Fascinating interview. Ron became a doctor as a form of resistance to the state. He knows how medicine was practiced before the government took over in 1965. Government creates nothing but problems. Then their solutions make the problems worse. And so on.
The MSM did their usual spin job on the consumer credit data released earlier this week. They reported a 5.4% increase in consumer debt outstanding to an ALL-TIME high of $3.051 trillion. In the Orwellian doublethink world we currently inhabit, the consumer taking on more debt is seen as a constructive sign. Consumer debt has grown by 5.8% over the first nine months of 2013, after growing by 6.1% in 2012 and 4.1% in 2011. The storyline being sold by the corporate MSM propaganda machine, serving the establishment, is that consumers’ taking on debt is a sure sign of economic recovery. They must be confident about the future and rolling in dough from their new part-time jobs as Pizza Hut delivery men. Plus, they are now eligible for free healthcare, compliments of Obama, once they can log-on.
Of course, buried at the bottom of the Federal Reserve press release and never mentioned on CNBC or the other dying legacy media outlets is the facts and details behind the all-time high in consumer credit. They count on the high probability the average math challenged American has no clue regarding the distinction between revolving and non-revolving credit or who controls the distribution of such credit. It is fascinating examining the historical data on the Federal Reserve website and realizing how far we’ve fallen as a society in the last 45 years.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/HIST/cc_hist_sa_levels.html
Revolving credit is a fancy term for credit card debt. Imagine our society today without credit cards. That sounds outrageous to the debt addicted populace inhabiting our suburban wasteland and urban badlands. What is truly outrageous is the fact we have allowed ourselves to be duped into $846 billion of revolving credit card debt charging an average interest rate of 13% by Wall Street bankers who have used the American Dream of a better life as the bait to lure a dumbed down easily manipulated populace into believing that material possessions purchased with high interest debt represented advancement rather than servitude. Debt accumulation is seen as a badge of honor. Keeping up with the Joneses is all that matters. Our shallow culture has no notion about the concept of deferred gratification or saving to pay for your wants.
A shocking fact (to historically challenged government educated drones) revealed by the Federal Reserve data is that credit card debt did not exist prior to 1968. How could people live their lives without credit cards? It must have been a nightmare. You mean to tell me when people wanted new clothes, jewelry, a TV, or to eat out at a restaurant, they actually had to save up the cash to do so? What kind of barbaric system would make you live within your means? The Depression era adults had somehow survived for over two decades after WWII without buying cheap foreign crap they didn’t need with money they didn’t have using a piece of plastic with a Wall Street bank logo emblazoned on the front.
1968 marked a turning point for America. LBJ’s welfare/warfare state had begun the downward spiral of a once rational country. We chose guns and butter, with the bill being charged to the national credit card. It was fitting that Wall Street introduced the credit card in 1968.
Over the course of 40 years, the population of this country grew by 52%. Credit card debt grew by 51,000%. Credit card debt per person grew by 33,600%. This was a case of credit induced mass hysteria and it continues today. Have the American people benefitted from this enslavement in chains of debt? I’d venture to answer no. Who benefitted? The corporate fascist oligarchy of Wall Street banks, mega-corporations sourcing their crap from Chinese slave labor factories, and politicians in the back pockets of the bankers and corporate CEOs benefitted.
The evil oligarch scum grew too greedy and blew up the worldwide financial system in 2008. Since July 2008 credit card debt has declined by $175 billion, with the majority of the decrease from banks writing off bad debt and passing it along to the American taxpayer through their TARP bailout and 0% money from their puppet Bernanke. It bottomed out at $834 billion in April 2011 and has only grown by a miniscule $13 billion in the last 29 months, and only $1.7 billion in the last twelve months. The muppets have refused to cooperate by running up those credit cards. Not having jobs, paying 40% more for health insurance due to Obamacare, and real inflation exceeding 5% on the things they need to live, have caused some hesitation among the delusional masses. Even a government educated, math challenged, iGadget addicted moron realizes their credit card is the only thing standing between them and living in a cardboard box on a street corner.
Your owners have been forced to implement Plan B. The monster they have created is like a shark. The debt must keep growing or the monster will die. In 2008, the oligarchs were staring into the abyss. Their wealth, power and control were in grave jeopardy. Rather than accept the consequences of their actions like men and allowing the economy to return to normalcy, these weasels have doubled down by accelerating the debt production and dropping it from helicopters to subprime borrowers across the land, like unemployed construction workers named Gus getting a degree in liberal arts from the University of Phoenix while sitting in their basement in boxer shorts. The Federal Reserve Black Hawks are hovering over the inner cities dropping Bennie Bucks on the very same people they put in McMansions with no doc negative amortization subprime mortgages in 2005, so they can occupy Cadillac Escalades for a couple years before defaulting again. The appearance of normalcy is crucial to the evil oligarchs as they attempt to pillage the remaining loot in this country.
