The Gap

Racism is indeed a problem in our country that espouses equality and tolerance which in practice provides neither. Not to diminish this issue, there is a global problem that has existed since the beginning of civilization, but only recently has become acute in the United States - the Gap between right and poor. The driving force behind this blog is to show the obscenity of extreme wealth in the face of growing poverty.

Michelle Singletary soft peddles the issue at the open of her article for the Washington Post:

"There is a disturbing and widening gulf between the rich and the poor in America. And it would be even wider except for the fact that so many middle-income families have borrowed their way to a comfortable lifestyle. They are just a paycheck, a divorce or a heath crisis away from financial ruin."

But the staggering statistics she brings up are worthy of a mention here:

"A 2007 report by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy found that the top 20 private-equity and hedge fund managers made more in 10 minutes than average-paid U.S. workers earned in a year. Top executives at hedge funds averaged $12.6 million a week, or $210,700 an hour based on a 60-hour week, compared with the $29,500 the average worker made in 2006, according to researchers."

For her, the roadblock to reform was partisanship and personal responsibility.

For me? The road block is a lack of education about the facts about wealth and the apathy that has been generated by so much misinformation.

Crises of Capitalism

I know I was sidetracked by the oil spill. Which interestingly enough is following the course I kind of laid out. They plugged the well, but scientists have found that the sea floor around the well head has sprung some leaks...but the reason I'm typing tonight is simply to share this great video by RSA Animate.



Be forewarned, David Harvey uses references to Marx which doesn't offend my sensibilities one bit, but many folks who have been in the educational system of the United States have some sort of 'kill switch' in their hearing nerves. The word Marx is uttered and they go absolutely deaf. They cannot even hear a peep of the most reasonable of theories or arguments when that name is mentioned. It is quite strange indeed.

It's all over now baby blue. Part 2

"The oil giant drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble."

This might be just an alarmist point of view, but in the video I posted in the first installment of IAONBB you can clearly see the sea floor cracking open in multiple spots with gas and oil coming through.

If BP did trigger an event of this magnitude as the author above claims, at what point would people actually believe it?

Independence Day

We live in a society ruled by a select few very wealthy people. It is more like a monarchy with less freedom than our colonial past.

A society whose greatest export is war and culture identity of monster trucks and NASCAR is bent on the destruction of the planet:

Oh say can you seeAt the dawn's early light
What so proudly they nail
By the twilight’s last gleaming

Whose sexless drones who drive cars
Through each per-i-lous night
And the roadkill they watch
Were so fre-quent-ly bleed-ing

And the rockets red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Each end of the world scare
And that flag was still there

Oh say does that car strangled freeway yet rage?
With the slaughter of the land
They make a home for another slave



What do we celebrate on this day? Another chance to buy beer and BBQ? In our modern world, where all the countries are tied together in a very global market place, where all are involved in the health or destruction of our biosphere isn't the idea of country antiquated?

One of my first memories as a child were the moon landings. Not the first one, for I was too young, but the last few and Skylab after that. With these images of our world so etched in my mind during my formative years I cannot sway to accept we are divided into countries. That is completely an artificial construct that, with the controlling power of transnational corporations, is more fantasy than fact.

What we need now is a war of independence from the rule of transnational corporations and a refocus on what is true:

We are one world.

Reality Check

"underemployment"...right now is 16.6%, just below its recent high and twice the level it was a few years ago

And even that may not tell the full story. Many people have simply dropped out of the labor force statistics.

Consider, for example, the situation among men of prime working age. An analysis of data at the U.S. Labor Department shows that there are 79 million men in America between the ages of 25 and 65. And nearly 18 million of them, or 22%, are out of work completely.

Cap Gemini's latest Wealth Report notes that the North American rich saw an 18% jump in their wealth last year.

Keep watching the oil spill and remember that oil men are still seeing their personal wages the highest in their lifetimes.

3D or not 3D

There is a lot of talk about getting everyone on the band wagon to make and watch 3D movies.

In a time of shrinking global resources and people lobbying for greener energy, isn't the easiest thing to consume less energy? Why am I writing about this in a blog about wealth and in specific in a topic about 3D?

