UP IN SMOKE

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Posted on 8th April 2013 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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Why do I try to understand why stupid people do stupid things? I guess I can’t help myself.

Why do high school dropouts smoke at a rate that is 4 times the level of college graduates? Are they just so stupid that they don’t understand how bad smoking is to their health? Or are they so stupid that they are lured into smoking by advertising propaganda? Or do they smoke because they see other stupid people smoking?

Of course, high school dropouts and most stupid people don’t make much money, because they’re stupid. The higher your income, the less likely you are to smoke.

This brings me to the part that boggles my common sense financially driven mind. The chart below from Zero Hedge was meant to compare prices in cities across the globe. Now I know why people aren’t flocking to Australia and New Zealand. What caught my attention was the fact that it costs between $8 and $12 for a pack of cigarettes in the United States. If someone is stupid enough to smoke, they are probably stupid enough to become addicted. Someone with a pack per day addiction would spend approximately $3,500 per year on cigarettes. We know that the vast majority of smokers make less than $35,000 per year of income. Many of these people are spending 10% to 20% of their annual income on a disgusting, health destroying habit. These are the same people who are being subsidized with Section 8 housing, food stamps, Obama phones, free internet, and other welfare payments. They are using their earned income credits to buy smokes. That means your tax dollars are buying those smokes. When these people come down with the usual health problems from smoking a pack a day, they just go onto SSDI and Medicare.

Let’s continue to subsidize bad behavior and I’m sure it will end well.

BUGGER THE BANKERS

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Posted on 20th February 2013 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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SCREW THE POOR

41 comments

Posted on 9th May 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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This is a sure sign of economic recovery. The Casino industry was able to successfully bilk America’s senior citizens and the poor out of $35.6 billion that Ben Bernanke wasn’t able to get with his ZIRP. In this warped society of ours we proclaim an industry that preys on the old, stupid, poor, and desperate. Sure some wealthier people gamble for entertainment, but the vast majority of suckers going to casinos are lonely poor senior citizens and those who think they can hit it rich when the odds are astronomically against them. These people become so addicted they leave their kids in cars in the casino parking lot for hours while they gamble.

 

According to this story 60 million people visited a casino last year and spent $36 billion. That is $600 per person. In reality, senior citizens are suckered into going by alluring offers sent to them three times a week by these parasite casino corporations that track all of their activity and know which buttons to push. These senior citizens end up spending thousands per year. The average Social Security income of a retiree is $15,000. Ben Bernanke has siphoned off their interest income and these casinos are bilking them out of another couple thousand. And this is encouraged by slimy politicians like Fast Eddie Rendell of PA who pretend to be a champion of the poor while throwing them under the casino bus in reality.

PA has siphoned off revenue from Atlantic City and Delaware, but it’s a zero sum game. You can only squeeze so much from the senior citizen stone. I saw a new PA Lottery ad on TV last night. It was a poor black couple trying to cook out in their crappy backyard with a 10 year old habache grill. Suddenly, they scratch a lottery ticket and their backyard becomes a paradise of luxury. It brought a tear to my eye. Government sanctioned and initiated theft from the poorest and least educated never seemed so good.

What a disgusting society we’ve become. Great news!!! A new casino opened in King of Prussia last week. My 76 year old mother will be thrilled. 

 

US Casinos Slowly Coming Back From Recession Woes

By WAYNE PARRY Associated Press

The nation’s commercial casinos continued their slow-but-steady comeback from the recession last year, with revenues up 3 percent nationwide and jobs holding nearly steady, according to a report released Wednesday.

The American Gaming Association’s annual report noted the nation’s 492 non-Indian casinos or other legal gambling halls paid nearly $8 billion in taxes to state and local governments, a 4.5 percent increase over 2010.

The casinos took in $35.6 billion last year.

They also provided more than 339,000 jobs, a decline of less than half of 1 percent from a year earlier. And casino workers saw their pay decline by 3 percent last year, to $12.9 billion in wages, benefits and tips.

“While it may be slow, the recovery of the national commercial casino industry is well under way,” said Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., the AGA’s president. “The state of the industry is good; the prospects for its future are solid.”