Before the credit card was rolled out in 1968, there was non-revolving debt strictly related to auto loans made by banks and credit unions. The Federal government was nowhere to be found in the mix as banks and consumers made economic decisions based upon risk and reward. There were $110 billion of loans outstanding to a population of 200 million, or $550 per person. The Federal government stuck their nose into the free market with the creation of Sallie Mae in the 1970’s. But they were still a miniscule portion of total consumer debt at $115 billion in 2008, or only 11% of total consumer debt outstanding. The chart below from Zero Hedge reveals what has happened since the oligarchs crashed the financial system with their vampire squid blood sucking tentacles syphoning the lifeblood from the American middle class. Non-revolving debt has increased from $1.65 trillion in July 2008 to $2.2 trillion today, solely due to Obama and his minions doling out subprime auto and student loan debt to anyone that can scratch an X on a loan document.
If middle class consumers were unwilling to borrow and spend, the oligarchs were going to use their control over the government to dole out billions to subprime borrowers in a final, ultimately futile, attempt to keep this Ponzi scheme going for a while longer. The subprime game worked wonders in the final phase of the housing bubble. And now the losses will fall solely on the 50% of Americans who actually pay taxes. It wasn’t a mistake the Federal government took complete control of the student loan market in 2009. It isn’t a mistake the only TARP recipient the Feds have not attempted to disengage from happens to be the largest issuer of subprime auto loans in the world – Ally Financial (aka GMAC, Ditech, ResCap).
In 2008 there was $730 billion of student loan debt outstanding, of which the Federal government was responsible for $120 billion. Five short years later there is $1.2 trillion of student loan debt outstanding and the Federal government (aka YOU the taxpayer) is responsible for $716 billion. Using my top notch math skills, I’ve determined that student loan debt has risen by $470 billion, while Federal government issuance of student loan debt has expanded by $600 billion. The rational risk adverse lenders have reduced their exposure to the most subprime borrowers on earth, undergrads at the University of Phoenix and thousands of other “for profit” educational black holes across the country. Only an organization who didn’t care about getting repaid would lend billions to borrowers without a job, hope of a job, or intellectual ability to hold a job. A critical thinking person might wonder why student loan debt would rise by almost $500 billion in 5 years when college enrollment has grown by only 2 million. That comes to $250,000 per additional student.
The Federal government couldn’t possibly have distributed $500 billion to anyone with a pulse as a way to manipulate the national unemployment rate lower, because anyone in school is not considered unemployed. Do you think the $500 billion was spent on tuition and books? Or do you think those “students” used it to buy iGadgets, HDTVs, weed and Twitter stock? With default rates already at all-time highs and accelerating skyward and $146 billion of loans already in default, you don’t need a PhD from the University of Phoenix (where default rates exceed 30%) like Shaq to realize the American taxpayer is going to get it good and hard once again.
My personal observations during my daily trek through the slums of West Philly would befuddle someone who didn’t understand the oligarch scheme to create an artificial auto recovery by distributing auto loans to deadbeats, the SNAP army, and hip hop nitwits. As I maneuver quickly through the West Philly badlands in my four year old paid off compact car praying I don’t get caught in gang crossfire, I see an inordinate number of brand new BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus, Cadillacs, and Jaguars parked in front of $20,000 dilapidated fleapits that tend to collapse during heavy rain storms. The real unemployment rate in these garbage strewn, disintegrating neighborhoods exceeds 50%. The median household income is less than $20,000. Over 40% of the adult population hasn’t graduated high school and 63% of the population lives below the poverty level. These people put the “sub” in subprime. How can anyone in this American version of third world Baghdad afford to drive a $40,000 vehicle? The answer is they can’t. But you the taxpayer, out of the goodness of your heart and without your knowledge, have loaned them the money so they can cruise around West Philly in Jay Z or Kanye style.
Bernanke’s ZIRP creates the environment for mal-investment and reckless lending. With the Federal government owned Ally Financial leading the charge, the miraculous auto sales recovery is nothing but a bad loan driven illusion. With the Federal government pushing subprime loans like a West Philly drug dealer, the Too Big To Trust Wall Street cabal have followed suit providing financing to deadbeats with FICO scores of 500, no job, but a nice smile. When you can borrow from the Fed at 0% and loan money to SNAP nation at 18%, with a Bernanke unspoken promise to bail them out when the inevitable defaults come as a complete shock, this is why you see thousands of luxury automobiles parked in the urban kill zones across America.