3D is here to install a new ceiling on filmmakers. Too many indie filmmakers and small studios were taking over Hollywood's turf. Instead of looking at a level playing field as a time to up their game, Hollywood changed the rules - 3D is in. 2D is out. They have convinced many theaters to install 3D projectors and distributors to look for 3D product. Since 3D adds $2-15 million onto the cost of making a film, this pushes most filmmakers back to the fringe.

Hollywood thinks that it will stem the piracy, but that time has already passed, as 3D versions of movies are already popping up on the P2P networks. The other aspect is that it costs $2-15 million more in resources and...here's the sleeper part:

3D TVs consume 15-30% more than their 2D counter parts.

Calibrated TVs
Samsung's 2D UN46B6000 LED 46" 90 watts
Samsung's 3D UN46B8000 LED 46 " 105 watts
Sony's 3D Bravia XBR-46HX909 46" 125 watts


Still think Avatar heralded in an age of eco-friendly smurfatude?

One more thing

WKRG.com News

The Oil Forcast

It's all over now baby blue

What is not being told about the disaster in the Gulf is that the sea floor around the drilling area is unstable and it is more likely that the floor will collapse letting loose the whole of the oil reserve.

Video doesn't lie.



Notice oil leaking from the cracks in the sea floor. How are you going to cap a couple of square miles of sea bed?

"What is likely to happen now?
Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets."

Remember the amount of money the people responsible have made. How they gained that wealth by cutting corners and lobbying the Feds for less restrictions.

The more you know....

...sometimes leads you to want to tear you eyes out.

This oil disaster is like the Bush Administration claiming they didn't see it coming. We have one oil disaster of epic tragedy scale and yet this Administration is doing nothing to stop bigger disasters of the same ilk.

"Last September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration urged the president to halt future leases in the Arctic, warning that federal regulators operating on Bush-era guidelines had "greatly understated" the risks of drilling. Both industry and government, the scientists added, displayed a "lack of preparedness for Arctic spill responses" and had failed to "fully evaluate the potential impacts of worst-case scenarios."

That's putting it mildly. Shell has received all the environmental permits it needs to drill five exploratory wells in the Arctic — but in light of the BP disaster in the Gulf, the documents read like a sick joke. According to the Environmental Assessment that Interior conducted last December on Shell's drilling plan, "A very large spill from a well-control incident is not a reasonably foreseeable event, and therefore, this EA does not analyze the impacts of such a worst-case scenario." The response plan that Shell put together in case of a disaster is equally disturbing: The oil giant says it is only prepared to respond to a spill of 5,500 barrels a day — a fraction of the 60,000 barrels currently estimated to be pouring into the Gulf. Shell, the eighth-largest corporation in the world, has a disturbing record when it comes to the environment: Its operations in Nigeria spilled at least 100,000 barrels of crude last year alone."

Read the rest here.

What is lame raised to the highest factor?

Today the answer is BP. Yesterday it was Judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman. (This is the same Judge who ruled on the side of big business during the financial fallout of Katrina.) Yesterday he issued an injunction to block the moratorium on deep water drilling. This judge owned stock in Transocean (the company owns the rig that exploded). He also owned stock in dozens of other energy companies that would gain by his ruling including: Provident Energy ( a diversified energy enterprise with oil and gas assets), Atlas Energy Resources (a natural gas exploration and production company), Parker Drilling Co. (on-land and offshore drilling services, including rigs), TXCO Resources (oil and gas exploration and production); EV Energy Partners, (owner and operator of oil and gas properties), Rowan Companies Inc. (major provider of contract drilling services), NCP Capital Resources (lender to energy companies including Anadarko, a part owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig), BPZ Energy (oil and gas exploration and production company), El Paso Corp. (North America’s largest gas pipeline owner), KBR Inc.(oil industry engineering and construction), Chesapeake Energy Corp. (gas driller), and ATP Oil and Gas Corp. (gas and oil developer in the Gulf of Mexico).

There are laws that prevent him to rule on issues he has a stake in, but will he suffer any consequences?