I feel like I’ve been the bellwether for a bad economy in a way. I don’t know if that makes sense but it does to me. It’s a weird bellwethering so to speak. I just seem to think that generally, when the economy is booming (or at least the hype is in overdrive) I’m usually unemployed and when things are dire I seem to be gainfully employed. The one time I was employed during the madness I was in Dubai when they were at the peak of they’re financial orgy and I was miserable. Now I’m here in San Fran and things are a bit dire in the US and I’ve never been happier. Curious. The happiness is not directly correlated with being employed or unemployed. It could be either. Perhaps I’m just a bit twisted upstairs but it is what it is. There are other examples but for another time perhaps…On that note, a feel good song about San Francisco. I’m diggin it even if some of the lyrics are less than great but it’s on the mark and I’m on board…

Brent Dennen - San Francisco

Hole number nine ….. those were the days

Now that I’m a shareholder of GM by simply being an American taxpayer, I’d like to express my wishes for the future direction of the company. I realize most shareholders just want to see profits and really don’t care about “externalities”, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that GM adequately consider social costs in future actions. This has had a bit of an effect in the past. Remember all the calls for divestiture in companies that did business with the apartheid South African government. Socially conscious college kids all over the world petitioned their schools to divest in South African businesses. Apartheid is now a fading memory. Witness also the rise of socially conscious and “green” mutual funds.

But back to GM. Plain and simple, I want an apology. Not just one, but multiple apologies.
First, I want an apology from Bob Lutz. Bob Lutz is GM’s soon to be retired chairman. Last year he famously commented that “Global warming is a crock of shit.” Have a look. Before he retires, he should apologize to the people of Tuvalu, the Pacific Island nation that has had to abandon its low-lying islands. He should apologize to the people of Arctic villages that have had to be relocated due to thawing permafrost. He should apologize to the American people for politicizing a scientific matter.

Second, I want an apology for their role in dismantling privately-owned transit systems in numerous American cities. This was done by fronting companies, which Standard Oil and Firestone helped to fund. See this. And this. For a comic version of it, watch the animated movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
GM has been instrumental in spreading the plague of car culture and its methods for doing so have not always been particularly ethical. I think it can be argued that our level of fossil fuel consumption makes the US less competitive with other countries on the global market, and will become more so in the future. The agenda of GM and other car makers has put the US in a hole, a hole which they are now being swallowed by, and they expect us to pull them out of it. The least they could do is show a little contrition. Before you label this position alarmist or hyperbolic, consider this. There is substantial evidence that the oil price spikes of 2008 played a larger role in the foreclosure crisis than first assumed. Many of the new buyers who were already financially stretched saw their budgets break when they had to pay so much to make their long commutes to far-flung suburbs. Among the worst hit areas for foreclosures has been newly constructed homes on the outskirts of major cities. This has been reported in no less than that well-known Lefty rag, the Wall Street Journal.

Thirdly and relatedly, I want an apology for killing the EV1 in the late ’90s. A movie was made about it. See Who Killed the Electric Car?
I would like to see total transparency on the issue. They had an electric car that worked fine, looked good and was easy to drive. Then they took them off lease and destroyed every last one of them. Now we have to deal with this hyperbole about them “developing” the Chevy Volt.

That’s all, just three apologies. No big deal, right? I’m not even asking for an apology for the Hummer, possibly the most polarizing vehicle ever made. Las Vegas’ only Hummer dealership has been converted into a Smart Car dealer. I smile every time I drive by. That’s enough of an apology. But, I do want to ask, can you please explain the Pontiac Aztek? What were you thinking?!

I also propose, as a goodwill gesture, that the Chevy Avalanche be renamed the “Glacier Melt”.

Who’s up next? Chrysler? OK, apologize for building cars that look like they came out of a time warp from 1971. Chargers with Hemis? The re-release of the Challenger? Are you friggin kidding me? They really look like they just took the old molds out of the warehouse and added some new electronics and drivetrain stuff. Its like their designers live in a fantasyland where “American Graffitti” is the adolesence and NASCAR races are every weekend. Start acting like you have a grip on what people need to get around in their daily lives and maybe you’ll become profitable again.

“‘Look at this traffic,’ he said. ‘Look at them, rolling along on their rubber tires in their two-ton entropy cars polluting the air we breathe, raping the earth to give their fat indolent rump-sprung American asses a free ride. Six percent of the world’s population gulping down forty percent of the world’s oil. Hogs!’ he bellowed, shaking his huge fist at the passing motorists.
‘What about us?’ she said.
‘That’s who I’m talking about.’”
-Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang, 1975.

