliberalism. The reason is that there's a different market logic happening in LA. There's a housing shortage. Vacancy rates are typically below 5%, and there's always been a skid row and a large homeless population. This shortage helps to increase rents, thus, increasing profits. Rents aren't always rising, but it seems to grow in cycles, and new housing is built all the time, with some periods of intense growth like the last year or so, and earlier in the decade.

So, the conditions exist to increase both public housing (or at least preserve it) and increase nonprofit affordable housing. Neither would necessarily drive growth, because there's a third alternative of section 8 housing. If the public and nonprofit don't intervene, eventually, section 8 would.

For the poor, I think the best option is to increase public housing, because it has a side effect of lowering market rents for people outside of the public housing. Nonprofit is second best, because it ultimately costs more to the community, but will also lower market rents. Section 8 is the worst, because it won't lower market rents, and can potentially lead to slum-like conditions due to under-regulation of the units.

However, public housing is kind of a moot point because there's not enough political support for it.

1. http://reason.org/news/show/local-government-privatization-101

2. http://www.occ.gov/static/community-affairs/community-developments-investments/spring06/index.htm

3. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/mortgages-real-estate/10/affordable-housing.asp

"We are trapped in the toxic, termination-inducing capitalist system, and apparently there is no escape, nor even any way to slow down the spread of toxicity and madness.

The worse matters get, the more opportunity there is for disaster capitalism to make profits. As water become less available the price will go up.


The military-industrial-financial-media complex has in place all the systems it needs to ensure it can continue to loot and pollute with impunity, and has its massive army of *deluded slaves, saboteurs and opportunists* who defend the system that is destroying their lives.

The combination of public ignorance, public apathy and political evil will take us all down, despite the best efforts to raise awareness."

PS. reason is a koch stink tank propaganda outlet, a perfect thing to link to; multi-billionaire narratives for 'only little people pay taxes' libercorporaton fairytales, presented on foundation-backed 'dissent management' media outlets.

I'm not saying I'm not down for your apocaplypse.

I'm just saying even leading up to the end of civilization, we should aim for equity and an end to the worst features of capitalism.

Share the mansions. Fix the apartments.

Share the jobs, and let's have less work for everyone.

85 corporations and 2,200 billionaires are responsible for 'the apocalypse'

but what 'the apocalypse' really is, are measurements, samples, data and modeling, which indicates wet bulb temperatures will regularly exceed 95 degrees in Los Angeles within 35 years *if not sooner*. The latest data keeps shifting that point nearer to the present.

What is causing this, are all 'features' of capitalism not just some. Including Business As Usual - the very activities [now cloaked in ambiguous euphemisms] that were just posted above, direct from the mouths of some of those very billionaires. In fact the koch brothers are very near the top of the list of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

even if you worked for the koch brothers you couldn't do any better as a spokesman

I suggest the reason billionaire drivel can even be syndicated here at all is because BAU is the base motivation of the foundations and grants which bankroll media gatekeepers and dissent management operations such as this.

I also point out that both the working poor and the environment are beyond the managed dissent of BAU - the occupy tactic and superstorms are but the first volley of an unending assault on BAU minions, despite attempts to frame all confict and issues within the BAU paradigm, to focus on the messenger rather than deal with the message, or to marginalize data, measurements and samples by slapping a sound-bite label over them such as 'apocalypse'

..something that 'nobody' has been doing for years, searches reveal.

The deadly heat won't build there for ~35 years, but the water situation is critical *right now* - a 500 year drought that forecasts and models show has no end in sight.

The only activity I would invest in is evacuating as many people as possible. But that doesn't raise rents or play pretend-the-city-has-a-future, even for just a few more years.

“No way are we going to give up capitalism, at least not until most of humanity, and much of the rest of the living world, has died. There simply isn’t another plan that makes sense to the people with the power, or to most of us peons.
Nice to think about though.”

This frame of mind is exemplar of how our current form of civilization – global capitalism (or capitalist industrial civilization, as I like to call it) – ideologically dominates its inhabitants. People cannot even begin to imagine a different way of living because they have been made dependent on the system through dispossession of alternative means of subsistence. The masses have truly been reduced to consumers who are taught not to question the system, but to be obedient and conforming.

The superstructure of global capitalism is supported and protected by its institutions and ideas:

1.) Governments and their legal systems administer and regulate the capitalist process.

2.) The military, police, prison complex, and surveillance apparatus serve to enforce the capitalist process.

3.) The consumer culture only allows pro-market solutions.

These three pillars of the capitalist superstructure are very sophisticated and persuasive in diverting and co-opting discontent into forms that reinforce capitalism’s own institutions. Elections, corporate-funded nonprofits, nongovernmental organizations(NGO’s), community-based organizations(CBO’s), corporate-funded think tanks, etc. reinforce the system of capitalist authority and the illusion of democracy. They make people feel they are making a difference, when in fact the participants are tightening the bonds of their own oppression. Capitalism has been very adept at separating the worker from their environment.

This is why many indigenous societies whose culture and land has been usurped by global capitalism say that they “must first decolonize their minds.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"it hadn’t occurred to me to apply the PM model to Chomsky himself"

a perfect example of framing - when the framing is sucessful *you never even think to think outside it.*



"It does seem odd that certain domains of the media would be immune from that analysis for some reason.

"" …and never considering in thirty years of mounting crises that perhaps you should try something else.""

Depressingly, that seems to me to about sum it up. I see the desire for status to be a too strong and pervasive to call for much optimism about anyone who manages to find a voice engaging in any sort of systemic critique. "

it's not a bit odd when you consider who fills the positions - same as the corporate media



"Greenwald is a weird mix of deluded, shrewd and opportunistic."

here we're starting to get warm, the authoritarianism which Silber provides a piece of the puzzle in his writings



"Most revolution acts and ideas seem to have generated by bourgeois. It seems we have the task at hand to figure out if goodman, chomsky… etc are sincere or not."]

again getting warmer, the same class of people operate the 'alternative' media as the corporate media. They're also the one's who rotted the first wave of the occupy tactic from the inside.

Look at pictures from the very first occupy rallies, then look at pictures from later rallies and you'll see how the original *working poor* crowd was replaced by mostly white middle-class 'media majors' and their friends.

I was heavily airing material at the time and the production process required gathering hundreds of video clips, doing background research and collecting photos.

I saw first-hand reports of how 'connected' people moved in and took over, from the backend, using money to pave the way, while also seeing the 'gentrification' of the rallies which were turned into 'consensus meetings' and 'training workshops' - a time tested way to go nowhere and do nothing.


As soon as the rallies were infiltrated and defused then O'bomba organized a nationwide sweep *while bald face lying about it on the corporate media* just in time for BAU Xmas shopping season.

-the same as all the other protests and rallies since the early 70's

Only when the working poor reach critical mass *despite* these people's interference, faster than they can infiltrate and rot *the popular will*, will anything change.


But no one wants to talk about it, connect the dots or even acknowledge it..

which is what makes you'all no better than the people you're trying to put down for not being radical enough.

whether by intent, surroundings or whatever, it devolves back down to snarking *other establishment media stooges*, staying within their billionaire jism laced frames, allowing their 'product' to time sink your energy away, while quibbling over the split hairs of their choosing, and again, ignoring the big picture.


..and now with Swartz, managing to do a complete tap-dance around the only two whistleblowers that matter - Hammond and Edmonds.

I'm leaning toward intentional.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I added part of the current community affairs comments & quotes above because Mike mentioned:

'many indigenous societies whose culture and land has been usurped by global capitalism say that they “must first decolonize their minds.”;

BEFORE THE OCCUPY TACTIC I was looking around the international IMC websites and saw indigenous people and groups *directly complaining about IMC staff* saying how they fly in & take over, consume all time slots (to speak before the crowd) and alienate and silence the very people (working poor) who organise the events, turning a worker's rights rally dealing with local issues (like unions & local power brokers, etc) into bland, general 'protests' about 'human rights', social justice, and so on.

the same thing then happened to the occupy rallies

..and it's not just 'career activists' that support this, the subjects of capitalism themselves - as Mike just pointed out - lack the thoughts or language to think outside the capitalist frame of thinking

..and none of the estimated 1 million social justice organizatons are doing anything about this

they are collectively ignoring the climate destroying capitalist elephant in the room because really they're just extensions of the billionaire's will


this is like the disneyland version of dissent

the comments and discussions are light years beyond the 'safe' rallies, protests and issues that are syndicated here

http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/

same overseas - what the working poor are doing is so far beyond the narratives presented here, that they must be ignored lest they give the working poor here, ideas



my short discription:

"sold out years ago - now only carries safe 'news' like useless rallies"

reading the original article apparently provoked much ranting and ravings and vehemence, as if there were only 1 point of view allowable...that of a repeated perserverating poster called 'crazy inventor' and 2 others who want to agree only with his point of view [these sound like male-type postings].

apparently no Other Opinion is permitted here - and that is intimidating and very lopsided, if not topsy turvied ...

