Just a gentle reminder

 Bush and his Republican pals in Congress bailed out these Wall Street bankers:

Over the objections of Mitt Romney and the Republican party Obama bailed out the American auto industry which helped people like this:

Business as usual

Bank of America is willing to work with, and by work with I mean bleed it's customers a little less, people who are in mortgage trouble, but they'll only do so if these people promise to stop saying mean things about them on the internet.

How very fucking nice of them. Bank of America makes a shitty shady mortgage deal that rips people off and when they complain about it they get told to shut the fuck up or they'll get no help. Thank gawd I never made a deal with those thieving bastards and since I didn't, they can't tell me to be quiet. So I'll use my bully pulpit to say that Bank of America is a criminal organization run by thugs and gangsters whose mission in life is to steal from the poor so that a few already rich white guys can get richer. Bank of America doesn't give a shit about anything but taking as much cash out of people's pockets as it can. They suck and they ought to be ashamed of themselves but instead they're proud as a peacock that they rob, ruin, and ravage neighborhoods all over this country. Fuck you and your sociopathic behavior you fourth rate robbing asswipes. I live for the day your corporation goes into bankruptcy.

Twitter is now going to censor tweets in other countries. But, let's be honest with one another, they're probably already doing it here in the USA as well. They say they have to do it in order to keep offices open in those repressive countries that need to censor their citizens. I say they're doing it because they put profit above all things and they don't give a shit about freedom or letting people speak their mind.

It's been well documented that people used Twitter during uprisings and protests. They used it to coordinate meetings, tell others where the cops were, and to get more folks out to demonstrate, and all these things are an anathema to repressive governments. People in our government praised plucky freedom loving protestors in other countries who used Twitter like that, countries like Egypt, Libya, etc, but they then turned around and demanded Twitter give them the names of people who used their service to do those very same things in our country. They are still in the process of prosecuting people who use Twitter like that during the G8 protests awhile back. And guess what? Twitter complied with their requests.

So yeah. Twitter sucks ass. Just like Yahoo who gave up Chinese dissidents, and Microsoft, and Apple, and all other companies that do the bidding of dictators and repressive regimes. People cry, "What are they supposed to do? They're just following orders given to them by governments where they do business." If they are a US based company what they are supposed to do is to extend the same rights and freedom of usage to people in other countries that hey do to US citizens and if the countries they want to do business with won't allow that, then they need to get the fuck out of those countries. "But they won't make money if they do that!" So the fuck what. Making money and securing profit is not the be all and end all of life. It's more important to do the right thing than it is to make a buck and if more people and businesses adhered to that principle, then this world would be a hell of a lot better off.

Business needs more ethics and we need to stop patronizing unethical companies. Do business with companies committed to making the change you want to see in the world. And if you don't fin any, then start one.

These truths should be self evident

• You can fire as many workers as you like, you can ship all those jobs over seas, you can cut the benefits of the few workers you have left, but in the end, if we can't buy your products because we're laid off, fired, had our jobs outsourced, and our benefits and pay cut, then you've only shot yourself in the foot with all those things you did to please Wall Street.
• If the cops start beating 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters after getting millions of dollars from a big Wall Street bank, then people are going to connect the two and assume the NYPD now works for Wall Street and not for the average working stiff.
• If you want to ruin a country's economy then you should start two wars abroad and cut taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations at home. If you don't want to do that...oh wait, it's too late. Bush fucked us and didn't even kiss us first.
• If you're selling something, like oh, let's say a health care overhaul or a jobs bill, then you don't start where you want to end up. You start out by asking for the moon and then negotiate down from there.
• If they're going to call you a big government socialist, then you should grow a pair of balls and start governing like one. We've needed FDR and Obama has given us Herbert Hoover.