Zero Hedge documented the new subprime bubble in a story earlier this week. As auto dealers allow losers with sub-500 FICO scores to drive off their lots with new cars, ZH summarized the next taxpayer bailout:
“No Car, no FICO score, no problem. The NINJAs have once again taken over the subprime asylum.”
Someone with a 500 FICO score has defaulted on multiple debt obligations in the recent past. The issuance of hundreds of billions of subprime debt can give the appearance of economic growth for a short period of time, just like it did from 2004 through 2007. Then it all collapsed in a heap because the debt eventually must be repaid. Cash flow is required to service debt. Maybe the West Philly subprime Mercedes drivers can trade their SNAP cards for cash to make their car loan payments, since they don’t have jobs. Even the captured MSM is being forced to admit the truth.
While surging light-vehicle sales have been one of the bright spots in the U.S. economy, it’s increasingly being fueled by borrowers with imperfect credit. Such car buyers account for more than 27 percent of loans for new vehicles, the highest proportion since Experian Automotive started tracking the data in 2007. That compares with 25 percent last year and 18 percent in 2009, as lenders pulled back during the recession. Issuance of bonds linked to subprime auto loans soared to $17.2 billion this year, more than double the amount sold during the same period in 2010, according to Harris Trifon, a debt analyst at Deutsche Bank AG. The market for such debt, which peaked at about $20 billion in 2005, was dwarfed by the record $1.2 trillion in mortgage bonds sold that year.
When has packaging subprime loans, getting them rated AAA by a trustworthy ratings agency, and selling them to little old ladies and pension funds, ever caused a problem before? With subprime auto loan issuance accounting for 50% of all car loans and an average loan to value ratio of 114.5%, what could possibly go wrong? Think about that for one minute. The government and Wall Street banks are loaning deadbeats $33,000 of your money to buy a $30,000 car, despite the fact the high school dropout borrower doesn’t have a job and has a history of defaulting on their obligations.
Can you really blame the borrowers? For the second time in the last decade the rich folk have generously offered to let them experience the good life, with debt that is never expected to be repaid. The people in West Philly live in rat infested, rundown, leaky shacks waiting for the 1st of the month to get their EBT card recharged. They have nothing, so they have nothing to lose. When the MAN offered to loan them $300,000 in 2005 so they could buy their very own McMansion, what did they have to lose? They got to live in a fancy house for a few years until they were booted out by the bank and left in exactly the same spot they were before the MAN came along. These people don’t even know what a FICO score means.
Now the MAN has knocked on their hovel door again and offered to put them in a brand spanking new Cadillac Escalade with no money down, requiring no proof of employment, and no prospects of repaying the loan. Hallelujah, there is a God!!! They get to tool around West Philly for a year or two impressing their fellow SNAP recipients until the repo man shows up and absconds with their wheels. They will be left right where they were, hoofing it with their $200 Air Jordans. Anyone with an ounce of brains (eliminates Cramer & Bartiromo) can see this will end exactly as all easy money, Federal Reserve propagated, and government sanctioned scams end.
“Perhaps more than any other factor, easing credit has been the key to the U.S. auto recovery,” Adam Jonas, a New York-based analyst with Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note to investors last month. The rise of subprime lending back to record levels, the lengthening of loan terms and increasing credit losses are some of factors that lead Jonas to say there are “serious warning signs” for automaker’s ability to maintain pricing discipline.
In the last year 99% of all consumer debt issued was doled out by government drones, with no interest in getting repaid, to subprime deadbeats, with no interest in repaying. It’s a match made in subprime heaven with your tax dollars. As an Ivy League educated Wall Street banker CEO once said:
“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”
Chuck “Doing the Boogie Woogie” Prince – FORMER CEO of Citicorp – July 2007
You see it is always about liquidity, also known as Bernanke Bucks or QEternity. Without Bernanke and his Federal Reserve sycophants printing $2.8 billion of new money every single day, shoveling it into the grubby hands of his Wall Street bank bosses and a corrupt fetid festering pustule of a government running trillion dollar deficits and showering your money on loafers and welfare queens, this subprime final solution would not be possible. This is an exact replay of the subprime mortgage debacle, except the oligarchs have cut out the middleman. Holding the American people hostage for the $700 billion TARP bailout proved to be messy, with 90% of Americans against the “Save a Corrupt Criminal Banker” scheme. This time, there will not be a vote in Congress when the hundreds of billions in subprime student loans and subprime auto loans go bad and become the responsibility of the few remaining American taxpayers. What’s another few hundred billion among friends when our annual deficits soar past $1 trillion, our national debt approaches $20 trillion, and our unfunded entitlement liabilities exceed $200 trillion?
