Showing posts with label Corporations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Corporations. Show all posts

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Danger Will Robinson

Billions of years ago some elements combined with each other to form compounds.  These compounds somehow cooperated with each other to produce more of them.  This reproduction eventually led to organisms and life.
But in order for this newly formed life to thrive the individual parts had to somehow work together and create different functions.
As these simple organisms grew and replicated there were mutations.  If the mutation was weak and unfit for its surroundings it died off.  But if it was better adapted to its environment it thrived and multiplied.
Eventually simple single celled organisms found ways to work with others and evolved into multiple cell creatures.
Within each of these creature, these communities of cells there is an orderly separation of duties designed for the greater good.  When a cell breaks down or ceases to function as it should the organism sends out a signal to destroy that cell and thus continue a healthy life.
If we look at what the cells of the body have become we will see various individual shapes and sizes of organs all working together in a society of life.
As long as each community of cells, each area of the body works together for the greater good they all survive.
Evolution has taught these cells that greed is inappropriate within a healthy body.
Cancer cells are part of an organism that do not play by the rules.  They seem to forget that all cells have roles to play in a healthy organism.  They have figured out how to mask their intentions from the body’s police force and in many cases fool healthy cells into doing their bidding.
They wish to multiply themselves at the expense of other cells around them ultimately stopping other functions from working.
As a result they replicate at an ever increasing rate until they foolishly kill the host and with it themselves!
Unfortunately we have not yet been able to find cures for all the various forms of out of control cells known as cancer but we must keep trying.
However cancers are not only within a body, they exist everywhere.
If we consider Earth to be a living organism, not much of a stretch, then all the inhabitants thereon can be thought of as individual cells.
Our human society is in fact a living body.
We need to cooperate with each other in order to continue living on this planet of ours.
We cannot afford to kill the host.
We also cannot afford to greedily take more of the resources for our own individual good at the expense of others.
People or groups of people who insist on taking more than their fair share are a cancer on our society.
We use different terms for different groups of these anti-social cliques but make no mistake, they are each one a danger to life as we know it!
Terrorists such as the murdering throngs currently creating havoc in the Middle East are a cancer.
Super wealthy greedy individuals or groups trying to usurp power from the body for their own good are a cancer.
And leaders who look the other way when corporations pollute our planet thus endangering its welfare are a cancer.
Remember that we cannot survive without the Earth but the Earth surely can survive without us.  The body must find a way to work together to rid itself of these cancers just as it found a way to grow from those first elements into a population of 7 billion humans.

Because if we continue blindly as we have in the recent past the Earth will find a way to remove the offending cancer for good!

Friday, May 17, 2013

BWC is Now The Law of the Land!

While Congress and our so-called leaders debate who caused what or who spied on whom or who can we blame for whatever we don't agree with corporations are continuing to rape American consumer any way they see fit!  And while this goes on the charade that is the Republican Majority in the House of Congress will once again try to repeal the health care bill aimed at helping the average citizen!
A perfect example came today in my cell phone bill from AT&T which included a slight increase, as always!
I decided to have an on-line chat with an AT&T agent about this latest slap at a long time moron, I mean customer.
What appears below is that chat.  Please read it and see if it rings true with your experience dealing with impersonal corporations these days.


Thank you for your patience!
Your AT&T Representative will be with you shortly.
Welcome! You are now chatting with 'I removed the name lest the person be fired for possible honesty' 