On a free-independent-site any diversity is being pushed DOWN because a few colluders cant stand balance or other than what their version of what is PC dominates...these are types Wishing to Save their worlds...

and all the while these posters are claiming to love everyone, they sound angry and read like being outburst types - by insulting anyone who dissents from Their_ Preferred_ Pt_of_VIEW.... only these types are RIGHT, of course, no one else is allowed to differ....

thus there is only ONE view that is allowable to not be attacked here on this open site. Is that called being "just, fair, considerate" or is there only ego-blasting their own ideas the only ones, because anyone else or other would be drowned out by these repeaters ?

luckily for these commentators, the Indymedia site doesnt get enough donations to help insure that the 'few' repeat-commentators dont dominate. And they then take over the 'free-post-your-own-view' site with ONLY their versions.

Count the number of comments per person posting here and see the repeated demands to be Dominant here.

Thanks Indymedia folks - - for letting everyone not only post articles -- and it is not the site holders fault that a writer will get barraged and harrassed by those who dont like the original version expressed.

what happened to "free expression" when the results terminate and result in a lot of negative attacks and criticisms ncluding insults too ?

Oh.....hypocrisy reigns here too....the sweet wishful-saviors of their worlds Claim to be oh, so good and holy ...and yet act-out their hate and diseases to any dissenter.

Or if one disagrees, is different or has another version of what is 'good' or 'appropriate' or 'helpful' or even questions the holier-than-anyone-else' -ers' exhortations, surely they will be inundated with angry responders who want to win and bury them with their own versions of truth, holy as the Righteous ones think it is. .

oh well, what fun for commentators to correspond via Indymedia.

Wouldn't you 3 repeat commentators like to send each other more private emails than posting it all here tho ? For everyone else to see how you want to dominate all conversations and can do so on Indymedia at least.

reading the original article apparently provoked much ranting and ravings and vehemence, as if there were only 1 point of view allowable...that of a repeated perserverating poster called 'crazy inventor' and 2 others who want to agree only with his point of view [these sound like male-type postings].

apparently no Other Opinion is permitted here - and that is intimidating and very lopsided, if not topsy turvied ...

On a free-independent-site any diversity is being pushed DOWN because a few colluders cant stand balance or other than what their version of what is PC dominates...these are types Wishing to Save their worlds...

and all the while these posters are claiming to love everyone, they sound angry and read like being outburst types - by insulting anyone who dissents from Their_ Preferred_ Pt_of_VIEW.... only these types are RIGHT, of course, no one else is allowed to differ....

thus there is only ONE view that is allowable to not be attacked here on this open site. Is that called being "just, fair, considerate" or is there only ego-blasting their own ideas the only ones, because anyone else or other would be drowned out by these repeaters ?

luckily for these commentators, the Indymedia site doesnt get enough donations to help insure that the 'few' repeat-commentators dont dominate. And they then take over the 'free-post-your-own-view' site with ONLY their versions.

Count the number of comments per person posting here and see the repeated demands to be Dominant here.

Thanks Indymedia folks - - for letting everyone not only post articles -- and it is not the site holders fault that a writer will get barraged and harrassed by those who dont like the original version expressed.

what happened to "free expression" when the results terminate and result in a lot of negative attacks and criticisms ncluding insults too ?

Oh.....hypocrisy reigns here too....the sweet wishful-saviors of their worlds Claim to be oh, so good and holy ...and yet act-out their hate and diseases to any dissenter.

Or if one disagrees, is different or has another version of what is 'good' or 'appropriate' or 'helpful' or even questions the holier-than-anyone-else' -ers' exhortations, surely they will be inundated with angry responders who want to win and bury them with their own versions of truth, holy as the Righteous ones think it is. .

oh well, what fun for commentators to correspond via Indymedia.

Wouldn't you 3 repeat commentators like to send each other more private emails than posting it all here tho ? For everyone else to see how you want to dominate all conversations and can do so on Indymedia at least.

[high methane levels now being seen over Greenland too]

data, measurements, samples and models are not 'points of view'

"They study us intensively, like mice in a lab, every single activity, under the microscope. So if a girl pauses to look at her nails, they think ‘Why is she doing that?’ and analyse the motivation and exploit the time, as an opportunity to market a new intervention into her existence.

So next tine she sees tv or a magazine she find herself identifying with some fucking tv celebrity who looks at her fingernails and decides she needs to purchase some ridiculous synthetic product that’ll make her more attractive to me or get her a better job or whatever.

They’ll look at the sector of the population that [the people that operate IMC] fall into, and they see some passing concern for environmental issues but big concern for family and community and the amount of foundation income, etc, and they’ll tailor an organisation exactly matched to divert and neutralise that sector, so that it doesn’t interfere with their activities and actually contributes to their profits.



As I said, i worked for a nature conservation ‘charity’. They took on a retired bank manager as a financial advisor. Lo and behold, at the committee meeting he began to talk about how we might begin to think about turning some of our conservation reserves towards making some money.

You know, the idea had been since fucking 1932, or whenever the thing was set up, to buy these areas, and then to leave them alone, protected from any interference.

And then this creepy fucker, under the influence of Reagan and Thatcher, wheedles his way in, and wants to find ways of extracting a profit. After all, what else is the world, nature, ANYTHING, for ? Except to make money from ?




"I have not had a car or a tv any of that shit for decade and more, I can hardly remember when I was last in a fucking car."
I remember turning the TV on for a few hours during 9/11 but quickly lost interest since it was obviously staged.




Ordinary people continue to ignore dire warnings.

So, facts are not important. What is important is the psychology of denial. And even understanding that still does not facilitate any kind of breakthrough, any kind of shift in consciousness, I’m afraid.

(I agree with you about 9/11, even if Mike doesn’t.)"

Mike not only doesn't, he's actively censoring the discussion in true blog style.

*which is why I don't have a blog*



Yesterday I marched in Raleigh with a huge group of people who are against the insanity of the tea baggers in control of our state. It was called the Moral March. It was a diverse group, and on many issues I’m sure we don’t all agree. But we marched together to fight the bastards, compromising a bit for the bigger fight.

For me the big fight is to get people to understand at least that global warming is bringing devastation to our society and the real bastards are those who are lying to us. It is a moral fight. I’m glad I’m in it.

I get insulted here because of it.

I crossed some line and the people in this blog are too inflexible in their thinking at this point to excuse any crossing like that. Now, no matter what I say, I get disagreement or insults, even when fully mouthing exactly what has been said over and over here. Not a very open or friendly group, but oh,well…..there just are not many sites about collapse, and there is a lot to learn here.

..another reason why I don't have a blog - it becomes too much of a 'club' and like failbook, the format encourages the blogger (as opposed to investigative journalist) to become too personally tied up in a particular 'point of view' which leads to driving the discussions along personal bias/blindness (as opposed to simply gathering & reporting the facts) In the forum format, as equal anonymous contributers, the goal is to *not be able to tell anyone's actually running it*. Without the spam/scam sub-forum and the posts moved there, it meets this goal. With a blog the operator feels compelled to add content which leads to fatigue and lack of depth, since other people can only add comments.

Same problem here at IMC, billionaires look at the front page and the syndication feeds and pop a woody - oh look *nothing that threatens our profiteering is ever exposed here* - any issues that matter are buried in the comments, safely ignored.

"sold out years ago - now only carries safe 'news' like useless protests"

billionaires smile upon IMC

count the # of comments above, even those 'off topic' or just adding 1 sentence associating to topic at end of long commentary of other disaparate thingies..

11 by a crazy person who wants to also be an inventor
called "crazy inventor".

is this an abuse of Indymedia space by 1 person attempting to drown out what he DOES NOT LIKE PERSONALLY and thus not allow divergences, differences, variety, or any other views than his very own?

why the submergence of what is 1 person's views well written and valid for them or even for other readers, to be overwhelmed and all the spaces occupied below the article by mostly 1 person attempting to TAKE OVER the original writing ?

and then 2 others also are corresponding here as if they were emailing each other but instead do so publicly and while these too are writing EACH OTHER mostly, they did not continue on and on and on...

is this a subterfrug for usurping some writers that some ONE PERSON disagrees or Dislikes ?

Is this allowed ? Is there no equality, fairness, sharing of space and allowing for differences ? is this dictatorship by abusing the Indymedia site ?

yep.

speaking of which, where's yours?

You're on a roll there, but it's totally baffling.

I'm not sure how IMC is a gatekeeper in the way the big outlets are gatekeeprs. We keep 911 and chemtrails and a bunch of other stuff up. We push some to local, sometimes.

