Prepare for Change

The Moral Economy; What “The Invisible Hand” Left Behind by Jeff Jacobsen Philadelphia 1777 was a hot spot for revolution. The colonials had banded together and started their historic effort to pry a new nation from the clutches of the British. But the banding together did not preclude a community from going after one of their own, even a known patriot. Thomas Boylston was such a neighbor on Britain's enemies list. But he also tried to take economic advantage of the war by withholding coffee and sugar from the local marketplace in order to create a higher price for his commodities. The community chose otherwise for him. Abigail Adams wrote that around 100 women confronted Boylston at his warehouse, took his keys after an argument, and left with their booty, as “a large concourse of men stood amazed silent spectators of the whole transaction.” [Nash, 2005, p. 232] If one was inclined to believe that this was a unique occurrence from those times, one wo...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11849259 I believe protesting is a sort of way to "vote" by showing the strength your position has amongst the populous. So in that respect it is useful.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration today announced random waterboarding of passengers at the Las Vegas International Airport. The stricter scrutiny was a result of a rash of called-in bomb threats recently in Las Vegas. Thad Tacker, regional director of TSA for the Western U.S., said "we need to make certain as best we can that no one getting on our planes is a terrorist, or a phone-in terrorist." Approximately every 100th passenger is randomly selected for the waterboarding procedure, which can take over an hour. Selectees who miss their flight are provided a ticket to the next flight to their destination, and an "I've already been waterboarded" voucher. Theresa Falls of Henpeck, Wyoming was one of the first passengers waterboarded. "It was so horrible, I thought I was dying!" said Falls. "I confessed to probably everything I've done wrong in my life, but still they kept accusing me of making phone threats." The ordeal l...

I highly recommend Kevin Phillips' book Wealth and Democracy. He compares our current (well up to 2001) financial dive with similar falls in 17th Century Netherlands, 18th Century Spain, and 19th Century England. It's a useful historical review. It's also jam-packed with interesting historical tidbits about US economic history. Here's my favorite quote: "The peril of any utopianism, of course, is how it suspends rationality and pursues a dream. In the case of millennial American conservatism, the political dream, for all its responsiveness to the tangible self-interest of rich constituencies, has been the illusion of markets as potential parliaments rather than descendants of carnivals, as rational decision-makers rather than precarious litmuses of human nature." (p. 371)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy-2010-08-10 David Stockman, Reagans' money man, says the GOP has already destroyed the US economy. Up next; class warfare. While everyone is looking for an economic "recovery," I'm afraid where we are now is where we'll be for quite some time.

The Military Industrial Complex has us by the balls. Even though the rest of the country is reeling from the recession, military spending keeps on going. We now spend more on defense than the rest of the WORLD does. Why are we so paranoid? Who is after us? We could easily cut our defense spending in half and perhaps save our teetering economy. We have no need to be spread all over the world like some old-time imperial power. We could close bases in other countries, cut back on mammoth projects designed to fight the nonexistent USSR, and start using soft power instead of destructive wars. http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/how-not-to-save-money/413647