When the music stopped in 2008, Chuck Prince bopped away with a $40 million severance package and you were left to sweep the confetti off the floors, pick up the empty champagne bottles and caviar plates, scrub the vomitorium, and pay for all the damages that occurred during the sordid subprime orgy of greed, lust, gluttony, envy and sloth. Somehow the distracted, techno-narcissistic, easily duped zombies have been lured into the subprime web of deceit again. We have only ourselves to blame as the corporate fascist oligarchs implement their final solution for the American middle class and our once proud nation – a bullet to the back of the head.
The government slowly and methodically tightens the noose around our throats and no one notices or cares. Do you feel safer than you did in 2000? The Federal government was spending $1.8 trillion per year in 2000. Today they are spending $3.8 trillion, a 111% increase in 12 years. The GDP has risen from $10 trillion to $15.6 trillion over this same time frame, a 56% increase. Do you think the Federal government is twice as good as it was in 2000? Total government spending in the country (Federal, State & Local) has gone from $3.2 trillion in 2000 to $6.3 trillion today. Government spending was 32% of GDP in 2000. Today it is 40% of GDP. Has this been beneficial to the country or your life? We need to open our eyes and realize what is happening before it’s too late.
Monday, October 1,2012
A CAR SAYS a lot about its owner, perhaps a lot more than the owner might suspect.
In an extensive examination of automated license-plate tracking technology, The Wall Street Journal reports that the new tracking devices have the capacity to do more than a one-shot confirmation whether a car is legally registered but over time build a picture of the driver’s habits, travel routes and destinations.
And there is now the capacity to store the information cheaply and in huge quantities. One plate-tracking company, according to the Journal, has 700 million scans on record.
As the cost of plate-tracking technology has dropped, more and more police departments are acquiring the devices — more than one-third of large U.S. police agencies in 2012 by one estimate — many of them paid for by the Department of Homeland Security.
Meanwhile, the camera and software technology to photograph and read license plates has improved dramatically.
Law enforcement agencies say they use the devices to identify stolen cars, ticket scofflaws and track the vehicles of suspected criminals.
THE PRIVACY implications are chilling, especially to the International Association of Chiefs of Police that cautioned the devices can record “vehicles parked at addiction counseling meetings, doctors’ offices, health clinics or even staging areas for protests.”
In the course of their analysis, Journal reporters Julia Angwin and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries found that data about a typical American is collected in more than 20 different ways during everyday activities.
And there is a growing capacity to match this data with credit card, cellphone location, online searches and social network databases.
The early entrant firms to the field of tag tracking were typically started by “repo men,” specialists in retrieving vehicles from deadbeats. Scott Jackson, founder of MVConnect, tells the Journal he would never sell the data his firm collects to marketers or the general public.
THAT’S NOT to say someone else won’t. One firm, Baltimore-based Final Notice Location & Recovery LLC, tells the Journal that it has amassed a database of 19 million plates in locations in Maryland and Washington, D.C. The information is given free to police, but the company tells the newspaper that it soon hopes to sell the information to jail bondsmen, process servers, insurance companies and private investigators.
Privacy stands little chance where there is an economic incentive to intrude upon it. Indeed, privacy seems more and more like a quaint notion left over from the 20th century.
— Scripps Howard News Service
Originally posted in September 2010 – RIP Ray Bradbury
“Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries of more. School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?” – Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury wrote his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 in 1950. Most kids were required to read this book when they were seventeen years old. Having just re-read the novel at the age of forty-seven makes you realize how little you knew at seventeen. It is 165 pages of keen insights into today’s American society. Bradbury’s hedonistic dark future has come to pass. His worst fears have been realized. The American public has willingly chosen to be distracted and entertained by electronic gadgets 24 hours per day. Today, reading books is for old fogies. Most people think Bradbury’s novel was a warning about censorship. It was not. It was a warning about TV and radio turning the minds of Americans to mush.
It is now sixty years later and his warning went unheeded. A self imposed ignorance by a vast swath of Americans is reflected in these statistics:
When Ray Bradbury wrote his novel in the basement of the UCLA library on a pay per hour typewriter, television was in its infancy. In 1945 there were only 10,000 television sets in all of America. By 1950, there were 6 million sets. The US population was 150 million living in 43 million households. Only 9% of these households had a TV. There was one TV for every 25 people. Americans read books and newspapers to be aware of their world. Today, there are 335 million television sets in the country. The US population is 310 million living in 115 million households. There is a TV in 99% of these households, with an average of 3 TVs per household. Your reality is whatever the corporate media decides is your reality.