Our gates swing open, and they're not gates to anywhere that popular. It's like a gate around a small dirt patch.

Getting back to the original poster - I think you're frustrated with the homeless people sleeping on the streets, etc. but your rage is misdirected. The homeless generally can't do anything about their situation. If they could, they probably would.

Most are as meek and hidden as you wish, but some just want to be out there.

The only solution is to house them.

characterizing critique as 'hate'

I've posted and linked to _what other people are saying and what other people are doing_

- said about foundation funded 'social justice' orgs (there's over a million of them) several people, including former IMC staff - part the orginal group, that were 'driven out' or saw what's become of it and decided not to be a part of it anymore.

same as pacifica same as kboo

and I've seen those articles and comments hidden by the very people they're citing

- doing, people have moved on, first blogs now the occupy tactic. IMC definately wasn't at the leading edge of THAT - in fact you see virtually no page space devoted to the issue, as if they wish it would just go away (the billionaire foundation sugar daddies certaintly do)

as long as more & more people are made homeless and poor, the occupy tactic will keep growing

the 'solutions' proposed by these foundation funded 'social justice' orgs are only more BAU, slightly tweeked to pretend to address them.


without addressing those issues, attacking the messenger to isolate to message from the messenger and to isolate the class of people concerned from other classes, there's no point in engaging this


the rapidly evolving climate chaos situation is an excellent example - people here just ignore it and pretend it's not happening while all 'solutions' proposed are only kick-the-can-down-the-road, continuing business as usual, with a thin veneer of greenwashing applied, which is what is destroying our environment

..and the billionaires that bankroll these foundations are making out like bandits (investments in coal, tar sands trains, etc)

"whats with the mother nature hate?"

25 comments and not a single one of them could challenge the article presented by living insider. Not a one.

The best (BEST!!!) that they could come up with was to run away run away by changing the subject and playing the bully by calling living insider names.

Suppose that the people STEALING public lands for their own use were billionaires with dozens of homes scattered around the world. Suppose that it was Bill gates doing exactly what the poor homeless people were doing. Stealing public park areas to do their own thing.

You would have no problem seeing and saying that Bill Gates was stealing public park lands for his own use. You might even be so bold (aka, full of shit) to suggest that Bill Gates was stealing public park lands from the poor homeless people who couldn't be thieves of public park lands because Bill Gates was already stealing the areas for his own use.

Nope, Bill gates stealing public park lands for his own use would be no more of an offense (and yes, it is an offense, the same offense that those commenting run away from run away from) than poor homeless people are commiting when they steal public park lands for their own use.

The offense would be the same. Is the same.

And the best (BEST!!!) those people commenting can come up with is to trash living insider is to be all judge mental (mental). Oh, you don't appease the offenses of the poor homeless people because you don't live up to the standards that we have set for you, even though you don't see us lifting a finger to help those people either. Oh, we won't dip into our own pockets to help them unless we can get government to use their guns to force you to help them too.

10 cents a day. Hmmmm, since Democraps are the majority, that means LESS THAN 20 cents a day among the majority to cover your utopian dreams. Do you see them giving twenty cents a day until they can get government to force others to give ten cents a day??? I don;t see that happening. But we DO see them whining about how government doesn't yet stick a gun in your face to pay 10 cents a day.

lead by example, and cut the name calling judge mental bullying crap that we have come to expect from your comments.

you're a bit late to the concern troll game aren't you?

what's the matter, feeling a bit locked out lately?

Then where did my last comment go???

All i did was show how no one actually challenged anything living insiders posted and how vapid the bullies were uin thier responses to an article they failed to contradict.

Not a gate keeper??? How about book burner? I mean, if you really want to get a clear view of LA IMC editors. Book burner NAZIs is what LA IMC editors are comparable to.

Again we see for ourselves that crazy inventor can not deal with the issues presented, so instead, he/she tries and fails to change the subject.

Tea party doesn't change a thing. YOU DO! Ohhhh, lets not look at what is really happening, lets look at what the TV set God tells us to consider.

Run away run away, all you can.

After all, as we ALL can see, running away running away is what you are best at.

or irony?

I already addressed the OP's specific issue with the comment "Emotional Callousness"

scroll up and read it..

emotional callousness? Oh, so that is why we do NOT see you and the democrat majority reaching into your own pockets to pay 20 cents a day to help these poor suffering people???

According to some people (whom we shall leave to YOU to point out), it is others who are letting those poor people suffer, while at the same time,...who else isn't lifting a finger to help those poor people whom I ALSO don't seem to care about???

Emotional callousness ends up looking chump and vapid while you are showing your unwillingness to offer any support other than your willingness to use government force to stick a gun in other people's faces to force them to live up to your alleged ideals, which you have left at the way side long ago.

Face it, you have no idea how much I enjoy showcasing your 2 faced failures to live up to the ideals that you would use government to force others to live up to.

You make it so easy to trash your comments. I am so drunk that I have fallen off my chair twice since I sat down, and can still expose your mindless rant for the shallow self absorbed self engrandisement that we have come to expect from you.

Those of us that still bother to check out the LA IMC, that is. It used to be something to look forward to, coming to the LA IMC. These days, it is more of a chore. Thanks to people like you.

-an issue you're oblivious to. Which is exactly what the essay I reposted is about.

That you have the attention span of a toddler, tunnel vision and nothing but strawmen of your own creation to attack the messenger with, is another issue entirely.


Nothing is gained by babysitting abusive drunks, I learned years ago, whether on-line or off.

Might as well just make fun of them or ignore them.

The framing of 'we' and 'you' (WE WILL DESTROY YOU!!!) is classic trolling. "We" being your collection of strawmen dolls, and "you" being anyone that happens to be around, no matter the issue or position.


But why do it for free? There's employment opportunities for such a valuable skill :)

...you try to invent opponents whom you can ridicule as a way of running away running away from those real opponents who constantly make you look vapid.

So lets look at the made up cartoon that you saw fit to post. Hmmmm, "economic injustice". Hmmmm, what could that mean in your mind???

Would it be me not paying your bills or me not surrendering public lands to others who have no more claim to the public lands than I have???

I have been seeing that dung for almost 20 years now. Oh, if I don't pay the poor people's bills, then I am harming the poor people. Well, I guess that goes double for you then, because you don't seem to be sticking your own hands into your own pocket to spend your own money to pay their bills. Oh, not unless you can have government agents force me to pay their bills too.

But good luck with making fun of the bogus people you invent. And even more luck to you in ignoring the people (me for example) who constantly make you look chump and without substance.

The essay I reposted and the millions of non-billionaires deploying the occupy tactic 'get it':

"OWS knows who really pulls the strings

"...the megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. Indeed, Occupy's best move, as conservative blogger/financier Gregory Djerejian noted at TheAtlantic.com, was "directing their ire squarely toward the real elites of the country, rather than their bought-and-paid marionettes sitting in Washington."



Tea baggers are the puppets of billionaires, mainly because they aspire to someday BE rich themselves - the environment and other people be damned. So on the tiny chance they might 'join the club' they willingly emulate them. Fortunately they are a tiny minority (old white male) growing ever smaller as they die off (the average faux news watcher is 68).

Tea baggers were entirely invented by the koch brothers and supported by other billionaires, unlike the people using the occupy tactic which are millions of working poor and other ordinary folks.

When a tea bagger bot parrots billionaire propaganda, notice what they leave out - endless war, war profiteering, too-big-to-jail wall street bankster crooks, trans-national corporations that pay no taxes, tax shelters, havens, loopholes and the offshoring of jobs - all the issues that actually create poverty. Their puppetmasters don't want these subjects brought up, and so deflect attention to the victims insted.

Tea baggers cannot ever acknowledge this reality because it threatens and invades their fantasy and exposes their masters, and so we get intentionally obtuse willfully ignorant programmed bots that always frame themselves as 'winning' .

I don't care how you run away run away, just as long as it is amusing and easily flushed.

We all know that big money and government have joined up to screw over the rest of America. Tea baggers do not like it because they know that as long as democats and republicans have stacked the deck against them that they will never be rich.

OWS knows the same thing tea baggers know, and noone but big money and their whore politicians, democrats and republicans, actually like it because they are the only ones making cash out of screwing over the rest of us.

Koch brothers might support Tea baggers, I really couldn't tell you. But I never met a tea bagger who has gotten money from them or even heard of them until libtards started telling them that their movement was created by the Koch brothers. Up until then and since, they have been working folks and ordinary poor people who do not like being defined by what libtards say they stand for, which you obviously do not have a clue.

Endless war and all the issues that actually create poverty? Like Obama trying to start a war against Syria, and now Russia??? All those issues are denounced by tea baggers. So that trashes your theory that Tea baggers are following orders of their alleged masters.