Your logics are faulty

I've been remiss in not commenting on some events that have been going on in the world lately, so I'll use this post to catch up on some of that. Ready? Here goes:

• I'm not on board with the bombing of Libya. It's not that I don't agree that Ga-Daffy should be gone, he should, I don't agree with how we're getting rid of him. If you tell me you're going to go after him because he's mistreating his own people and that the mission is therefore humanitarian, then why are we not helping the people of Syria, Saudi Arabia, the women of Egypt, the Palestinians in Gaza, the Catholics in Northern Ireland like we're helping the people of Libya. Obama wants to prove he's got balls and that he's not afraid to attack brown skinned people, so that's what he's doing.
• Newt Gingrich, the man who justifies his affairs by saying he had them because he felt passionately about the USA, chided Obama for not attacking Libya. Then when he did attack Libya, he chided him for doing so. Which is it asshole? Which side of that flip flop are you on Mr. Extra Marital Affair? Why anyone pays the slightest bit of attention to that gas bag is beyond me.
  
• If you're one of the people who doesn't want to help the people of Japan, then fuck you. Stop reading this blog and go blow your brains out. You don't deserve to draw breath on the same planet that I live on you slimy selfish bastard.
• When you cut the salaries of working people, attempt to legislate away their labor unions, and outsource their jobs, you shouldn't be surprised that no one is buying the products or services you're selling. You can make your widgets cheaply in China but you can't expect anyone to buy them if they have no money.
• I never thought I'd live to see the day when teachers, cops, garbage men, and other public employees were made out to be villains for simply asking that the terms of their employment be honored. We have to honor our contracts, why the hell do conservative politicians not want to honor the contracts we have with our public servants? I'd love to see the big business boosters work a garbage route, put out fires, help keep the peace, and or teach a class for a month. If they did then they'd all change their tunes and they'd push for raises for teachers, cops, firemen, and garbage men.
• If your god is so powerful and awesome, why do you not believe that he made gay people? Why do you find the idea that your god made some people gay and some people straight so outlandish? Perhaps it's because your god didn't make them at all because he doesn't exist.
  

That's about all I can stand to say right now, if I go deeper into any of those points my head might explode or I might go postal on the next idiot who tells me that our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for my rights. (They can't fight for my rights in Iraq and Afghanistan because I have no rights over there and neither does any other American, Canadian, or Brit.)

Now I leave you with this artsy edited photo of mine. Even in a world gone mad, one needs to appreciate art when one can.

Congress in action!

The Republicans in Congress have decided to cut the taxes of wealthy Americans, businesses, and corporations yet again. They've also decided that most every one else won't have to pay taxes either, with the exception of the following people:

barrel burners,

indigenous aboriginal peoples,

gigolos,

musicians,

and this dude.

So enjoy your tax cuts America, and for those of you get one, get your asses back to work, the country is depending on you.

Share the love, share the sacrifice. America, FUCK YEAH!

Don't be stupid, stupid

I had a commenter on this blog tell me that she thought we should never tax business because taxing business was 'punishing' the entity that creates jobs. My first thought was, when did making business pay it's fair share of things become punishment?

A few weeks ago, this commenter and I went back on forth on Facebook over the value of labor unions. Basically she blamed them for ruining our economy and I told her she was an idiot for thinking and saying that. Her point was that unions have become so corrupt and greedy that no business would want their employees to be in one. Umm, duh. No business wants their employees to be in a union, they don't want them to have the protection or collective bargaining power that a union offers it's members. Business wants to make a profit as cheaply as it can and it wants no roadblocks to it, and all businesses see unions as roadblocks.

But this post isn't about her right wing view and irrational hatred of the only protections that workers have, it's about her idiotic comment that taxing business is punishing it.

Businesses, both large and small, want their workers, for the most part, to be able to read and write. And where do people learn to do those things? In schools, public schools for the most part, and public schools are funded by taxes. So therefore business should pay taxes that will go to funding schools.

Businesses like using publicly funded things like roads and bridges, therefore they should pay taxes to help build and or repair those things. Businesses like police and fire protection, therefore they should help pay for the police and fire departments. They like trash pick up, so they should help pay for the public landfills they use. They like their workers to be healthy so they can work them long hours for little pay, so therefore they should pay for things like the Centers for Disease Control, for public health clinics, and for inoculations of school children who will become workers later on.

