Disqus - Latest Comments for PaulKlinkman

Re: Why the New Hampshire Primary Is an Elaborate Reality Show Designed for National Media | News & Politics | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:31:43 -0000

Why don't they just steal the Republican primaries in certain key states like they have stolen elections in 2000, in 2002 in Georgia, in 2004 in Ohio, and in a number of states in 2010?

Re: Fraud and Folly: The Untold Story of General Electric's Subprime Debacle | Economy | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:03:19 -0000

A General Electric Mark 1 nuclear reactor melted down at Fukushima. The Mark 1 was a noxious product that should never have been built. I hope that GE's assets company-wide (if any are left after the mortgage business) are collateral against any damage that the released radioactive Cesium may do to innocent members of the Japanese public.

Re: Dispatch from Detention: A Rare Look Inside Our "Humane" Immigration Jails

PaulKlinkman — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:43:15 -0000

I go back to when Coast Guard foreign person detention centers were single rooms with a bare bulb and 50 men, or two rooms underground with bare bulbs and 100 men, and guards would quit from the screaming.

People would have their cases simply disappear for 4 years and then one day the ICE would give up and they'd be kicked out on the street, not speaking the language, and they'd sit on the steps.

Some of the cases were pretty outrageous, but when you're captured you don't get legal help. One man was a doctor flying home from Pakistan to Canada through JFK.

The inmates were a good source of minor labor, if, say, the warden needed his car washed.

I don't know whether to say whoopie, all people on earth have tiny human rights now, or to grieve that they still don't have serious human rights. The sex-for-a-can-of-Coca-Cola guard games are rampant in our regular prisons, never mind these joints.

Our country can no longer afford to keep millions of people in jail for extremely long time periods at $85/day = $30,000/year. That equals college tuition money at a state university. The nation's creditors are starting to want their money back.

Re: America Beyond Capitalism: Is It Possible? | | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:19:23 -0000

Just wondering how this will work out in the end. Why should I buy something from a worker cooperative if I don't have a job myself?

I wish for a small-scale full circle economy, a sustainable economy. If I buy goods and services from a co-op then I'd like an honest chance at selling my labor, my own services, or in some cases our own co-op's goods, back to the same co-op's members so that I could have a job too.

We would need to imagine and test an internal economic system within a co-op federation where people's jobs are valued, where their jobs are as important as the goods and services that they make and sell.

Re: Glenn Greenwald: The Real Reason the GOP Primary Is a Pathetic, Incompetent Clown Show | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:38:18 -0000

"The GOP Primary Is a Pathetic, Incompetent Clown Show." No problem here. The real reason is that big money has made almost all of the candidates into fake schizoid personalities, similar to high North Korean officials who weep, cry out and moan when their string is pulled.

We're forced to watch an entire row of adults deny science on cue. That's sick!

Most of the candidates, but not all believe fervently in oil patch wars that leave drug kingpins in charge of countries. Most of the candidates believe in oil wars bankrupting the country with a vengeance, and in shutting down the government to boot if it helps their personal cause.

It's now mud season in Iowa. People are saying any thoughtless and mean thing imaginable, and as loud as 1 or 10 million dollars can speak.

Re: Why Are We Forced to Worship at the Feet of 'Mythical' Financial Markets Controlled by the Elite? | Economy | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:07:10 -0000

While shepherds watched their stocks by night
All on the trading floor
The angel of the Lord came down
And oil began to soar
And oil began to soar

Re: How Ron Paul Could Win Iowa Caucuses -- and Screw Everything Up | | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:10:10 -0000

I respect a few of the things President Obama has done (actually precious few!). As a person of color he took his life in his hands running for president, and for that I respect him. However, with President Obama running again I have no choices on the Democratic side. Why, as an independent, should I mark an x in his box versus stay home on Presidential primary day? Just wondering.

So, that leaves the entire racist, sexist Republican Party. Bunch of jerks, they think that "Thou shalt not steal" doesn't apply to their bailiwick, usually they'll say anything to get the world's most gullible people to vote for them. So, which one of these pixies didn't support the oil wars? Which one doesn't want the FDA to ram the medical-industrial establishment's dogma down your throat.

Voting for which one causes the most trouble!