Bradbury envisioned gigantic flat screen wall TVs that interacted with the audience and people wearing seashell earbuds so they could listen to the radio. Anything to keep from reading, thinking, questioning or wondering. Today, anesthetized kids and non-thinking adults sit in front of the boob tube with their Playstation controllers in hand and a microphone attached to their ear, killing zombies while talking to their fellow warriors, sitting in their own living rooms somewhere in the world. Apple has sold 260 million iPods since 2001 that allow people to zone out and live in their own private music world, never needing to interact or associate with their fellow humans. Millions of Blackberry addicts roam the streets of our cities like androids, forcing alert pedestrians to bob and weave to avoid head-on collisions with these connected egomaniacs. They are overwhelmed with their self importance.
For those who have not read the book since high school, or have never read the novel, here is a quick summary of Fahrenheit 451:
Guy Montag is a fireman who burns books in a futuristic American city. In this dystopian world, firemen start fires rather than putting them out. The people in this society do not read books, enjoy nature, spend time by themselves, think independently, or have meaningful conversations. Instead, they drive at extreme speeds, watch excessive amounts of television on wall-size sets, and listen to the radio on “Seashell Radio” sets attached to their ears. Guy meets a girl that makes him rethink his priorities. He starts to question book burning and why people fear books. After not showing up for work, his boss Beatty comes to his house and explains why books are now banned. According to Beatty, special-interest groups and other “minorities” objected to books that offended them. Soon, books all began to look the same, as writers tried to avoid offending anybody. This was not enough, however, and society as a whole decided to simply burn books rather than permit conflicting opinions.
Montag connects with a retired English professor named Faber. He tells him that the value of books lies in the detailed awareness of life that they contain. Faber says that Montag needs not only books but also the leisure to read them and the freedom to act upon their ideas. After Montag’s wife turns him in and he is forced to burn his own house to the ground, he turns his flamethrower on Beatty. He is hunted by a mechanical hound and the chase is broadcast on national TV. He escapes to the forest where he finds a group of renegade intellectuals (“the Book People”), led by a man named Granger, who welcome him. They are a part of a nationwide network of book lovers who have memorized many great works of literature and philosophy. They hope that they may be of some help to mankind in the aftermath of the war that has just been declared. Montag’s role is to memorize the Book of Ecclesiastes. Enemy jets appear in the sky and completely obliterate the city with atomic bombs. Montag and his new friends move on to search for survivors and rebuild civilization.
“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.” – Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451
In Bradbury’s novel the fireman’s duty is to destroy knowledge and promote ignorance, in order to equalize the population and promote sameness. Any impartial analysis of the current state of affairs must conclude that he was absolutely right. In an interview with the LA Weekly in 2007, Bradbury clarified his views:
“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news. “Useless,” Bradbury says. “They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full.”
Bradbury wrote his novel shortly after WWII, at the outset of the Korean War, during the early stages of the Cold War and in the midst of McCarthyism. The novel reflects these influences. Orwell’s 1984 used television screens to indoctrinate citizens. Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate, keeping the public sedated. The wall televisions in Fahrenheit 451 allow characters to interact with those watching. Bradbury captured the future of reality TV. Entertainment today is dominated by reality TV. We are blasted by the likes of Jersey Shore, Jerseylicious, American Idol, America’s Got Talent, Survivor, Big Brother, Project Runway, Dancing With the Stars, Amazing Race, Housewives of OC, NJ, NY, DC, and Atlanta, I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant and fifty other mind numbing reality shows. Morons with names like Snookie and The Situation are better known by teenagers than George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In Bradbury’s world, television was used to broadcast meaningless drivel to divert attention, and thought, away from an impending war. Today, television is used to broadcast meaningless drivel to divert attention, and thought, away from ongoing wars, government corruption, impending financial collapse, and truth.
Bradbury still lives in Los Angeles and observes the alienation aspects of his novel playing out exactly as he envisioned:
“In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.”
Bradbury directly foretells this incident early in his novel:
“And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talking coming in.” – Fahrenheit 451
Montag spends the entire novel seeking truth. Professor Faber becomes his mentor, leading him toward the truth. It is not a coincidence that Bradbury named the Montag character after a paper company and the Faber character after a pencil company. Faber was the instrument through which Montag was taught. Montag was clearly fighting an uphill battle. The majority had stopped thinking and seeking truth decades ago. The majority always wants things to remain the same.