The report also found that more than a quarter of casino patrons surveyed said they rarely or never gamble, indicating that casinos are doing a better job of offering non-gambling attractions such as fine restaurants, spas, nightclubs and big-name entertainment.

Las Vegas remains the nation’s largest casino market, with more than $6 billion in revenue last year.

Markets where new casinos opened or where gambling had its first full year of operation posted the biggest gains, including Maryland, Kansas and New York.

Atlantic City had the biggest revenue drop at 7 percent. Its casinos took in $3.3 billion, down from $5.2 billion in 2006, when the first of Pennsylvania’s casinos opened and began siphoning off business from New Jersey. Atlantic City has lost its perch as the nation’s second-largest gambling market to Pennsylvania, although the AGA report treats Pennsylvania as a series of smaller independent markets.

New Jersey was for years the only state beside Nevada with legal commercial casinos, but it’s now is beset by fierce competition from casinos in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware, not to mention Indian casinos a short drive away in Connecticut.

Fahrenkopf said the opening last month of the $2.4 billion Revel casino resort could help turn things around in Atlantic City. Yet he said he was surprised to hear that Revel’s first-month casino revenues were only $13 million, a figure that ranks it near the bottom of the city’s 12 casinos. Revel CEO Kevin DeSanctis told The Associated Press the first month was a preview period where it was more important to test systems and equipment than concentrate on generating revenue.

Delaware’s casinos lost nearly 16 percent of their jobs, falling to 2,730 workers last year.

The AGA’s figures do not include Indian casinos, which took in $24.9 billion in 2010, the last year for which figures are available according to the National Indian Gaming Commission.

Maryland, where two casinos had their first full years of operation, saw casino revenue go from $27.6 million in 2010 to $155.7 million last year, an increase of 464 percent. Kansas’ casino revenue went from nearly $38 million to $48 million, an increase of 28.3 percent, and Pennsylvania’s casino revenue rose from $2.5 billion to more than $3 billion, an increase of 21.3 percent.

New York, where Resorts World opened last summer in Queens, saw a 15.6 percent increase in casino revenues.

Other notable gains in casino revenue were seen in Florida (16 percent); West Virginia (9.2 percent); Illinois (8 percent); Rhode Island (7.5 percent), and Oklahoma (6.4 percent).

Pennsylvania’s casinos paid the most taxes in the nation at $1.45 billion; Kansas paid the least at $13 million. Thirteen states saw increases in the amount of tax revenue they paid to governments last year.

Nevada’s casino revenue went from $10.4 billion to $10.7 billion, an increase of nearly 3 percent, even as jobs held roughly steady at 174,381. New Jersey’s casino jobs declined by nearly 4 percent to 32,823.

Nearly 60 million people, or more than one-quarter of the nation’s adult population (27 percent) visited a casino in 2011, and the only form of gambling that was more popular was the lottery. Almost half of those surveyed said they set a budget of less than $100 for themselves when they went to a casino, with another 23 percent limiting themselves to under $200.

Slot machines and video poker were the favorite forms of casino gambling nationwide, with 53 percent of the AGA’s survey respondents choosing it first. Blackjack was second at 23 percent, followed by poker (7 percent), and craps and roulette (3 percent each).

There are more than 837,000 slot machines in 39 states, with Nevada (183,319), California (67,601) and Oklahoma (65,400) having the most.

During 2011, Americans spent more at commercial casinos than they did on music, movies and outdoor equipment combined. But the money they lost at casinos was significantly less than the amounts they spent on electronics ($186 billion) and cable television ($97 billion).

Philadelphia ($842 million) and Yonkers N.Y. ($577 million) remained the largest racetrack casino markets in the country last year.

 

HUNGER GAMES = U.S. WARFARE STATE

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Posted on 15th April 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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Fascinating and accurate interpretation of the Hunger Games by Joel Poindexter. There are many other themes in the books and movie, but he captures the American Empire War Machine aspect in this article. The poor die when the rich decide to go to war. Our current economic disaster pushes even more poor young people into the military. I wonder whether this is part of the plan. I look forward to the uprising.