Re: Bail-out Bombshell: Fed "Emergency" Bank Rescue Totaled $29 Trillion Over Three Years | Economy | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:59:42 -0000

Just looking at the two 9 and 10 trillion dollar categories -- what is a Central Bank Liquidity Swap? What is a Primary Dealer Credit Facility?

Does a Central Bank Liquidity Swap mean that the fed swapped real U.S. Dollars for worthless toxic assets, which under Obama's loose accounting rules could forever be valued at their 2007 values as long as the property was never sold?

There are people out here called citizens, or voters, and at least a few of us want to understand the basics of what this $29 trillion dollar charge means. The others are all trusting that the few of us will figure it out and give the ok, or the not ok red flag if warranted.

Re: Don't 'Occupy the Democratic Party' -- Four Lessons From the Populist Movement | News & Politics | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 22:06:29 -0000

"The Populist movement was hijacked by..."

The Republican Party in 1856 was against the spread of slavery. It was soon hijacked by railroad tycoons who got the Republicans to give them 40 million acres of land in return for their building western railroads.

So why exactly isn't the Occupy movement going to be equally hijacked by government grafters? People will want more power and the grafters can usually provide it, but for a price.

Once upon a time, the Christians believed fervently that the Roman merchants would doublecross the Roman military emperor someday, crying, "alas, alas" (Book of Revelations) as they sailed off to other ports to continue to trade slaves and wealth. Nero wanted them all dead. Eventually they cut a deal with Emperor Constantine. Christianity became the enforced Roman state religion. In return, pacifist Christianity promised to fight all of the Emperor's wars forever and accept the slave merchants.

I can even see Occupiers taking on a doubletalk where yes, they are the
enemy, but you know we have to work with them to gain power.

Re: Conservative Frank Luntz Has Set a Trap for Progressives -- Here's How to Outsmart Him and Boost the Occupy Movement | Occupy Wall Street | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:18:04 -0000

The word "Enterprise" is an old Quaker term. It means that Quaker peddlers around the year 1650 would enter one fixed price at marketplaces and would not try to cheat customers. At the time, maybe 8,000 English Quakers were being thrown into jail because they would not fight the King's wars, because they were not more respectful to rich people than to anyone else (not taking off their hats to nobility or to judges, not swearing stupid-sounding oaths in court, not standing up when the baliff says "all rise", standing on pews and yelling the truth in churches), and for quasi-illegal civil disobedience activities like sitting, praying and preaching in the town square where it was banned.

It's not that the occupiers are against "Enterprise". We are "Enterprise", as opposed to many of the hugely wealthy who defraud people and hire slave labor in oligarchic countries. If they want to buddy-buddy with the post-Maoist Red Army, that's them, not us.

Re: Pepper Spray, Tasers, and LRADs â What's Behind the Explosion in 'Less Lethal' Weapons for Crowd Control? | | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:59:13 -0000

Why is felony assault ever legal?

Re: Sea Levels May Rise Faster Than Expected

PaulKlinkman — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:33:44 -0000

Dr. Wanless is the guy that you want teaching your kids, because he follows the science to its logical conclusion. This takes some courage.

So, what are the logical conclusions, assuming that we can see evidence of sudden sea level rises in the past?

Re: Naomi Wolf's Response to My Critique Largely Evades the Issue at Hand | Occupy Wall Street | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 17:25:38 -0000

I happen to like the search for clarity, so my first question would be, are there two organized camps of people blasting at each other, and not just Joshua Holland vs. Naomi Wolf? Are the two camps of people roughly the fundamentalists (who the other side would say wants nothing to do with the enemy and everyone not in their little group is the enemy), versus the collaborators (who the fundies say would sell out the store)?

If so, I've seen this type of argument before in sports forum arguments. I would prefer a careful delineation of what's going on with each side. Why is one side or why are both sides getting intransigent? Where does each faction want the movement to go? Is there any other faction or set of ideas that is getting drowned out by two hot under the collar loudmouths?

Personally, I'm a fundie on Mondays and a sellout on Tuesdays. The art of nonviolence requires that we alternately take firm stands against injustice, but then make peace with our adversaries. I would tend to oppose both "sides" trying to take psychological control of which stance is better, because both stances are necessary.

I'd recommend that you pretend that you're writing a Wikipedia article. Try to lay out Naomi Wolf's passion-laced stance with an even-handed demeanor. Try to figure out what drives her to not address your previous arguments and instead to slide onto some fresh tack where she has more traction. This shouldn't be some political candidate's debate where each candidate's job is to steer any oddball question 90 degrees right, into one of only five or six well-proven political canards.

