Torpedo Sandwich of Truth

My Facebook Tirade. :)

• Michael DeVore I hold no such animosity towards tirades.  The reality, of course, is that the Bush recession caused terrible disruptions in the marketplace and these disruptions have hit particularly the middle class. I see the number of underemployed every day trying to maneuver back into the level of job they had before the recession. So anyone unemployed has to compete with those that are underemployed because they took ANY job when they were out of work. This really was a depression that was moderated into a recession by social programs and doing what we did not know to do in 1929, pump money into the economy. This was done with extremely low interest rates by the FED which benefited the extremely wealthy. But in general economic theory it added money to that of social programs like unemployment insurance. Remember that all other attempts at job creation, tax breaks for the middle class, or any other way of putting money into the economy, were blocked by the GOP with their ability to veto all legislation with the dramatic use of filibuster powers in the Senate. Add to this their inability to form a coalition with the tea party and all legislation stopped for going on 5 years now (not counting the honeymoon period used to do the beginning of the jobs bills needed and health care reform at the beginning of Obama's presidency). What this ended up with was the very wealthy increasing their share of the pie and not even paying the same tax rate as the middle and lower upper-classes. The necessary money was pumped into the economy by the FED which was the only place true power could be used during the blockage of all legislation -- legislation, for instance, that would have taken away those insane tax breaks for the ultra wealthy and attempted to pour money into the economy by other methods than giving the banks almost a zero percent interest rate. All is not bad though from the Capitalist perspective because the old maxim of "he who governs least, governs best" has had its unusual benefits. This IS the longest sustained period in jobs growth by all kinds of metrics. The trend has been so solid that we are unlikely (knocking on wood) to encounter the double dip recession other counties including China appear to be now beginning. The jobs we have built have been forged by the private sector. We are truly participating in the laisez faire Capitalist dream where labor is just a factor of production and is not considered in policy making (which is blocked.) We are more purely Darwinistic. We have become more like the animals of nature and not human beings with a higher purpose. We are competing head on with slave labor and are are actually doing fairly well (if we do not consider humanitarian or religious goals as important). End tirade. 

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  Michael DeVore To sum my earlier tirade, we are still waiting for the trickle down. Come on, trickle down, its as if we hardly knew ye. 

  17 mins · Edited · Like

The Pellet Gun

Kids are being shot for having toy guns and confusing police. The St. Louis police department put out a long message about how dangerous these can be if kids, say, run when the SWAT team shows up.

I am sure I have related this before. I have only held a gun one time in my hands and that was to see what it felt like to hold a gun in one's  hands. You never know, knowledge of something that intrinsically dangerous might come in handy.

Then there was the time I found a gun in my yard while mowing. It was fairly deep in the grass but I ascertained it was some kind of gun. I quickly called the police knowing not to handle evidence, of course. The police officer arrived alone and proceeded to pick up the gun with his bare hands and say "This is a pellet gun." in a manner which was that of heavy ridicule. Well, yeah I am ignorant of guns. Guilty.

As he was handling the gun I realized that it was way realistic. Well, I am certainly glad that the officer knew everything about every crime that could have possibly gone down with a fake gun used as a real one in the weeks or months preceding... because I was unsure why the gun had been dumped in my yard which was on an intersection where people often threw out full beer cans and complete six packs to hide evidence from their car before returning home.

I did not feel any resentment. I just wished my city had hired policemen with some sense of community. And I still think I did the right thing despite the ridicule.

The police officer then looked at me and said "These are expensive, can I have it?"

yeah. whatever.