BRUCE M RESCH: Hi AT&T Person
AT&T Person: Hi Bruce, I can help you with the charges on your account.
BRUCE M RESCH: My bill has been $197.82 for ages and while it's way too high for the actual service provided at least it was a constant.  Now the bill is over $200 and it looks as though the rise was merely a BWC increase.  Is that true?
AT&T Person: I can have that check for you. Let me review your bill.
BRUCE M RESCH: ok
AT&T Person: Please give me 2-3 minutes to run through your bill.
BRUCE M RESCH: sure
AT&T Person: Thank you for waiting.  Upon reviewing your account, I found out that your monthly bill is always $197.99.
AT&T Person: The reason why your bill went up to $200.70 is because of the additional fee that was being charged to each of your line.
BRUCE M RESCH: An additional fee for what may I ask?
AT&T Person: If you will take a look on your bill, each line has a corresponding surcharges and other fees.
BRUCE M RESCH: yes I see that
AT&T Person: The additional fee that was added on each line was the Administrative fee which costs $0.61.
BRUCE M RESCH: So I was right, It's a BWC
AT&T Person: What is BWC?
BRUCE M RESCH: BWC stands for "Because We Can!" It's a fee charged by all large impersonal anti-human corporations to make even more money for doing nothing and causing those of us who must go along with their greed to suffer. In other words, bullshit!
AT&T Person: I understand you. But the the Administrative fee covers a small portion of certain expenses AT&T incurs, including but not limited to: Charges AT&T or its agents pay to interconnect with other carriers to deliver calls from AT&T customer to their customers Costs and charges associated with cell site rents and maintenance
BRUCE M RESCH: Did you actually type that with a straight face? Forget it - I cannot beat you guys. But when I decide to leave because your inane unfair extra fees are too much you will NEVER get me back no matter what you do.
BRUCE M RESCH: It's truly a crock of shit! The small increase of which you speak in AT&T costs could easily be covered by the unbelievably high rate you charge for nothing! I am speaking of texts etc. which cost you zero! In fact you had to invent a way to keep track of texts just so you could charge for them! But as I said I can not win & I realize it is not you personally who is at fault so I'm done here - Have a nice life.
AT&T Person: I understand where you're coming from. That's the initial reaction of most of our customers when they learned about this fee.
BRUCE M RESCH: I wonder why!
BRUCE M RESCH: Most Americans have not gotten a raise in years but AT&T & others like you continue to raise fees and make more profits and hand over our hard earned money to a bunch of useless shits at the top of the corporation who think only of how to make even more money on the backs of the customer. As I said - This is not personal but THEY are criminals!
AT&T Person: I understand you. We all work hard to earn money and who does like to have their money wasted? No one. I understand how you feel.
BRUCE M RESCH: 
enjoy the weekend - I'm out of here - Have to think about this situation further. Thanks

Note the line about having to pay increased costs due to connecting with other carriers.  Of course those carriers are using that same bull shit line to collect their own BWCs.
The collusion is on all sides of the equation and the only ones being hurt are the customers!

If anyone cares to add all the bills they pay and track the changes in each of them since we handed control of the country over to the large corporations who now own Congress I believe they will notice the same trend toward new BWCs.
Can we stem the tide of corporate greed?
Can we get Congress on the side of the people who actually vote them into office?
Can we make it through a month without House Republicans attempting to repeal the ACA aka Obamacare?
Sadly I feel the answer is a definitive NO WAY!
But still I rant and still I complain and at least in a small way I am a thorn in the side of corporate hypocrisy.
Never turn your back on these criminals and do not let them get away with what they do without at least complaining.  Who knows, maybe one day the meek really will inherit the Earth.
And by the way, when we do I'm going to hit all the bastards of the former corporate world with so many BWCs they heads'll fall off!

Sunday, March 31, 2013

It's Not Too Late!


More and more Americans are working into their 70s and 80s not because they love to work but because they are forced to work in an ever increasingly oligarchic America.
In order to squeeze any and every possible greedy penny out of a business owners have taken advantage of a ruined economy to turn the once great and thriving middle class workers of this country into slaves for life.
The current feudal system was caused by a perfect storm of corporate greed and governmental complicity that allowed jobs to be shipped overseas putting more and more loyal American workers on the unemployment lines.
There was no tariff placed on the increased profit made by undermining the middle class and producing inferior and occasionally dangerous products in Asia.  In fact Congress acted to reward corporations for the unpatriotic practice with tax breaks!
And those tax breaks continue even as millions of Americans who played by the rules their entire lives are struggling to pay their bills.
And the bills these duped workers are forced to pay are to the same corporations who put them in their financial predicament.  The banks who ruined the housing market with countless bad decisions and were bailed out lest those millionaires lose money have come back as though nothing happened.
Oil companies that spilled their black death onto our shores in their wanton haste to find more pollutants and higher profits still receive subsidies from our tax dollars.  This while America’s infrastructure, our nation’s life giving arteries continue to deteriorate at alarming rates without any proper funding in sight.
The wealth gap between what once was the middle class and the top richest few in America is the widest it has ever been and still one political party refuses to ask the greedy sect for an extra penny to help the country get back on its feet.
One always has to wonder which group is worse, the evil greedy few who bribe officials to continue the ruination of America or the hypocritical politicians who accept the payments and turn a blind eye to the people who naively elected them.
Perhaps the under educated electorate deserves a piece of the blame but that can change in the blinking of an eye if they wake up to the facts that are staring them in the face and pocket book.
Every November we are allowed to choose the people we think will advocate for our best interests.  Then within months we see the results in the actions of those elected to office.
One thing should be painstakingly clear to anyone with a brain.  The Republican Party has consistently stood with the greedy evil wealthy would-be owners of America without a thought to the grief they are causing the very people who elected them to serve.
This must change!
Sadly the Democratic Party has not been the total knight in shining armor they proclaim to be but in a choice between the two they are light years ahead of their opponents.
Even if a so called super majority of Democrats are elected over the next few Novembers our country’s woes will not soon end but it would at least FINALLY be a step in the right direction.
And maybe, just maybe our nation’s 90 year olds will finally be able to retire with a modicum of dignity and a tiny nest egg with which to enjoy whatever’s left of their golden years.