“But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority.” – Professor Faber
Government did not need to ban books. As technology advanced and filled the days with 24 hours of entertainment, infomercials, propaganda, and trivia, the population willfully stopped reading books. Why think, ponder, or question when you can be entertained and directed to believe in whatever the state thinks is best? When entertainment wasn’t enough, the population would drive their cars at speeds exceeding 100 mph with a goal of running animals and people over. Today, the mainstream media is controlled by a few mega-corporations that do the bidding of the state. They are responsible for keeping the population sedated, entertained, confused, and misinformed. The public willfully accepts the reality presented by those in power, rather than thinking, questioning or seeking the truth.
“Remember the firemen are rarely necessary. The public stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but its a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line. So few want to be rebels anymore.” – Professor Faber
In America’s pleasure society we drive as fast as we want, heedless of danger. We care only for our own gratification, not for the welfare of others. For enjoyment, we memorize lyrics to Eminem rap songs. Thinking is not pleasurable so we envelop ourselves with flat screen HDTVs that provide nonstop distraction. Reading books is no longer necessary in our world. This is reflected in the fact that 40% of all adults in America can be classified as functionally illiterate. The U.S. public school system has been so dumbed down, with equality of all as the mantra that one wonders whether the state purposefully wants to process non-thinking, non-questioning autobots into society. A thinking, questioning public is dangerous to the state.
“We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.” – Captain Beatty
“It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals. Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Sam’s Cabin. Burn it.” – Captain Beatty
Bradbury imagined a democratic society whose diverse population turns against books. He imagined not just political correctness, but a society so diverse that all groups were “minorities.” It was essential that all thought become like vanilla tapioca. First they condensed the books, stripping out more and more offending passages until ultimately all that remained were footnotes. Only after people stopped reading on their own did the state employ firemen to burn books. Once you sacrifice liberty to the state, the state will not restore it without a fight. Political correctness has been taken to the extreme by those in power in America. The text books used to educate our children have had all “offensive” facts extracted. History has been revised to satisfy the agendas of those in power. The truth is inconsequential when a minority group might be offended. History books used in our public schools have more references about Marilyn Monroe than George Washington. Bradbury was prescient in his ability to see the future denigration of those who sought wisdom.
Our public schools have the power to place students into roles such as runner, football player or swimmer. By being placed in a role, a person is doing what is expected of him and not being an individual. We dread the unfamiliar. To be an individual is to be unfamiliar. Thus, to conform is easier.
“With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.” – Captain Beatty
The ruling elite and the mainstream media are openly scornful and antagonistic toward those they label intellectuals. Fox News and MSNBC prefer talking points, misinformation, and dogmatic ideology from their anchor entertainers and insipid guests. The numbskulls on these shows are never in doubt and always wrong. There is no true debate between reasonable people. These entertainment shows appeal to the baser emotional instincts of the public, not to their reason or intellect. The American public no longer has the capability to critically analyze what they are told by the mainstream corporate media. They gave up reading books decades ago, leading to a steady decline in critical thinking skills. No need to think when you can go bungee jumping, mountain biking, sky diving, yachting, or paint balling.
In the ultimate irony, Bradbury found out in 2003 that over the years editors from Ballantine had censored 75 separate sections of his novel, fearful that it would contaminate the minds of our young. The idea of today’s censorship is not to burn books, but to remove every controversial word or phrase that could offend anyone. Books are made so generic and bland that no one would want to read them anyway. Bradbury is still full of piss and vinegar, sixty years after writing his masterpiece:
“The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/ Italian/ Octogenarian/ Zen Buddhist, Zionist/ Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/ Republican, Mattachine/ Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.”
“Someday the load we’re carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn’t use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run. And someday we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we’re going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them.” – Granger
Bradbury had known nothing but war from the time he was 18 until he wrote Fahrenheit 451 at the age of 30. He describes the sound of bombers continuously flying over the city. America had started two nuclear wars since 1990. The degenerative effects of mass media in today’s info-bite world can be clearly seen in how they are able to manipulate public opinion to support undeclared wars without question. If Americans were still able to think and interested in exercising their responsibilities as citizens of a Republic, they would have required that Congress exercise its responsibility to declare war rather than allow one man to declare and wage wars all over the globe. It is easy when the state controls the message.
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war.” – Beatty
Montag is stalked by the Mechanical Hound throughout the book. It was programmed to hunt down Montag and lethally inject him with poison. Bradbury didn’t know it, but he had described an early version of a predator drone. Today, a man can sit in front of his computer in the Pentagon and direct an unmanned predator drone to fire missiles at “enemies” without faces, halfway around the world. No danger, no consequences, no responsibility. The American public blindly believes the state is protecting them by murdering “enemies of the state”. They will think differently when predator drones circle the skies above their towns seeking out “domestic terrorists” and non-conformists.