Nope, the tea baggers know that they are also the victims of the same people victimizing the OWS troop. Who ever has you convinced otherwise sure saw you coming. maybe you should have checked their alleged facts before you took up their banner and make yourself look ignorant.

And the only bots I have seen are the ones in your This modern world comix. Seems they were made for you and people just like you who can't trash what others say, so you were given an opponent that you might actually have a chance of making look as chump as I constantly make you look.

Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) (1984–2004) was a conservative political group operating in the United States, whose self-described mission was "to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation." In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity.

Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) was established in 1984 by David H. Koch and Charles Koch of Koch Industries.




In 2002, seven years before the “grass roots Tea Party” began to gain national attention. A study funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health found that in 2002, the Koch brothers with financial backing from big tobacco, created a now-archived website entitled usteaparty.com. The featured text reads “Today we’re having a new tea party against high taxes!”

The true origins of the tea party

But you have to go farther back than 2002 or the 1980′s to find another piece of the puzzle. Charles and David Koch are the sons of Fred Koch, a founding member of The John Birch Society, a right wing organization still in “business” today. The John Birch Society railed against the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act; Fred Koch even went so far as to write that the civil rights movement equaled Communism.

Koch Industries is one of the largest environmental polluters in the country. One of their subsidiaries, Georgia Pacific, is currently poisoning the entire town of Crossett, Arkansas.

"The koch brothers are fighting WALL STREET REFORM"


What do you tell predominately white, middle class or even poor Americans to convince them that these “policies” are in their best interest? You scare them. You tell them the same thing Fred Koch told people; you just have to modernize it a bit. Instead of “Communists,” it’s socialism. Instead of “the colored man,” it’s immigrants. Instead of the president being a Red, he’s “foreign,” “un-American,” “a terrorist sympathizer.” The message remains the same, the base becomes terrified of a mythical boogeymen, and they vote for men and women who are lying to them every single day.

So a “movement” that claims to be “Taxed Enough Already” really started with the John Birch Society, found backing from Philip Morris, moved into the new millennium with US Tea Party.com, and somehow got millions of Americans to believe that none of that is true. And they don’t. You try and tell a Tea Bagger all of this, and they will deny it with every breath in their body. It’s a liberal plot, we’re just angry that “they’re” winning.

http://quietmike.org/2013/10/03/origins-of-the-tea-party/

http://www.polluterwatch.com/category/freetagging/citizens-sound-economy

http://smallbusinessconsultants.typepad.com/blog/2010/11/the-kochs-proxy-war.html

And still, nobody in the tea party that I have ever met knows who the koch brothers are. Oh, they have chosen the same name. Wow, and so what? Make your point.

What do you think of web sight names? Nambla, North American Marlon Brando look alikes, or that other group that stole their web sight name?

My PR degree (BA) has me knowing much of how changes happen. And one of the first things we learned was to let others carry our burdens. Yes, other people can be used to do your work for you. That doesn't mean they support your goals. All it means is that you have found a way to get other people to work for the same goals you have set for yourselves.

It doesn't mean they follow you. It may, if you position yourself right, that you may find them doing your work for you. And that is what PR work is really all about. get your job done. Koch brothers may have found a way to get working class Americans to get behind things that the koch brothers want accomplished. But for you to suggest that makes the Koch brothers the tea party masters is to place the cart before the horse.

Look at Democrats. Do democrat voters really support the Zionist's murderous theft of Palestinian lands or have democrat politicians found a way to buy your support of the Zionist's murderous theft of palestinian lands in exchange for your free ride at tax payer expense . Or have democrats found a way for you truly expresse your hatred of all things Palestinian. which would make you a vile piece of excrament by all standards?

Sure, we don't expect you to admit that your supposition is meaningless crap. Notice how I used the word "we". Yep, that is PR. If you were standing on the same ground I was standing on, then you wouldn't need me pointing it out to you.

So, who does that make the "we"??? According to your limited understanding, we would mean ME. Not all the others included in the word "WE" who might find understanding and unity in the word WE. Like you see the Koch brothers as being the tea party WE. We? Them or us?

You have no idea of who I am, or of who we are, or of who you are, as you have shown US (us?) repeatedly that you are one of us, even when you refuse to admit it.

Sure, you (YOU!) would find life much easier if every one of us (US!) was carrying a flag to set themselves apart from the US, or the we, from the them or the Koch brothers and who ever their us or we were. But the real world is a bit trickier than what you (us? or them?) will understand without a road map.

Which is what helps make this so much easier for the We, us , (aka ME). to understand and to use to make you look vapid and chump. And yes, I am not 8 shots of rum kicking your shallow vapid kabooty. Not that y9u would ever know or admit.

don't you understand?

Denial can produce bizzare effects, like elaborate tap-dance numbers that desperately try to ignore the FACT that the billionaies and their media toadie's echo-chamber, created another 'grassroots' (astroturf) movement. Giving this tiny minority exposure and legitimacy far beyond their actual numbers.

If the 'revelation' that this group has been played by paid professional liars is too painful to bear perhaps 'p' should stop 'winning' so much, and start learning.


As part of learning one runs across citations that link to FACTS, then posts them to back up what they say.

Constantly 'winning' by just saying so, minus such citations makes a parody of oneself, as does shifting pseudonyms.

Well, your response was about what WE have come to expect from you. meaningless

Millions of dollars didn't create anything. They might have opened up an avenue that the tea party then started marching down, but it was the folks themselves that got the news coverage. Sure, some "news" coverage would spend their time focusing on the money rich people spent on PR (public relations) to start the people marching down the avenue. But that is just a chicken stuff way that those alleged "news" reporters have to run away run away from the actual people marching. People didn't join the tea party because a rich guy spent money on PR. They joined because the saw value in supporting the values that the PR people showed them. And that PR message sure as hell wasn't anything to do with tobacco, or that they should follow the dictates of Koch.

How full of yourself would you have to be to expect anyone to be stupid enough to buy into that load?

If you do something right, no one will know you didn't do anything at all.

I have already pointed out how PR has as its main objective of getting others to carry your burdens.

Oh, spell checker. How interesting. You found yet another way to run away run away from people who constantly make you look vapid. I can not spell very well and need a spell checker. Is that the best you can come up with? My Spelling??? To me, it just makes it so much more enjoyable when a poor speller can trash everything you post.

What? You can't even compete with a poor speller. How pathetic are you? Sheesh, this C-I guy/gal sure is a looser when he/she can't even compete with a guy/gal who can't spell up to our standards.

And it is who, not that

People who do this, numbers who do that.

What? Is your grammer really so pathetic? Don't worry, it isn'y your pathetic grammer that makes your post stink up the place. It is your supositions and your creating bogus oponents while your are chasing windmills. damn, I spelt windmills corectly. I really wanted you to enjoy your fleating victory iover a poor speller. Yuk yuk yuk.

Re: the homeless and Bill Gates

I don't think the homeless are “stealing” the park, but if they were, that would be a legitimate form of civil disobedience. This country is rich enough to provide a real home to every person.

Second, the way that Bill Gates operates is cronyism. He has an “in” with the system and gets the government to buy his products. Micro-soft's first contract was software for stoplights.

Re: the Tea Party

The Tea Party are interesting. I've met a few people who are self-identified baggers, and consider myself a friend with one, and what's astounding is how ignorant they are about political philosophy, or how politics really works. They don't even seem to remember high school history or government classes. Of course, most people are ignorant about these things, so, that's not special, but given that they are so interested in politics, it's kind of nauseating.

They (the few I've met) are similar to some Communists and Anarchists, in that they are very concerned with how things should be, rather than how things are. So, they are easy to manipulate; they're obviously lied-to. I'd say the same for some people on the left, particularly younger people. The main difference with Tea Party people is that they are generally older, and shouldn't be so naïve; generally these baggers got a late start, so they're still caught up in their illusions. Since the illusions are those that support the systems of power in America, there's not a lot you can do to “wake them up.”

As far as the Koch bros and the TP, most of the TP don't know much of anything. I was debating with a bagger about Obamacare/ACA before it was passed, and I asked them how they felt about a law that would require people to buy insurance from private companies. The TP person was very supportive of it. So, I told her that is what the ACA did – it had an individual mandate. She was also supportive of expanding Medicaid to all poor people. So I told her that ACA had something like that. Then she directed me to read something on a specific page of the law. I asked if I could get a print or a quote from it, but she couldn't provide it. You'd think, if it's a few lines on a single page...

Anyway, we parted ways. I was picketing to support a public option, and hoping to inform people about Kuehl's single payer bill. I was critical of ACA but basically supportive. I figured something was better than nothing. The law affects a lot of lives.

Some years later, I saw that TP person, and I was hoping to talk to her again, but didn't have a chance. She was in a crowd of anti Obamacare protesters, and they had a lot of signs opposing the individual mandate!