Friday, October 19, 2012

WAKE UP WOMEN OF AMERICA!

This is a quickie I'm adding on the fly. (McFly! I thought I told you...  Sorry about that.)
I have been spouting about the dangers of allowing Republicans to gain control of the government for the next four years but for some reason the evil scary right winger puppet is still close in the polls!
So perhaps people like me are not getting the message across well enough.
With that in mind I now appeal to 51% of the American populace - WOMEN!
And I offer this message, not from plain looking me but from BEAUTIFUL ladies like this!
If you are a woman; a member of a minority; over 65; UNDER 65 or just a human who earns, makes, or brings home less than a million dollars a year and are still thinking of voting for this evil right wing moron please click the above link and learn!
Don't worry, it's short and won't tax your brain too much.
Republicans are not for humans, only corporations!  And no matter how many bribed conservative Supreme Court idiot justices say otherwise CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE!!!!
Remember in November!  And remember that November is getting close!  It's just 17 days until D (as in Democrat) Day
VOTE "D" ACROSS THE BOARD.
DO NOT REWARD THE BAD BEHAVIOR OF THE EVIL REPUBLICAN HOUSE THAT HAD ONLY ONE THING IN MIND - GETTING RID OF PRESIDENT OBAMA BY FORCING 4 YEARS OF STAGNATION ON THE NATION.
And to make matters worse these evil terrorists blamed Mr. Obama for not getting anything done!
Hypocrisy!
VOTE D!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Corporate Baggage



Airlines will make around $3B more this year charging for bags. This is a revenue stream that did not exist before deregulation of the industry and another example of a ‘BWC’ fee. That stands for my ‘Because We Can’ invention that covers every raise or surcharge or rate increase the public is forced to endure while the raisers of those costs reap ever increasing profits for ever decreasing services merely, well because they can.  Who's going to stop them?
Gold Mine for Airlines
I don’t have the exact figure on how much the airlines pay baggage handlers whose numbers have dwindled due to corporate cost analyses but I am willing to bet they don’t share in the windfall.
The airlines will say that the increase in fuel costs caused their increase in fees but the numbers don’t completely add up and even if they did why hide the fare increase?
Telling a traveler that he has to pay extra to carry some luggage is like selling a car and then asking the buyer if he’d like a steering wheel with his purchase.
But airlines are not the only culprit in this corporate scheme to milk humans out of every remaining penny they have.
Anyone alive on Long Island is well aware of the inept Long Island Rail Road and it's ever increasing fares to complement their ever decreasing level of service or competence.
Note that the railroad considers its trains to be on time if they are only 5.9 minutes late!
Most riders would not 5.9 minutes late as on-time but rather a miracle!
But I digress.
A quick check into the business world reveals that most corporations have amassed unprecedented and record profits; cash cushions of nearly unimaginable amounts all while claiming that the current administration in DC has left them with a terrible feeling of uncertainty that is causing them to NOT hire new workers.
Does not knowing if you will triple your profits rather than merely doubling them next year constitute an uncertainty?
This absurd rationalization pervades every corner of every industry and threatens to eradicate the middle class completely.
But while I and many others write about the path we’re on nobody seems to have a solution.
One reason is that a major political party doesn't see the above AS a problem to be fixed.
The Republicans feel that the business world and the banks in particular should not be regulated at all, or if so we should allow them to self regulate.
Millions of potholes nationwide
Sounds like Mr. Romney’s call for illegal aliens to self-deport and equally as naive.
One possible solution to the job loss in America is right under our noses or rather under our feet.
Suddenly not an uncommon thing
Our nation’s infrastructure (a word former President Bush had trouble even saying) is crumbling. A no-brainer (The fix, not him although...) would be to start hiring workers nation-wide to save our streets, and highways, and bridges, and on and on.
Disaster on the clock!
The amount of architects and planners alone would take a chunk out of the unemployment numbers and therein is the problem.
Allowing anything to help the economy while the right wing controls the purse strings of the House and President Obama is still in office is anathema.
To paraphrase Senator McJowls, aka Mitch McConnell, an elected official sworn to help America in return for a huge undeserved salary; free health care; retirement funds for himself and family and exceptional perks far beyond his worth, “We simply cannot give this pretender a win.”
So there goes infrastructure repair!
And with it any hope of fixing America.
But I am not just talking about the roads anymore.  Now I speak of the entire experiment that is America.
One political party gets their marching orders only from the wealthiest of the country. They have now brazenly taken to fixing elections so even when the masses rise up against their terroristic-like tactics it will not be enough since their votes will not be counted.
And many on the right feel that is as it should be.  "The poor made their own beds and chose to be poor so their votes should not count!"
Never happen till Congress
finds out how to give
Exxon the profits
It is the ruling class that will decide when and where workers will be hired and what those workers should do.
There are many public works programs and ideas such as alternative energy as a way to ensure that the world as we know it will still exist in 50 years that are being blocked by the ruling class and their puppets in Congress.
They will not give in unless and until we bow to their superior intellect and allow them to reap any profits from any new industry.
We are now used to paying for luggage when we fly but until we divest ourselves of the evil and brain-dead, dead weight baggage in Congress we will never get anywhere!
I hope this is not just a
Pie in the Sky.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