Surely, one of the purest affirmations of Brotherly Love is the daily sharing of a stolen sandwich and the throwing of the disc on a green. Wharton provided the sandwich and the green-green grass was owned by a bunch of morally bankrupt knob-heads spewing gobbledegook from “Gurus” like Tom Peters at each other on their way to financially bankrupting themselves and hordes of unsuspecting (and unfortunately trusting) laymen and women.

The rapture in this case is that the “brothers in sandwich”, sensed quite well the coming storm - it may have taken 10 years - but better late than hungry I always say.

Not coincidentally the events of which I speak took place in the city of Brotherly Love on the Lehman Brothers Quad within the Wharton School’s corner of the UPENN campus

Yes … I am still on the phenomenon of the MBA Scourge and all the awful and anti-human shit people have come to believe about it whether they have one or not.

The real meat of any discussion for me is the phenomenon’s future. Currently there are a lot of rumblings about the Scourge of the MBA and ways to show it for the sham that it is. Efforts by actual human beings are building up to re-humanize our world and the way we do our deeds.

I believe that beyond the overtaking of the human being by glib gurus and their gobbledegook, compliance procedures, faceboook and Tweets there MUST be a human revolution coming. Call it a resurgence of the Luddite movement. Otherwise we might as well just take off for the beach and fry into eternity like “little brown sausages lyin in the sand.”

As I am usually one to spit in the bulldogs eye and let others discuss it … I give you an article from the London Times.

It’s a little hard to follow at first but so, I’m afraid, is the hocus-pocus of the MBA Scourge.

You can find it here

The sandwich is the spit. The bulldog is bankrupt.

Enjoy

at least once …. if you haven’t seen it.

200 is 0.00006666666666666667% of 300 million.

“For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.”

-John Winthrop, Governor Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630

“Texas is a unique place. When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. We got a great Union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it, but if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that.”

-Texas Governor Rick Perry 2009

“I have had it I am fed up with the oppressive federal government lead by a bunch of criminals. They have done nothing to earn my money. Yes I am anti-government, the less government the better we are all off. Don’t wait now is the time, I want the Republic of Texas to secede from the FEDREAL GOVEMENT, NOW. Freedom is not free you pay for it with blood. For those afraid of blood leave the state now. There are all kinds of good reasons for Texas to secede! The entire financial crisis we are going though today can be directly link to the democrats starting with Bill Clinton.”

-Mad As Hell, Texas 2009

“I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. ”

“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.”

-Barack Obama, 2008/09

“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.”

-Alexander Hamilton

Folks came together in different states and cities to have tea parties to bitch about taxes. It’s a national past time and I’ve complained about them myself now and again mostly because of things like Star Wars. But the political discourse in this country is so useless, puerile and counter productive that the only purpose it serves is to provide ammunition for smart asses like me. So, as a member of the federated United States I hereby grant Texas nationhood. But since Texas is now a sovereign nation there’s a couple of items to address.

-That wall we were building around Mexico will now be built around the nation of Texas as well paid for by the federal tax dollars no longer going your way
-You’re favorite bumper sticker and t-shirt slogan “Don’t Mess With Texas” can only be seen as a provocation by Homeland Security. Therefore, you are hereby designated as hostile to the United States since we are fighting the war on terror.
-The Dallas Cowboys can take their billion dollar, tax payer subsidized stadium to the Canadian Football League.
-We will miss you Austin
-All those guns you’re so fond of…Load ‘em cause we’re coming after your oil
-We can finally divest ourselves of the Texas Bushes, Tom DeLay, Phil Gramm and T. Boone Pickens

Lastly, here’s a proposed national anthem. RIP Texas.

Stay in Texas

Saw a bumper sticker today on the drive to work when I should’ve been taking the shuttle. It summed up my thoughts on our disregard for the planet although we seem to be waking up a little. However, this idea always gave me solace even though I hadn’t summed it up as well. That’s why bumper sticker slogan writers are anonymous stars. It said: Nature Bats Last. Damn right. Happy Earth Day.

… its a good tune anyway

Do you recognize any of these People?

… maybe there’s something about the hollow gaze and million dollar smile that’s familiar?

Or maybe they are who you are not?

Citizen Reporter found an interesting podcast about the history of the SCOURGE of the American MBA …. how it has negatively affected our economy …. our values and nearly everything in our lives.

No one living in the US, or the world, today has escaped it’s blood letting … from fast food and slow cars to cheap plastic shit and the loss of your retirement nut.

Listen to it via the link below …

Reasons why choosing not to be a “Lehmo Brother” was good