The TP are a bunch of robots. They's echo whatever talking points the team advocates. One year, they're supporting the ideas behind Obamacare, another year they're opposing those exact same ideas.

That's not to say there aren't robots on the left. My experience is that we're more robots out of practicality. We're settling, and self-aware of that. Yeah, we voted for Obama. I'd say 75% of us had genuine hope, and 25% were trying to keep ourselves from laughing at our compatriots, but voted for the guy anyway. That shit goes double for Jerry Brown. Jerry knows it, and that's what's great about that old asshole.

If malignant cells could only talk, they too would tell you how special they are, how growth is good, how they can’t help themselves, how much they intend to grow in the coming year, how the damnable natural killer cells (environmentalists) are always getting in the way of a good thing. All the while, the body from which the cancer escaped for its temporary growth binge is growing weaker and weaker as the tumor burden gets larger and larger.

I wish there could be something magically special about industrial civilization, it’s not all bad being a cancer, while it lasts.

You can pat yourself on the back and tell each other how superior and special you are, for a while. Then the truth comes home to roost (black swans) and the goose gets cooked.



Humans naturally tend to conserve energy and resources - as exemplified by the thrifty societies that prevailed prior to Bernays. his 'great' achievement was to persuade the masses to abandon their instinctive behaviours. As we [here] know, the manipulation of the masses by corporations and their spin-doctors was purely in order to stimulate consumption, something which went against the grain and had to be changed!

And now we have mindless consumers spread across the world.




blinded by the light

Many techno-utopians are like someone the bank calls up tells them they are out of money to which they adamantly exclaims, “I can’t be out of money, I still have checks!”


Industrial civilization is out of time and money. Technology is like having lots of checks left.


Technology needs time and money to back it up.


The global banking mafia has no real time or money left, [b]just fake claims on underlying assets[/b], and many, many broken promises.

Fossil fuel technology needs more time and money than the global economy can cough up.


techno sustainability fantasies are powered by a gross incomprehension of ‘money’ and how it funds or doesn’t fund technology.

Money funds energy extraction, fossil fuels prop up economies.

The chicken and the egg.

Which dies first?



Techno-utopians are incapable of big picture concepts like that.

In a world of collapsing economies, there will be no techno fixes, that takes money.

Money is confidence in the future. No confidence in tomorrow’s promises, all ‘money’ disappears in the blink of an eye.


You’ve said it in one: If you’re a reductionist thinker, you’ll never be able to get into the mind of a person that is not. But scientific reductionism dominates every aspect of our culture, and finding “solutions” to “problems” is dogma. But as you say so well, it is like all utopian ideologies, including mankind’s latest, modern and future technology, just another secular faith. There you have it. Tobis is even arrogant enough to propose that “doomers” like us are poisoning the minds of people who could otherwise be rallied to the cause of technological salvation and positive thoughts. (Not a quote but the message I got from his writing.) He can’t understand how we “doomers” get up in the morning. To me, that just shows how very little “real understanding” he has.


A generalist learns less and less about more and more until eventually he knows nothing about everything,

conversely a specialist learns more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.


I get up in the morning with a sense of celebration of another opportunity to help other people and animals.

And appreciate knowing reality head on, seeing how every day presents challenges to those who wish to face them.

[cat stevens - morning has broken lyrics follow]

this week's community affairs ^

What does that have to do with what's being posted?

Do you even read the whole response before you bring out the copy-paste?

The rest of this is for PrionPartyy and p.

>And still, nobody in the tea party that I have ever met knows who the koch brothers are.

That's because they're dim bulbs.

The difference between Occupy and TEA is that Occupy was well aware that union money was being used to try and co-opt the movement. They even accepted the assistance, knowing who it was, and what their agenda was, and knowing they were not 100% in alignment, but close enough.

They knew that the progressive politicians wanted the Occupy sex appeal.

They knew that nonprofits would try to glom onto them, and the nonprofits did. So did a lot of writers and media people who wanted to make money off of Occupy.

The Koch operation is just the same as the GOP playbook of the last 20 years. They get the old middle class on board with the tax talk. They know that the poor old people on a fixed income feel the pinch and see their declining situation will make taxes hurt more and more each year.

I know leftist seniors who complain about their taxes. They feel the pinch.

Then they attack the black President, and the gays. Lock in their factions with old fashioned bigotry.

Then you get them to go vote, because old people know how to vote. They put the polling placed INSIDE retirement complexes (many of which are funded via socialistic government spending).

As far as Democrats and Zionists. Please. The GOP supports them more than anyone else, but during Democratic administrations, the sides change temporarily as AIPAC focuses on funding Dems more. Most Americans don't care about foreign policy.

As far as media coverage for baggers: lol. 30 baggers at a rally would get TV coverage, while 2,000 anti-war protesters got none. The fix was in. The professional PR flacks were in on it. They got the message out that the typical 60 year old newswatcher loves to see gray haired people protesting taxes. The news doesn't want to show resistance to the powers that be, especially before running a couple ads from Big PhRMA donor.

Protests might give the old folks some hope.

Nobody suggests that they are NOT stealing public lands. Then Nobody can post their own address so that the homeless can "camp" in Nobody's back yard.

Oh, you would see pretty damn quickly how they would be stealing your own private property. Wouldn't you???

How would you respond if a bunch of homeless people started moving in on you? Would you see with your own eyes that they were denying you a chance to put in some tomato plants and bell peppers and I like Okra? Maybe your kids would loose half of their places for hide and seek. And maybe you would start to wonder if you should start to worry about their drinking, and maybe some meth use. Where then? Would you then start to wonder if any of them were sex offenders,or even pedophile sex offenders? Then you would start to see their STEALING your back yard as stealing.

Oh, but you don't worry about them stealing your private property or being a threat to your loved ones. You see them as NOT stealing public lands. Because it is something you live far away from. They are an offense to public lands and a threat to other people's loved ones. Right? so you don't see that as being such a big deal. Right?

Go ahead, and feel free to address anything I post. Don't feel obligated to respond for the sake of responding just for the sake of not appearing vapid and detached from reality. And don't try to create a bogus PPyy to respond to, as that would just make you look even more vapid and detached fro reality.

Oh, and civil disobedience. And if they were a bit closer to home, and if it was your own back yard, what you see it as??? If you told them to leave your own back yard and they refused, would that also be civil disobedience???

In a civil manner, you would be asking them to leave your property. In an equally civil manner, members of the public want them to leave public lands, which they are denied access to because the poor homeless people have STOLEN it for their own use.

Oh, but that is far and away from the golden reality that you have chosen for yourself, isn't it?

Oh, and the P is me, the author entry has a memory and I usually just press the p button, which give me PrionPartyy as an option, and I guess I pressed enter before I could choose PrionPartyy as the option.

I must have been in a rush to present my opinions. Seeing as how my opinions are so much more valid than the drivel presented by others, you included obviously, then is it easy to see how I could screw up on such a typo.

If I am wrong about that, then we can all expect to see you posting your own address so that the homeless ,and maybe a few suprize guest appearances, can STEAL your own back yard.

Dim Bulbs. Well, that is one possibility, isn't it. Another possibility is that other than dumping a load of cash and coming up with a name "tea party" the Koch brothers have not really been a part of the movement they are credited by libtards for creating.

They spent their own cash on a public relations endeavor to get other people to do their biding. Other people chose to join an endeavor for their own reasons and created the Tea Party, which the Koch brothers ended up having to pay public relations people to keep their agenda a part of the movement, which failed as we can all see, even you, is no longer a part of the tea party movement.

If they have to keep spending money on a pr program just to keep their agenda a part of the movement which they were a part of at its genesis, then they have clearly failed as their original agenda is NOT a part of the tea party in any form and the tea party is clearly not controlled or even influenced by the Koch brothers, and it is just libtards who keep saying that because the Koch bothers were once, long ago, a part of the naming of a movement that the Koch brothers clearly lost controle and even influence over, as can be observed in the tea party not being a part of the Koch brothers agenda, DUH. What, you need a road map???

And then you go on a rant about how people can be separated and compartmentalized. Wow. what a meaningless load of dung. Oh, I am sure YOUR mother could be proud of you for being so slick. I also am sure that your mother thinks you are attractive and sure that you will someday meet someone who isn't repulsed by your presence.

great minds talk about ideas

average minds talk about events

small minds talk about other people



community affairs is a sample of current events being discussed by people looking reality squarely in the face rather than doing their best to tap-dance around it, such as re-hashing old talking points and sound bites kindly supplied by the billionaire noise machine.

Myself I have very little to say, because I'm not important.. If one scrolls up and looks at either nobody or pityy partyy one may note how often "I" appears and/or how often a single individual is focused on, whereas the dialogue that is selected for attention for community affairs are groups of people talking about events which affect everyone and everything and different ideas, concepts, paradigms and narratives. Some participants do talk about themselves and insult others but they are recognised for what they are and shunned.