It's Great to be in the USCA

There is a sinister movement afoot in America and it is surely on a course to change the way we live for years to come.
The movement is insidious.
It is attacking us on many different fronts.
And while each individual attack is brought up in the news or on the web nobody seems to be putting two and two together.
Nobody is talking about the cohesive factor involved in this well planned war on the American Dream and our very way of life.  
But it is not a very well kept secret nor are the people or groups waging the war even trying to keep it thus.
I am talking about the very real war on the Middle Class and all people not considered wealthy.
The evidence is simple and the examples are abundant.
From Governor Scott Walker and his band of puppets doing the bidding of the billionaire Koch brothers by stealing away the long fought for rights of the individual to the silly idiot Governor of Maine, LePage removing a mural from government property because it had the audacity to celebrate a worker's movement and decry child labor.  (Maine voters better turn a NEW page and soon or they will find themselves in big trouble.)
Justice Thomas of the once revered and fair Supreme Court is a staunch supporter of his old company Monsanto in its fight against individual farmers and will fight for anything spouse Ginny espouses.  (Virginia is of course a staunch tea bagger.)
Fellow co-conspirator Justice Scalia is sure to vote in favor of Wal*Mart in their defense against a class action lawsuit brought by women who have been discriminated against by that giant corporation - no matter what the evidence says!  He has already hinted as much in previously released statements.
And many more chinks in the armor (I mean that in non-racial terms) of the American fabric may be found without hard investigative digging.  Just Google 'Individual rights and Ohio' or 'Assault on the EPA' if you like.
In fact a simple extrapolation of these events will lead us to a future eerily reminiscent of a fascist state where any gathering of like minded individuals discussing the shortcomings of the government will be found guilty of sedition!
It sounds a bit far fetched if not totally paranoid but the movement is definitely in that direction.
And as with any political movement it runs on funds.
So which side of this conflict would be able to last the longest?
Which group can afford to keep the fight going until they attain their goal and grab the brass ring?
As silly as it sounds the future could hold a time when a family of five or more sitting around the dinner table will be too frightened to discuss politics lest they be imprisoned.
"Step away from the meatloaf, little Bobby and place your hands on the table where I can see them!  You have the right to remain..."
Of course the above is all the alarmist rantings of a delusional conspiracy theorist, right?
I mean the government is not out to get you.
They will not infringe on any of your rights as long as you continue to file your taxes every April.
Oh, and speaking of taxes and that whole 'no taxation without representation' thing, where does that leave the likes of GE and Exxon?  I wonder what they are doing with all that cash they don't pay to the IRS?
The architects of this movement have worked long and hard.  They have planned their attack for a quite some time, tweaking and reworking but always with an eye toward the goal.  And finally they are poised to reap the rewards of their patience.
Every American voter must keep this in mind when he or she pulls the curtain closed on November 6th, 2012 or be prepared to bow down to the United States of Corporate America and avow their support for the USCA!