The hunt for Montag was broadcast on national TV. Bradbury’s imagination produced a vision of fake reality TV, fifty years before it became an everyday reality.
“Mechanical Hound never fails. Never since its first use in tracking quarry has this incredible invention made a mistake. Tonight, this network is proud to have the opportunity to follow the Hound by camera helicopter as it starts on its way to the target…- TV announcer
They’re faking. You threw them off at the river. They can’t admit it. They know they can hold their audience only so long. The show’s got to have a snap ending, quick! If they started searching the whole damn river it might take all night. So they’re sniffing for a scape-goat to end things with a bang. Watch. They’ll catch Montag in the next five minutes! – Granger
The search is over, Montag is dead; a crime against society has been avenged. – TV announcer
They didn’t show the man’s face in focus. Did you notice? Even your best friends couldn’t tell if it was you. They scrambled it just enough to let the imagination take over. – Granger
As I read this passage visions of the OJ Simpson slow speed chase along the LA freeways appeared in my mind. It was immediately followed by the fake balloon boy video from a few months ago. Lastly, the streaming video of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico came into focus. When the cameras are turned off, the show is over. Cold blooded murderers are released due to political correctness. A child in danger was just a show. The effects of 200 million gallons of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico on the environment and the citizens of the Gulf region aren’t apparent when the cameras are turned off. So therefore, there are no effects. The world today is one big TV reality show. The populace wants to be entertained by its news. Sound bites are essential. Dazzling special effects are required. Beautiful people presenting the show are necessary. Facts are optional. The truth is a nuisance. There is only one requirement – THE SHOW MUST GO ON.
There are few builders left, while millions of burners lurk behind every bush. First it will be Korans and Mosques. Then it will be bibles and churches. Then it will be libraries. Eventually it will be your house. America was built by those who cherished liberty, freedom, responsibility, knowledge, and truth. A fog of complacency and malaise settled over America in the last six decades. It is almost as if Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 were used as instruction manuals rather than warnings by our society. The worst aspects from all three of these dystopian novels have been adopted or implemented in present day America. The citizenry has become dependent upon the state for information, direction, support, and protection. The unquestioning obedience toward the faceless, nameless, hapless state bureaucracy will lead to tyranny. The state will demand your compliance. The state will monitor your thoughts and movements. The state will tell you what to believe. The state will brutally punish anyone who attempts to think or question. The match is lit. The books are piled high.
“There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we’ll stop making the Goddamn funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation.” – Granger
At the end of the novel, the city is destroyed by atomic bombs. The “Book People” begin to move back toward the city in an effort to rebuild their civilization and help it rise up from the ashes. Our society has gone so far off course that a peaceful reversal seems highly unlikely. A revolution that sweeps away the old order and provides an opportunity for America to start anew will occur during the next fifteen years. Just as in the novel, there are surely dark days ahead, with much suffering, pain and death. The majority do not see this revolution coming. Those in power are blinded by their own ignorance. It is up to the minority of thinkers, questioners, skeptics, and truth seekers to insure that America rises up based upon its founding principles of liberty, freedom and personal responsibility. I urge you to look up from your Blackberry. Turn off the TV. Take the iPod earbuds out of your ears. Log off your computer. Read Shakespeare, Twain, Orwell, Bradbury, Huxley, Dickens, Tolstoy, Hemingway, or Faulkner. Don’t believe anything that the mainstream media declares as fact without verifying it yourself. Question everything. Question everyone. Believe no one. The state is not your protector. Government cannot replace reason. Montag was responsible for memorizing the Book of Ecclesiastes in order to pass along that wisdom to future generations. Ask yourself – What are you leaving for future generations?
“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” ― Frank Zappa
I think Frank was onto something. There is much debate going on today about whether a college degree is worth the cost. The editorial below has much truth in it. The more government has gotten involved in higher education, the more fucked up it gets. The government provides grants and low interest loans to anyone that can scratch an X on a loan document. When the crisis hit in 2008, the Federal government took complete control of the student loan program. Look what happened next.
Does that graph remind you of another graph? How about mortgage debt and home prices. It will end the same way, with you the taxpayer footing the bill for a massive write-off totaling in the hundreds of billions. Whenever the government says they are solving a problem, they are surely making it worse. Is it a good thing that anyone can get a low interest student loan? Obama and his minions wouldn’t be dishing out these loans so unemployed people will not be counted as unemployed, would he?