Most of you get my point. However, I'm sure it will be lost on the idiot woman who thinks that unions and not greedy short sighted corporations ruined our economy and that taxing business is punishing it.
If stupid could be taxed, we'd make a fortune off her.

Deficit cutting recommendations from the Monkerstein Commission

Here's how we end the deficit:

• End the wars of terror on Iraq and Afghanistan and bring all troops and equipment home.
• End all foreign occupations immediately and bring all our troops and equipment home.
• End farm subsidies.
  
• Cut military spending to the bone.
• Institute a 50 percent income tax on individuals making over $250,000 a year. (It used to be 90% back during the 1940's and '50's, and we still created thousands of jobs.)
  
• Make individuals pay Social Security tax on 100 percent of their income, not just the first $106,000.
• Raise corporate taxes.
• Tax all businesses one dollar per square foot for every square foot of land their business occupies.
  
• Tax all religious institutions.
• Legalize and tax industrial hemp.
• Legalize and tax marijuana for recreational use.
• Institute a gas guzzler tax. If you want to buy a huge gas guzzling SUV, then you can... but you have to pay at least half the purchase price back in taxes.
• End all corporate tax breaks on the local, state, and federal levels.
• Heavily tax all forms of gun related ammunition. If you want to own a handgun, fine, but you're going to pay through the nose for bullets.

My plan is a good mix of ending wasteful spending and raising monies to pay for the kinds of things we want as a country. It's much fairer and more balanced than the current plan that just got shit out of Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson's asses.

And my plan is the center piece of my 2012 presidential campaign. That's right America, Dr. Monkey is once again running for President.

Eat up with stupid

I heard on the radio that in the state of New York they're having a budget shortfall of 9 billion dollars or something like that. The soon to be ousted governor wants to close parks, cut school spending, and what few social welfare programs they have left to make up the budget deficit. My question is, why the hell would they do that when banks and financial institutions in that state and in NYC are seeing record profits? Seems to me that a windfall profit tax on Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and the rest of those vultures would solve the problem.

Also, don't Walmart, Exxon Mobil, and other corporations that are flush with record profits doing business in the state of New York and other cash strapped states like Illinois and California? Don't pharmaceutical and medical insurance companies do business in those states as well? Instead of raising taxes on the working poor and families, how about state legislators get some balls (or ovaries as the case may be) and make these companies who are swimming in record profits pay up for a change. If they want to do business in a locality, then they need to invest in that locality and to stop bleeding it dry.

It's not like these companies are going to close up and move out of the USA or something if they are forced to pay their fair share of taxes. It boggles my mind that people are standing idly by while services are being cut and teachers laid off while banks and insurance companies rake in huge profits. If I had a kids and their school was getting shafted by the state budget while Walmart or Microsoft got tax breaks, I'd be even madder than I am now. I'd be taking to the streets to protest and I'd be encouraging others to join me in some kind of civil disobedience actions to get my state to make the money sucking corporations pay their fair share of state and local taxes. And people who wouldn't join me and others in doing that, well, they'd just be eat up with stupid.

Crazy huh

It turns out that the happiest people in the world live in countries where there are high taxes and high rates of atheism. I'm guessing people love living where their taxes pay for their health care, their kid's college, and it pays for a strong social safety net. Since they don't have to worry about working so hard to pay for life necessities, they have no need to become slaves to out dated Bronze age religions.

So once again, it shows you how wrong conservatives and libertarians are. People do not mind paying taxes as long as they get something tangible for their money, like health care, college educations, unemployment insurance, etc. And notice that some of the world's most successful corporations come from those countries as well, corporations like Nokia, Bang & Olufsen, Lego, Heineken, Vodaphone, and Royal Dutch Shell. Also the unemployment rate in Finland and Denmark routinely hovers around 2%. So the line that business can't survive or thrive in highly taxed countries is nonsense.


If we would just make the rich and big business pay their fair share of taxes we wouldn't have to pay much more to get all the things that other, more civilized, countries have.