Adults having adult conversations which, even when links are dropped here, fail to be followed, then a pretense is performed pretending pasting such conversations are the outlier, not the other way around.

The subject has been directly addressed by the essay pasted above, yet neither one of you are capable of acknowledging it, along with any of the other subjects, events, data, measurements, samples, peer-reviewed studies or even local climate and water - issues which directly impact living standards 'real estate prices' and other metrics. Even the banksters are largely ignored, billionaires certainly so, corporations that pay no taxes, tax havens, loopholes subsidies and corporate welfare. Which do directly impact the false issue of this published story..

This refusal to face reality permeates and characterizes the entire scope of narrative for all the content syndicated here - which I've also directly addressed and was called 'mean' and a 'hater' for doing so.


a tea bagger and a neo-liberal walk into a bar..

You make a lot of assumptions.

I live pretty close to skid row. Not right in it, but walking distance if I take a long walk. There are always homeless people a couple blocks away because there are a number of bus stops there, one which goes to skid row. I also don't have a back yard, but do have a front. The homeless don't sleep there, but sometimes, people take my vegetables, but I don't mind. There are no homeless in the park nearby - I don't know why. It's probably because this is considered an unsafe, high crime neighborhood. Homeless people usually have a roll of bills on their body, and I can see drug addicts rolling them for their money.

Seriously - if I were homeless, I wouldn't sleep in this area, because there's some criminal activity, and cops driving around, and I think some residents here would beat me up. It's probably safer in skid row.

There seems to be a homeless person living under the freeway nearby though.

I pay my taxes. I want the government to give these people rooms.

BTW - the Kochs may not have started it, but they jumped on to fund organizations that took it over. I've read the TP forums - the people know they've been co-opted by the GOP think tanks and lobbyist orgs.

devastating flooding in the UK, unprecedented drought in California, wild swings in temperature across the US, Slovenia, crippled by ice storms, Pacific Islands disappearing completely, large tracts of South America suffering unprecedented drought and parts of Australia in ‘meltdown’ etc.

The biggest lease holder in Canada’s Tar sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.

I’m not going to get sucked into a pointless haggle.




“Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction.

Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.“

The issue of climate change doesn't make the issue of homelessness moot.

It's not like reducing homeless from 0.5% to 0% is going to have huge impacts on greenhouse gasses. If anything, studies show it's cheaper to house people than leave them unhoused. I assume that's due to reduced law enforcement. Lower cost can be a result of consuming less energy.

It's not for-sure, but there's a correlation with some likely causal relationships there.

Also, it's not like you have to build new for each person. There are a lot of buildings out there that can be repurposed. You can also build upwards - a structure needing a new roof can add a penthouse and PV panels.

you're walking back - before you suggested building NEW 'low-cost' housing AND proposed doing it with 'free market' private contractors (neo-liberalism)


- in a rising seas, coastal desert area with no potable water future

I didn't say that we should contract out building affordable housing. I said that's what is being done right now, because there isn't the political support to do government operated public housing.

This is the reality since the 1980s, when the political winds turned against public housing.

I said that the preferable option was an increase of public housing. Nonprofit is second best. Section 8 is the worst.

'An annual report is about to be released by The Millennium Project which is titled, “State of the Future.” This report examines global problems and their potential solutions. In discussing the report, chief scientist of NASA’s Langley Research Center, Dennis Bushnell, has said that humans need three planets to sustain themselves.

I had previously read a statistic which claimed that if all humans on Earth had the lifestyles and consumption habits of the average American, that we would need over five Earths to sustain the global population. That tidbit was more of a warning about the American “way of life,” whereas what Bushnell is saying is a more direct, we are running out of shit right now, sort of statement.


“The entire ecosystem is crashing,” says Bushnell. “Essentially, there’s too many of us. We’ve been far too successful as the human animal. People allege we’re short 40-50 percent of a planet now. As the Asians and their billions come up to our living systems, we’re going to need three more planets.”

Far too successful?

This choice of words, while not surprising, is quite indicative of the logic of the civilized mind and its human-centric bias.

Imagine for a moment, you’re a scientist studying a colony of rats living on an island, and that these rats eat so much that they are destroying their habitat. Imagine that these rats have, in their rapacious quest to eat, destroyed the trees and killed many of the other species on the island. Imagine that after running some calculations, you recognize that these rats are going to require not one, but two more islands worth of resources if they are going to survive, and that if they don’t acquire this new resource pool, their population will crash and potentially be wiped out. In writing your assessment of this rat colony, would you choose to describe them as “successful?”

I think you might be more likely to use terms like “foolish,” “short-sighted,” “parasitic,” or “suicidal.”



No, modern humans aren’t “far too successful,” as a species.

The dominant culture — because not all people live this way — is far too stupid to understand that it is “eating the seed corn” if you will.

Not only are the people who live under the dominant culture destroying tomorrow’s resources to get by today, they are by and large too stupid to even enter this possibility into their self analysis.

The fact that Bushnell and any of his ilk would with a straight face suggest that what humans need are more planets, as opposed to needing a massive overhaul of how the dominant culture operates, is frightening. The casual madness of this recommendation demonstrates that the overriding belief within the dominant culture is that everything is hunky-dorey; what people within industrial-civilization are doing on a daily basis is absolutely OK.

It’s not the activities of global industrial capitalism that are the problem, no, the problem is that God just didn’t start us off with enough stuff!

Machete your way through the brambly facade, and the core premise within this assertion — even though it would seem contradictory based on the data being reported — is that civilization works.'


So We Drove On Toward Death: The Casual Madness of Civilization

Home-free-less-people are occupying public areas - without a political agenda or connection to anything more than taking up space where they can find it and claim it regardless of how it affects all others.

Those living and paying for their space - and roofs, amenities, utilities plus whatever - can fit in their small space are asked to "help their brothers" - as most of those who live on streets turn out to be male, and many are older or disabled ones. Fair to all concerned ? no.

Are they willingly or forcibly paying for the non-rent of pubic spaces may be a question if they pay taxes for land, upkeep, and all the increased social services required.

The famous USA government and it’s employees - supposedly paid for by taxed publics and lobbyists and frauds -are unwilling to solve or even see the problem that all the other urbanites live within... while living in paid-for-spaces while surrounded by those too poor or unable to pay or maintain some indoor living spaces.

Take a bus-stop corner that has been Occupied by a dirty persistent man, who has spread out to the edge of sidewalk and store - living in a public space that has become so unsanitary that every bus rider or any person walking that street winces, holds their nose, calls the City councilperson, and worries they have been disease contaminated from breathing in that area. True story. Not made up. Experienced repeatedly.

Any passerby is despaired of trying to find someone in govt responsible to change this takeover. Seems like ‘no one can’ change it.

To walk by this disheveled dirty old man, one has to step onto the traffic of the street, or step in urine and in food thrown on sidewalk, and to listen to rants and insults, and to wonder why washed people are living in such fancy neighborhoods together with this [surely mentally ill ] homeless man.

The bus stop bench [a commercial company pays for it] was removed but the same man returned to his favorite spot anyhow - because it is his "home" now. What would any normal person do? the same ? The store is continually calling LAPD when the man disturbs customers or people complain about the store's responsibility in this scene [for the city sidewalk? ].

The fun writing of Indy commentators …saying of course, there should be homes for all, paid for by whom and agreed to by whom ? That somehow someones will pay for such living spaces, someone else, of course. That some vague nebulous organization like a govt will take care of housing all it’s citizen and immigrants too. That ‘it should be….” but is not so. How easy *to write* it off so simply.

The pleasure of idealizing that of course 'everyone' should have a home in the USA because we are so rich [and generous too ? ].

The delusion of assuming 'someone else' will take care of these outdoorsy people who are only living on sidewalks, benches, storefront or cubbey holes in any buildings because they are poorer or victims of someone else…but this generalization is not logical.

The easy words to say of what "should be" vs. what IS happening, and not only in LA, but worldwide - as we hear it from dem visiting foreigners too.

Of course, India and Asia and even China is known for this way of life … but that is not suitable to our fancy lifestyles…those living near Hollywood and even any ethnic neighborhood in Los Angeles or Orange county…. each ethnic group screams about "get them out of here !" as loudly as any other upper priced ones do. We do not live like "that" ! all shout. We wish.

So repeat same msg. of how the homeless are sacred, treasures, helpless, sweet, lovable and will be taken care of….by whom ? What living out on the streets, beaches, parks is like, is experienced, is known, whether any commentators here have lived it or not – doesn’t answer the question of space and who has or uses or usurps what, when, for how long and does not share.