One of the problems with this article is that we readers can't trust you to accurately report what Naomi Wolf said. She may in fact have said some unusual things, and if so, you might try to link to direct quotes from her website and/or quote huge portions of what she originally wrote if you fear that she'll change what she said, so that we don't fear that her words have been taken out of context. Understand that I come to this argument late.

Re: Radiation From Cell Phones and WiFi Are Making People Sick -- Are We All at Risk? | Environment | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 12:03:17 -0000

I use a cell phone once a month. I keep it turned off except when someone is specifically going to call me.

I don't have wireless connections in my apartment. I use cables. I use a flash drive. I watch out for computer screen radiation.

If the other kids were playing in traffic, you would too, right? If they were smoking cigarettes then you would too?

Your government is sick. It's not operating normally. You alone must protect yourself from death, and you must protect people that you love, through relatively easy choices. Again and again, you must establish a pretty much trustworthy news network that tells you how to reduce your risk of cancer, you must talk it out with other informed people, and you must act on such information.

If you push too hard, you risk being a noodge, an oddball. If you don't push and if your family members get cancer, you will have painful regrets. I recommend that you get a backbone and do the right thing.

Re: Start a Business?! How 'Bout Occupy Entrepreneurship?

PaulKlinkman — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:05:08 -0000

You have the right to free speech and the right to be clubbed by a loose gang of cops.

In that same spirit, you have the right to be carefully taught how to be a boss/innovator, and then you have the right to start a business.

I'd like to see a world where being a boss or an innovator is no longer a hereditary apprenticeship, but everyone gets an equal opportunity in school to follow this path. Then if someone can convince their committee that they could be a great boss rather than an average employee, they are given plenty of startup resources, when they got out of that business the businesses wouldn't crash into a hundred shards, and they would not be competing on a sharply tilted field against megacorps who use Chinese slaves for labor.

If this all were true, we would have real competition in the free marketplace, and bright young people would mostly have fine, dependable careers leading us into the solar age.

Right now it's about as true as Secretary Paulson coming to your house and bailing you out. Of course, if your name is Goldman Sachs it might well be true. But the rest of us need bailouts too, and we 99%ers didn't even cause the crash.

Re: The "Sabotage Question"--Does the GOP REally Want the Economy to Fail?--Goes to the White House | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:37:31 -0000

This entire concept, that the Republican Party wants to stab Uncle Sam in the back as much as possible just to get President Obama out of office, is ultimately the death of the Republican Party.

Some new opposition party will form in its place, because the American political system perpetually forces the voters into two almost equal political parties. We could change our method of voting to get rid of the two party system.

Re: Debtor's Revolution: Are Debt Strikes Another Possible Tactic in the Fight Against the Big Banks? | Economy | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:23:52 -0000

The United States, when it gets a citizen government back, needs a sovereign debt strike. The crooks who stole our national treasury owe the $12 trillion so go get it from them.

Re: Live Blog: OWS Oakland to Take Over City in First General Strike in 65 Years | Occupy Wall Street | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:15:06 -0000

One part of the story needs an attribution. Which police spokesperson is claiming that the rounds fired at people are "non-lethal"? When you shoot an ex-marine in the head and the hospital says he's in critical condition, that's pretty close to lethal.

Re: Worst Food Additive Ever? It's in Half of All Foods We Eat and Its Production Destroys Rainforests and Enslaves Children | Food | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:35:05 -0000

Useful article.

I thought that this article was indicting Newman's Own Newman-Os for unfair palm oil trade practices. I wrote Newman's Own to find out. They say that their organic palm fruit oil comes from trade co-operatives in Columbia, and that their palm oil is certified according to the standards of Pro Forest.

So, this bounces back to the article's author. Did you, the author, make an inadvertent unfair trade connection to Newman's Own, or did you make a claim that you stand by and that you can explain further? These clarifications are important! If you know the author, please contact the author to get an answer.

Re: Taming the Casino

PaulKlinkman — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:37:10 -0000

I recommend an oligopoly tax. All companies should know beforehand that if one company is reaping windfalls off of consumers because of its predatory monopoly tactics, the extra money and a penalty will be taxed away. The simple act of owning more than 20% of a market should be grounds for a tax. No company should ever get too big to fail. This type of tax gives companies the right to fission into two or more smaller competing companies, assuming that they have a killer product.