They still don't get it

Why all the fuss over whether Wall Street loves Obama's plans for the economy? It should be obvious to all but the most dim witted conservative troglodyte that what Wall Street wants and likes is not good for you and me. When stocks go up on news about layoffs then there is something seriously wrong with the whole financial system. When it's investors who are the only ones getting ahead financially in this country then something is seriously wrong. When the people who work hard and play by the rigged rules set up by Wall Street and the corporate shills in our government in Washington DC can't buy a house or send their kids to college on what they make then there is something seriously wrong with financial system in this country.


Work should be rewarded, not parasitic investment.

We had a great opportunity during this financial melt down to blow up the rotten crooked system that's failed us for so many years now. But it looks like we're going to let it pass by us and we're going to let the same Wall Street and Federal Reserve crooks and greedy corporate weasels keep on plundering us yet again because we're afraid to tame big business. Oh well, maybe everything they're trying now will backfire and we'll get the economic revolution this country so desperately needs.

Listen up all you TV 'journalists' out there

For the past 8 to 10 years most of you people have been laying down on the job. To see how you should be doing your job, I recommend you watch Jon Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer.

You people in the business of reporting on business and finance have been nothing more than shiny faced cheerleaders for all the bullshit that's finally hitting the fan. You knew the system was rotten well before it collapsed, hell, I knew it was rotten and ready to collapse, and yet you stood by and acted all surprised when the bottom fell out. None of you asked the tough questions or did the leg work. You all just sat back and stroked ego's and cashed checks while the rest of us got screwed. If there is any justice in this world then maybe you had all your money invested with Bernie Madoff or maybe you took Cramer's advice and you bought the hell out of Bear Sterns.

Stimulate who?

Oh wow.

Did you see it?

Did you hear it?

It's out there and it's huge! No, I'm not talking about Jessica Simpson's ass, which is only now beginning to look somewhere near fine if you ask me, I'm talking about the Senate Republican's answer to President Obama's stimulus package.

Predictably it full of the one thing that all Republicans love, no, it's not full of hookers, it's full of tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations. Crazy huh. They want to cut taxes on themselves and the corporations who they are beholden to, it's their way of stimulating their own economy. The rest of us can go to hell as far as they are concerned. Let's look at the cold hard facts:

• If a bridge gets built in your community the whole community benefits. The construction company hires people in your area to build it. Those people spend their paychecks in your community, thereby benefiting local business. Your state or city gets either sales tax or income tax off the money paid to the workers and your state and city provide all kinds of services to you with that tax revenue.
• When the taxes of rich white people get cut they pocket the money they are going to save that would have gone to pay taxes. Your community doesn't benefit from it. Only the persons whose taxes got cut benefit. And maybe a big bank or Wall Street investment house benefits too. But that's it.

President Obama's stimulus plan has millions for such things as Pell grants which will help kids in your area go to college, public health initiatives which will employ people and benefit your community in the long run, infrastructure repairs, and many other beneficial projects. All of these projects will produce real tangible economic benefits almost immediately in your community. The stimulus package offered by the obscenely wealthy Senate Republicans will have no economic effects on your community whatsoever, unless you live inside a Wall Street bank that is. Heck, I'm still waiting for the economic effects of the Bush tax cuts to kick in and the Reagan tax cuts as well.

My fellow citizens, we should be fed up with watching the rich and powerful in our government take care of only the rich and powerful in the business world. It's time that all the bastards in Washington DC started doing what's right for the vast majority of us and stop doing the bidding of Rush Limbo, ExxonMobil, and IBM. I'd like to say that I hope that the Senate Republican passes so that when our economy tanks even further and they propose more tax cuts to fix it I could point and laugh, but I'm not. I'm not an asshole like a certain fat blowhard drug addict is, so I'm hoping that the Republican plan fails so that the President's plan, which will benefit all Americans in the long run, can pass and succeed.

The first few million of the bailout money has hit the banks

And corporate America knows exactly what to do with it.