Those who cant take care of themselves in a more customary way, as in living in any shelter, indoors, in a hut or camp or squat house or a railroad car [as was the romanticized version that was not better then than now either ] are living in other people's yards, sidewalks, on bus benches, in public-parks, and do what they do because they can...and truthfully, they dont care if anyone else doesn’t like it !

Ask the homeless if they are concerned at all about no one else being able to also use those spaces they have taken.

The LAPD has 'more important' business to do and doesn’t like repeat visitors in their overfilled jails. The so-called-social agencies that are suppose to find solutions and living spaces indoors for those in 'need' are stumped by some homeless who do not like the shelters or the spaces that are found for them. And social-workers do not make policy or have power or influence over finances to provide homes, spaces for all those who end up street-wise-street-stuck.

As another one above commented, anybody giving euphemisms and fancy throw-away lines like : “they should have.... everyone should ...” is just blabbering and passing the chore on elsewhere.

Most assume it is someone else's responsibility, and so on... they do not and would not like some stranger living right alongside them or in their spaces, discarding body fluids and junk food packages and dirty clothes in their living [in or outside] spaces.

Soooo easy to talk, so hard to deal with, in actuality.

And it is not a 'fault' or cold-heart, or any Rand mentality that is conveniently used to accuse anyone else of forthrightly saying what all do see, feel, smell, or turn away from themselves.

This is difficult for all, and the homeless who are also difficult to work with because of attitudes, paranoias, severe mental diagnoses, addictions or long outdoorsy experiences where they have survived so far – they are not agreeing to move. It is "our park now" is the usual answer.

It is "my space" now, as no one else can walk, pass, nor tolerate the unhygienic conditions the homeless have created in their own unaware or ‘I cant help it’ ways.

To never blame anyone for what they do or where they have gotten to is the usual liberal wishful thinking - that we are ALL VICTIMS somehow - and no one is ever responsible...not for drug taking, not for continuing addictions, not for their 'oh so sad a childhood' or ' had bad parenting' [the most blamed victims are parents in this USA] - then nothing improves because there is no one Responsible !

And to assume that this writer knows not how it is - to live as a homeless person - because of what else is said and thought, is to accuse and try to be one-up or superior as a one-down to this writer… how easy it is to write whatever and claim to know it all. ugh
The story stays the same however it is told.

The public city spaces that are spare and sparse and rare are now lived in by homeless people who may have few other choices - but who have assumed they now 'live' there - and so no one else can use those spaces....not the children, not the athletes, not the elderly, not the visitors, not the neighbors.

Not ok.

¤*¨¨*¤.¸¸…¸.¤ ¤*¨¨*¤.¸¸…¸.¤
¸ ♥ AYN RANDS PARADOX ♥.,.
.¸.¤*¨¨*¤.¸¸.¸.¤* .¸.¤*¨¨*¤.¸¸.¸.¤*
..

¸¸.•*¨*•*´¨)
¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*¨)
(¸.•´ (¸.•` BLAME ONLY THE POOR - NEVER THE RICH!!!

If you had the public sector providing more housing, eventually, the private sector would produce something similar at a lower cost. It wouldn't happen immediately. It would take time but it would happen if the private sector seeks efficiencies.

The bigger idea is that increasing the amount of housing would drive down prices.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair


What is a vested interest?

When people derive their income, job, status or power from something, they have an interest in that situation continuing.

Even if the situation causes obvious harm to people or the environment, they work to keep the status quo for economic reasons.

This causes a conflict of interest between what is good for the individual in the short term and what is good for humanity and the planet in the long term.

Vested interest structures impede and suppress innovations that would benefit society as a whole. The most practical solution is to implement a guaranteed livable income which would immediately reduce the impact and number of vested interests, and would free humanity to evolve and save the environment before it is too late.

The entrenched and entwined layers of vested interests that prevent social and economic evolution should not be under-estimated —almost everyone is 'vested' whether they like it or not, making it a topic difficult to examine because of the high level of fear people have of losing their jobs.

Here are some examples of vested interests (in no particular order because they are all interconnected) and their impacts:


EXAMPLE 1: Drunk Driving Laws

A straightforward example of a vested interest is the battle against drunk driving. The harm from drunk driving is severe and well documented, yet people who get their income from alcohol sales have a vested interest in maintaining current drinking habits. Even if they morally agree with laws that would save lives, economics dictate that they must worry about their livelihoods if consumption decreases. This title says it all: "Tough drunk driving laws good for public safety, but still bad for business"(25 Nov, 2011).



EXAMPLE 2: Military Industrial Complex

An example with far-reaching and devastating impacts is the military industrial complex. Peace is good for the people and the planet but bad for economy. Conversely, war makes the economy grow (military Keynesianism) as the number of direct and indirect jobs from military spending is massive. And even with high tech wars and robot soldiers, it is still about the economics of vested interests as companies will continue to vie for profits from public and/or private military and security spending.

In the light-hearted comedy The Man Who Knew Too Little the story revolves around two former cold war enemies who try to get a war going again to gain back their previous big budgets and power



EXAMPLES 3-6: Tobacco, Alcohol, Guns, Big Pharma



In the darkly satiric Thank You For Smoking, the tobacco, alcohol, and gun lobby plot how best to keep their industries (and jobs) going regardless of the harm. Then there is the pharmaceutical industry and the situation where more profit can be had from disease and ill health than it can from health promotion, good nutrition and disease prevention. (See clip from the comedy Side Effects based on the experiences of big pharma drug rep Kathleen-Slattery Moschkau.) And the cancer industry has Pinkwashing: "Samantha King, author of the book Pink Ribbons, Inc., suggests that the big players in the cancer establishment have boards of directors with representatives from the pharmaceutical, chemical and energy industries.

It is thus almost impossible to separate the people who might be responsible for the perpetuation of this disease from those who are responsible for trying to find a way to cure or, even better, to prevent it." Dominion Paper, May 2012


EXAMPLE 7: Junk Food



The junk food sector is also huge and harmful to health, but if everyone made healthy home-cooked meals, millions of people would lose jobs in the upstream junk food industry (production) and downstream in the health and pharmaceutical industries. The fact that people's health is being ruined by bad food and poor nutrition is tolerated because there are millions of jobs (and obscene profits) at stake.


EXAMPLE 8-9: Made to Break



The documentary OBJECTIFIED touches on how product design can be stymied because of market pressures. In the book Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, Giles Slade writes: "Planned obsolescence is the catch-all phrase used to describe the assortment of techniques used to artificially limit the durability of a manufactured good in order to stimulate repetitive consumption.

To achieve shorter product lives and sell more goods, manufacturers in the 1930s began to base their choice of materials on scientific tests by newly formed research and development departments. These tests determined when each of the products specific components would fail."



EXAMPLE 10: Energy Policies




Energy policies are also severely impacted by vested interests. The titles of the documentaries Who Killed The Electric Car and Who Killed The Electric Street Car (1993) say it all. Non-renewable incumbent industries are threatened by emergent renewable energy industries."And that deep threat to vested interests is why the revolution moves erratically in specific national contexts: emergent and incumbent industries are battling with unprecedented ferocity." Andrew DeWit, Asia-Pacific Journal (See also the US Streetcar Swindle and the Modern Ideas blog )


EXAMPLE 11: The War On Drugs



And of course there is The War On Drugs, with so many vested interests, it's impossible to guess at the number of jobs (and careers) that rely on its continuation. The Union: The business behind getting high - The New Jim Crow - Prison Industrial Complex
Funny or Die - Tragic comedy of the drug war - Saving Private Perez - comedy



EXAMPLE 12: Poverty and Charity Industries



The poverty industry (or poverty industrial complex) includes all the jobs and careers that rely on the continuation of poverty and poverty-related problems:

- welfare bureaucracies
- policing the poor
- charity think tanks
- help-the-poor charities (Downtown eastside example, UK charities example)
- non-profits trying to fix poverty related problems (with a one-on-one service model)
- job-training and workfare schemes
- health/pharma jobs from mental and physical health ruined due to poverty
- jobs due to poverty related child-apprehensions

"There are job creation projects on the back of marginalized people. How many businesses are built on health, crime, courts, hospitals, mental illness, jails and hundreds of thousands employed due to poverty? You keep them poor, and these other people have work." -Mary C, from the Women's Economic Justice Report interviews (Victoria BC) 2006




See the books: The Tyranny of Kindness by Theresa Funiciello; Community and Its Counterfeits by John McKnight; and We Are The Poors by Ashwin Desai.



EXAMPLES: Social Control and Compliance



The vested interest sectors of religion, media, advertising, and education are in a different category as they are not just about protecting jobs and incomes, their main purpose is to 'manufacture consent' and compliance. While there can be positive individuals and aspects within these sectors, their primary systemic role is to uphold dominant social norms and world views and they do this by influencing people especially when they are young.