Re: Don't Diss The Drum Circles: Why Hippie Culture Is Still Important to Our Protests | Activism & Vision | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:43:41 -0000

The hippie movement, "Tune in, turn on", differs from well-organized movements led by groups of politicals. The hippie movement emphasizes the proper care and feeding of every individual's own mind, so that overall, individuals and groups don't make particularly dumb political mistakes. It's not just about drugs, it's just as much about seeking spirituality beyond drugs. People with well-functioning minds tend to drop out of clumsy political groups -- nothing personal, but some groups have operating systems that just don't work. People fight internally too much in their groups, and they make decisions when they are all worn out and have low blood sugar. Finally, the hippies have the best communication devices, all types of rock (folk, grunge, reggae, whatever) bands with double meaning lyrics that your parents never seem to hear. I'd rather be politically hippie.

"Hippie" also strikes me as a collection of activities which ordinary people can try. Playing frisbee is just a nice thing to do with other people in a field or on a sidewalk. Drumming is the lazy person's musical instrument, a milk jug and a stick will suffice, although drummers do get famous with dedication to their art. There's something inherently wrong with hugs now, or is there something innately inhuman with not ever touching other people? Mardi Gras beads, peasant shirts, piercings, tattoos are partly to (hopefully) attract lovers and partly for some social status.

Re: Why Are Police Attacking Peaceful Protesters? How OWS Has Exposed the Militarization of US Law Enforcement | World | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:54:30 -0000

We're a divided country, and all police actions should be examined in the light of our schizophrenic politics.

Some individual police and not others, some police chiefs and not others, some mayors and not others, believe fervently that we live in a democracy. Citizens have the right to demand higher taxes on the rich. They have the right to demand criminal investigations of rich wrongdoers. Everyone has the right to a fair chance at a job and a house.

Other policemen have joined the nutty cult. Other mayors lead the cult. These people believe that the city treasury can be bankrupted and teachers laid off, in order that citizens be intimidated, for the stability of the country, which actually means for the benefit of the rich people who buy mayors off with campaign cash.

In practice, both cops and legislators will masquerade as believing in the former ideology while practicing the latter. The jobs of many police chiefs depend on their "getting tough" with the very citizens that it is their sworn duty to protect.

Re: Occupy Wall Street: 992 Arrested at Price Tag of More Than $3.4 Million | World | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:09:43 -0000

Who, again, is made of money? The mayor is made of money! The mayor has money to burn. So does the city council! If you build a thick wall of currency all around a thousand citizens and light the entire wall on fire, the citizens will be scared, very scared!

There's a difference between apprehending white collar crooks and intimidating thousands of citizens interested in civic justice. One is a police activity. The other is contrary to federal and state law. If your police chief doesn't see any difference between these two tasks, and if she has diverted half the police force to the latter task, then your police chief is a good candidate for transfer to some other job which doesn't require sticking to a budget.

Re: Wall Street’s Second Occupation | News & Politics | AlterNet

PaulKlinkman — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:03:22 -0000

I encouraged my mayor to instruct his police chief on the difference between apprehending burglars and intimidating the city's citizens. The latter costs the mayor's office two fortunes, first for the overtime, and second for the expected legal problems. Third, our mayor needs our votes next election and so he needs to be responsive.

Re: Why the Elites Are in Trouble

PaulKlinkman — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:53:42 -0000

"There’s two co-facilitators, a stack keeper, a timekeeper, a vibes-person..."

We invented exactly these five roles for the November, 1978 (I think) Clamshell Alliance Congress at Brown University. I am so proud now! Not quite tears of joy, but I'm close at this moment.

The idea of different silent hand signals in response to comments is new to me and sounds wonderful! Thank you, universe, and the specific person who came up with the idea! I'll try to propagate it. Also valuable and new is selective stacking so that groups or people that don't wave their hands as much get heard.

In fairly large groups, we took process questions off the floor to a subcommittee of two people. If the question got by them, the process question must be significant so then it hit the floor.

The Quakers were caucusing three centuries ago. Old Quaker meeting houses were built specifically so that the women's business caucus could be walled off from the men's caucus.

Next, we build the internet version. Are you in?