Student loan debt is now in the vicinity of $1 trillion. It cannot be extinguished in bankruptcy (thanks to the Boomers who hid in college during Vietnam and defaulted on their loans en masse). As the article points out, 30% of the borrowers drop out without graduating. These people will be and are defaulting in large numbers. Those who graduate have an average debt of $25,000, with many exiting college with more than $100,000 of debt. This anchor around their necks will keep them from buying houses, starting families, and buying cars. With the Boomers unable to retire, the job market is upside down. There are fewer and fewer jobs for these graduates in their fields.
When I went to college in the 1980s it cost about $8,000 per year to go to Drexel University. It was a good college, but nowhere near one of the top schools. With my accounting degree I was able to get a $20,000 per year job with an accounting firm. Today it costs $41,800 plus another $8,000 for room and board. I commuted so my room and board was $0. It costs $50,000 per year and starting accounting jobs pay $40,000 to $50,000 per year. So the cost to attend Drexel has gone up sixfold since the 1980s, but starting salaries have only doubled. The payoff is even worse for liberal arts graduates.
The government interference, manipulation and control of the student funding market has caused the prices to skyrocket. Anyone who has taken Econ 101 should understand. The proliferation of easy low interest debt to anyone who thinks they are college material has artificially boosted demand. The supply of colleges is static. Therefore, the government created high demand, based on cheap debt, leads to much higher tuition costs. If the government was out of the equation, the number of people lured into this game would drop dramatically. Colleges would be forced to compete on price and would need to offer more financial aid. Only the best colleges would have pricing power.
This would leave the for profit publicly traded diploma mills like the University of Phoenix, Corinthian Colleges, and Career Education up a creek without a government paddle. These parasites feed off the government teat. They know how to game the Federal student loan system to maximize their quarterly profits. Educating people so they can obtain good jobs is not a priority for these lowlife institutions. They lure in the 40 year olds that have been laid off with the promise of new careers with an online education. There great at marketing, great at gaming the student loan golden calf, and not so great at getting jobs for their graduates. Do you really think the 533,000 enrollees at the University of Phoenix are getting a top notch education for their borrowed money?
They have about as much chance of getting a good job as Bluto.
“Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the fucking Peace Corps.”
Thursday, May 31,2012
WHAT PEOPLE subsidize, they get more of. Consequently, about 40 percent of Americans have college degrees, compared with 5 percent in 1940. This growth industry has been unnaturally boosted by government subsidizing higher education with direct funding and more indirectly with low-interest student loans.
This has been mistaken for progress. In reality, it is the victory of the entitlement-minded over those who foot the bill. Ironically, they often are the same young people. As with all income-redistribution schemes, it has unpleasant, unintended consequences.
Almost everyone now realizes living off borrowed money is one of the causes of today’s faltering economy. Bills come due. They don’t always buy what was intended.
Home mortgages inflated to reckless amounts and credit card debt buried consumers. They provided short-term joy rides, only to become great financial burdens. Defaults are economically damaging. Lenders lose, borrowers lose and the economy eventually self-corrects with contractions, as seen in recent years.
The more than $1 trillion in student loans is another symptom of short-sighted appetites for instant gratification, oblivious to long-term consequences. These debts, much like government-subsidized and incentivized mortgages, have ballooned to ruinous levels.
COLLEGE ENROLLMENT is up 38 percent in the past decade. More than 20 million people are enrolled. Some students amass six-figure loan debts by graduation, and too often can’t even find a paying job.
Nearly 30 percent of college students with loans drop out. Dropouts, according to the Education Sector think tank, are four times more likely to default on their loans. Many students who stay in college increase likelihood of default by working to meet expenses. That requires taking fewer courses, lengthening their stay but decreasing odds of graduating.
Much of this problem results from the misguided notion that anyone who can pick up a pencil should attend college. As columnist Robert Samuelson wrote in the Register, “We overdid it. The obsessive faith in college has backfired.” As Register editorial writer Mark Landsbaum previously noted, “Not only is a college education not necessarily all it’s cracked up to be, it’s not as necessary as you’ve been led to believe.”
Government-backed loans and subsidies encouraged colleges to accept more students because tuition is paid upfront, unlike tuition debts. The result is completely unwarranted enrollment numbers.
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION has been downplayed and bad-mouthed. Even in our high-tech culture, 69 percent of jobs don’t require post-high school degrees, the government says. To admit more students, entrance standards were lowered. “We’ve dumbed down college,” Mr. Samuelson wrote.
“Forty five percent of college students hadn’t significantly improved their critical thinking and writing skills after two years,” concluded the authors of a book, “Academically Adrift.”
Unfortunately, the herd mentality persists, urging and luring ever more young people onto campus, instead of creating new vocational and tech opportunities and private-sector apprenticeships. Living off borrowed money remains attractive, at least until the bill comes due, especially for the unemployed.
— The Orange County Register