The wheels of the car go 'round and 'round

They're having trouble paying for the schools here in Washington County, TN so they decided to put a fund raising measure on the primary ballot. When I say "fund raising measure" what I mean is they want us to vote on a tax, specifically it's a wheel tax and the powers that be in our county want to use that money for education.

I was surprised that they allowed us to vote on this in the first place, they usually impose such things on us by fiat and then say "Pay up or else!" What also surprised me was the fact they floated the idea of a wheel tax at all. Most people in the surrounding counties where I live routinely vote these kinds of taxes down and I expect we'll do the same thing here. I know I voted against it. But I didn't vote against it because I hate the little kiddies in schools. I voted against it becasue it is another in a long line of regressive taxes they want to foist on us.

You see folks, here in TN we have no income tax. What we have instead is one of the highest sales taxes in the nation. And it goes up almost every year. The last time they raised it they said they had to do it to pay for TennCare, our states one time version of Medicaid, but then the gutless politicians in Nashville gutted TennCare and they tossed all people off it except for children under the age of 18 and expectant mothers. Now, did the gutless wonders in Nashville give us back our tax increase once we no longer had TennCare? Nope. They continued to stick it to us and more specifically stick it to the poor and working class people of this state.

The poor and worknig class pay a high percentage of taxes under a sales tax only system. The rich and high income earners pay a far lower percentage of their earnings in taxes while reaping more rewards the state offers, such as tax breaks for businesses and tax breaks on the purchase of big ticket items like cars and homes. The sales tax rates are configured differently in this state for big ticket items because the state knows that if the rates were the same on expensive items, like cars and such, as they are for groceries and everyday items then people, especially people like Sparky and I who live near the Virginia and North Carolina borders, would buy those big ticket items out of state to avoid paying such high sales taxes.

This wheel tax business they are trying to get us to vote for says that any person who owns a vehicle with four wheels must pay a $50 a year fee. Some of you are saying, "That's not much to pay." Well if you drive one of these, it's not:
But if you drive a beat up one of these:
Hell yes it is too much to pay.

In this area where everything is spread out you must have a car to get around and to get by and this wheel tax would unfairly impinge more heavily on the already over taxed poor and working classes. Once again they'd be asked to pay a higher percentage of taxes than the wealthier citizens of this county. And I know damn well that the schools that would benefit the most from the tax would be the ones in the cities and not the ones that need it most, the ones in the outlying rural areas.

So if this wheel tax loses, which I expect it to do, whatever shall we do to fund our schools? They've already raised our property taxes, and we already pay city and county taxes here at El Casa de Monkey, and that's in addition to those scandously high sales taxes we pay too. Until we have a state budget meltdown they will never ever approve an income tax in Nashville. So again, I ask, whatever shall we do? Where shall all that money come from to pay for our schools?

Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's my idea, we pass a tax on the square footage of every business in the county, and why stop there? I say we institute a tax on the square footage of every business in our state. Here's how my idea would work:

• Every business, big and or small across the state pays a yearly tax of one dollar per square foot of their buisness. This would mean that businesses that are huge, like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, hospitals, etc, would pay far more in taxes than small Mom and Pop businesses.

That's it. The big boys, for once, pay more in taxes than the small businesses. We use that money to fund schools and to make other community improvements. Some of you might say, "That will kill business! The big corporations will just pack up and leave if you tax them like that." Bull shit, of course they won't. What they'll do in fact is to try to open more stores or hospitals or whatever in order to make up for the revenues that thay are now paying in taxes. And of course some of them would raise their prices to offset the tax increase on their business, some people will of course pay the increased prices but some will shop elsewhere at stores that choose to make a little less profit and to be a better community partner.

Of course I am under no illusion that my plan will ever be adopted in this state because like their counterparts in the US Congress, our legislators in Nashville are in the pockets of every coroporate lobbyist who ever put on a pair of loafers or high heels and walked the halls of power. They'll continue to put the wants and alleged needs of big business ahead of the citizens of this state for as long as we have this corrupt political and economic system.