These sectors are too complex to go into here and there is already ample analysis on these topics elsewhere.

(This is not a definative list of all vested interests; there are many more that are not listed here, gambling and the financial sector for example.)


SUMMARY:

It is as if we are locked into some global self-imposed Stanford University Prison Experiment. There are so many vested interests weighing us down, it is a wonder there are still many sparks of life in art, music, writing and comedy that break through the immobilizing gloom.

there are those who think they are oh so humanistic because they like to blurt blurb repeat and insist on ruling over the whole space on *their* chosen topics, not on the one initiating the story with the variegated comments arriving thereafter.

the crazy person who has proliferated and hijacked this particular topic has rarely addressed clearly what was WRITEN originally - but continues to enjoy putting his stuff [cut and paste mostly] or his own versions of how the world "should be" as implied - and repeatedly taking up space, as if no one else knew what he perseverates and fearfully cries out [as in the sky is falling right now! , once again ].

a few others did address the topic. If anyone choses to agree or not is not the issue here but staying on topic, of what is brought forthrightly and written to address a problem in city living, that has been endlessly complained about but not solved nor helped.

to pretend the difficulties mentioned in the original [see top] article do not exist is to pretend to live in a cave, closet, or dream or unreality. Anywhere but in most urban environments.

to sidetrack the issue is to DENY the contaminations, the disturbances, the continual cost of all level of govt services [paid for not by the homeless - but by most others, who are honest enough to pay for services for all, themselves And all others].

to cover-up the topic here by proliferation and distraction...., like nuclear contamination spreads or disease spreads, or oil spill spreads.... the essential topic of HOMELESSNESS - those living in what were provided for all as PUBLIC ACCESS SPACES - for everyone - - - not just those WITHOUT an indoor or storage space, - - -is to pretend the take-over "could" all be taken care of ...by others, of course...if only....

and the "if they would"...continues to be the motto ....repeated as if no one knew who or what could possibly be responsible or effective.

and neither the great majority general population - those who pays taxes, cleans their spaces and maintains good hygiene and takes pride in being a civil, decent, fair-sharing person with a paid-for living space are not the ones who cant - however the non-homeless maintain or pay for living spaces of their own or share rooms or trade for them.

The topic remains vital and viable. The excursions, diversions and trying to 'change the subject quickly !' do no service to the homeless either, but relegate them to being unimportant and assume then 'someone else will do it..."...maybe....maybe not.

continuing to use Indy space instead for all extraneous conversations just to be read, noted, exposed - or maybe to have some connections somewhere - seems self-centered and is usurping and taking up more than a fairly shared space here. The acting out in writing of self-advertising their own concerns and thus ignoring the ones others' may have differently.

Of course, the diversions then elicit responses from a few here, who have given their own reactions to the crazy person, who has Taken Over the whole scene with his own personal exhortations...which may be a way of theatricalizing to a wider public [if they bother to read any of these comments at all] , readers who may or not enjoy the show.

wouldn't it be more Helpful to All Concerned if the topic were actually discussed here and elsewhere openly, with attention to what the difficulties problems solutions suggestions possibilities could be -rather than the continual posting images that do NOT relate at all....

or maybe the whole purpose of a free input site is to give spaces to the inner-homeless-with-not-much-else they have to do ?

barking orders and bullying people while simultaneously playing the victim

So where is that 20 cents a day??? Oh, please please please keep bullying us to pay 190 cents a day while you constantly choose not to get the democrat majority of California to pay 20 cents a day.

Come on. It is just 20 cents a day. Just double (10 cents a day) that you would force OTD to pay.

And still we see nothing (NOTHING!!!) from you other than name calling and barking out orders.

demand you like our faultless blameless billionaire role models else 'we' throw tissy fits while vomiting their talking points because it makes 'us' feel good

PS. nice citations and links

Link to the article about barriers to social change.

It's ten cents, not twenty. But it could be twenty and done faster.

Whatever. It could be a progressive income tax, or a progressive land based tax as well. It could be a tax per dwelling. The point is that it's affordable.

of THIS ^

great replies, some sincere, some accusatory, some questioning and some just blasting images hoping to get attention. Topic: can the homeless fairly take all available public spaces to live in with their ‘stuff’ and leave none for ‘everyone else’????

why are extremes the easy way to depict anyone who is not playing by a few people’s policially-only-Our-defined-“correct”-rules ? Why are extremes discussed at all ? billionaires ? don’t know any nor plan on finding them in ordinary worlds we exist in – yep, each of these commentators are included in this “we”.

The drunks passed out on sidewalks, other than in special areas, these are not the normal findings of ‘homeless’ living on LA most city streets. Some do, most find their usual cubby hole or friends.

The experience of ‘nobody’ commenting here is a fair-share here but may not be my or someone else’s experiences, which means what 1 person finds in 1 district or area is not nessarily related or same to another’s. but interesting, and shared. Ok.

On streets found near here, every corner has one or more heavily laden man with shopping carts overfilled and heavy with their ‘ownings’ alongside their bodies seemingly stuck in one favored spot. In front of a regularly used store, alongside an alley or safe corner.

Bus stops are frequently Occupied…with 1 man and his things, so most other bus riders cannot dare not sit alongside [having cleaner clothes and being affected by certain smells may be why, fear of being touched, grabbed, insulted or fainting may be other whys]. riding a bus and just observing, it is many, not a few, bus benches that are not used by most busriders because they are already filled with those who awoke on our streets and found a ‘spot’ to call their own for the day.

And watching these scenes, why are so many poor working people not acting or looking sympathetically on these streetlivers and act irritated that they cannot also sit or wait for bus on a bench ?

Obviously, something to do with the differences in cleanliness, courtesy, dangers perceived and even ‘social class differences’ to the POOR people, not the billionaires who don’t use bus benches, or do they too ?

The topic remains vital and needs repetition [obviously I think so and so do the continual deniers here do too]. There are inadequate space for us all, to share, or there is a hijacking of what is open air available and not locked, gated, or security-safed.

Or, the homeless have taken what they could and refuse to share or cannot [unaware? unconscious? self-centered?] give up any spaces they have found in case someone else takes it and they have to move over or away.

Yes, many have been yelled at, cursed, run from a bared fist waving with loud shouting if speaking to a homeless, or being totally ignored as if not present there at all. The LA City and adjacent areas, other cities, local counties, etc. are not, do not, will not change the scene with excuses while they who have influence over how taxes are spent chose other happier projects instead.

..not getting enough attention in the new 'news story' - "Home-less-free occupying is not a free ride either" so you're back here stirring shit again, while always playing the victim..


Wall Street Is Sucking Huge Amounts of Money from Los Angeles

http://www.alternet.org/economy/new-report-reveals-how-wall-street-impoverishes-los-angeles?paging=off¤t_page=1


Corporate Profits Hit A New Record High Last Year


PS. you'll be saddened to know I scroll right past your 'personal experiences' and hit the comment button right away having long since dismissed you as a troll

the clever graphics do not hide the hate and venom spewed with not-so-clever name berating and allusions to having the 1 only right words or attitude or view.

wrong again. crazy people like to pretend they are not while they are :
screaming angry mean insults and make false connections or labels that do not fit...but since they know-it-all, or want to, mean people continue berating, demeaning, doing anything because they think/wish/hope to WIN...what ?

the more the comments prove that meanness is allowed and subtle but obvious allusions to people-you-love-to-hate or snide affiliations that have nothing to do with any commentator here, the crazies continue on and will surely do so more and more, just to prove...what ?
that they can ? that they dominate ? that they are right if they continue to hate more ?
that they can hurt/ kill off/ injure/ and get away with it here ? yep.
ok. continue.
you win
the crazy title.
what's next ?

like children wanting immediate gratification, incapable of understanding what is going on around them.

Any news that causes them discomfort is immediately dismissed as not possible. They truly believe they are exempt from the consequences of their actions until the situation unravels effecting them and then they whine like babies wanting the problem to just go away.


Psychopaths are not wired to consider the future in any realistic way. They see the world as a dog eat dog war of survival today.

...it is NOT 20 cents. No, it is 10 cents.

AND it is affordable. Well, then why don't we see the democrat majority giving 20 cents until they can force the OTD (other than Democrats) to pay 10 cents???

Hell, that would end up 30 cents total. Even faster. And yet, we see nothing (aka, NOTHING) from the democrat majority. Not until they can force OTDs to pay the 10 cents that the Democrat majority doesn't seem to be paying.

What? DO you really need to force others to join you before you actually take an action yourself???

Wow, thank you for making my point for me. That really means a lot to me. Even if you choose not to recognize it.

And crazy inventor just keeps running away running away by changing the subject or creating bogus enemies to attack.

Uhhh, there is a nasty looking windmill to charge.