Hunger Games as a Metaphor for the Warfare State

Posted By Joel Poindexter

Much has been written about The Hunger Games and many of the underlying libertarian themes in that story. Jeffrey Tucker recently described the similarity between the fictional games and voting. Brent Railey noted just the other day the realities of the black market springing up to provide what the state can’t, or won’t, and the futility in relying on political figures for salvation. A co-worker of mine suggested that another lesson is that when fighting one evil, it’s important not to become just as evil yourself; a lesson from later in the series. In this essay I’d like to draw attention to the allegory of the games and the modern warfare state.

Briefly, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the trilogy, here’s the background. North America has descended into a full-blown totalitarian state, with the people forced to live in virtual internment camps. The citizens of each region, or district, work as slaves to the Capitol, providing such goods as coal, seafood, or electronics.

In order to maintain control over the people and remind them of their impotence, a group of teens is selected each year to fight in a gladiatorial arena. The event, called the Hunger Games, is televised for the entertainment of those in the Capitol, and the punishment of those in the various districts. A rebellion ensues and, well, you ought to just read the series.

So right off the bat it’s pretty clear: An impoverished underclass, already forced to pay tribute to the government, has its youth pressed into violent service by the wealthy and politically powerful, for the entertainment and enrichment of this ruling elite. This pretty well describes the nation-state in virtually all times and all places, but it goes far beyond this.

The next similarity one finds is the way in which children are selected for the games: a draft. Each child’s name is placed in a bowl, and a representative from the Capitol draws the “winner.” There is a slight twist, one that makes the process even more similar to the actual draft. Each child may be entered additional times in exchange for greater food rations for their family.

The obvious effect is that poorer families are at greater odds of having their children selected for the games. In similar fashion, special rules applied during the draft allowed wealthy draftees to receive deferments, effectively allowing them to avoid military service. In modern times the ranks of the military are almost exclusively made up of the middle class and poor, who are promised better-paying jobs and opportunities otherwise not available at home.

While the people of most districts generally dread the “reaping,” in others, participation in the games is a coveted experience. In these districts, children, known as “Careers,” volunteer to go after training their whole lives. In very much the same way, military service is a generational endeavor. There are many soldiers now serving who can trace their family’s participation in wars going back many generations. It’s not uncommon for recruits to explain that their reason for joining was, at least in part, because their fathers and grandfathers served; “it’s just what we do.”

It continues.

The games are of course a spectacle. The players are paraded in front of adoring crowds; politicians make grand speeches, the Capitol showers praise on the children, who are costumed and trained before being sent to their deaths. Those who die have their portraits broadcast at the end of each day, in memoriam, not at all unlike the nightly news here when troops are killed in overseas combat.

One point that stands out, as Tucker notes, is that none of the participants would have any real reason to fight one another outside the arena. They are forced to do so, to adopt a base mentality and become uncivilized animals in order to survive. This is also true in virtually all wars. The people of at least one side, if not both, are pressed into service and sent to kill other people they’ve never met, and have no real quarrel with.

As with all contemporary conflicts, the games are televised, and huge profits are realized for those who organize them. Cameras are set up everywhere, ensuring that no detail goes unnoticed. Highlights are routinely played, not just of current games, but of those past.

The children are taught to revere the players, who are immortalized as heroes. Those who survive are paraded through the districts on a victory tour and conditioned to act as if all is fine. The reality is that each is condemned to a lifetime of nightmares and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some resort to self-medication with drugs or alcohol to cope with their demons.

There is one major deviation, to be sure. “Winners” are treated to special accommodations and never want for any material thing, unlike many of the troops who return from war with broken minds, bodies, and souls. A staggering number of returning veterans are often unable to function in normal society. Having been used up by their government, unfit to continue fighting, they’re no longer valuable and may be left and forgotten.

It’s no surprise that so many parallels exist, given that the series’ author, Suzanne Collins, was inspired when watching news reports about the wars. The two are so strikingly similar I can only hope that the millions of people, mostly teenagers, will make the same connection. To not see The Hunger Games as anything but a warning of the evils of war would be tragic. It would turn a work damning the spectacle of violence into nothing more than just that: a spectacle of violence.

ROMNEY NOT CONCERNED WITH THE VERY POOR

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Posted on 1st February 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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Romney’s definition of the “very poor” is anyone making less than $1 million. More than 50% of working Americans make $25,000 or less per year.

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