Memorial Day is an emotionally perplexing holiday for me. I usually cringe when I hear the rhetoric of being grateful to a soldier for the freedoms we hold so dear.  While there is certainly a part of me that wishes it so, it is about the most a-historical statement one could make. I have yet to see one freedom “saved” through war.

The harsh reality, as in our current extravaganza in the middle east, is that war is too often the anti-thesis of freedom in the soldiers name. Societies do not go to war to preserve rights and freedoms, but to destroy them.  The irony of this is soldiers come back from war believing this propaganda, and are aggressive in the assertion of their inalienable rights. I guess it just goes to show that government lies and in turn lies we tell ourselves are double edged swords.

I think in many ways soldiers are an exploited group. They rarely come from the classes in America that prosper and owe the most. They tend to, as Eugene Debs would argue, come from the lower class, those who have rights denied, if its in the work place, court system, or the political arena, on a daily basis. They must fight for and appropriate ideals which are not initially their own.   Too often being a soldier is the class burden of fighting for the interests and rights of the privileged classes that you yourself are not privileged too.

Mother Jones had it right when she said, Honor the dead but fight like hell for the living. Post WW1 soldiers in demanding their rights as Americans gave us the march on Washington. Post WW2 soldiers gave us the GI Bill of Rights which radically transformed both college education and home ownership. Post Vietnam soldiers, especially black soldiers, demanded a level of integration they had experienced in fighting for their country but were denied upon their return.

Propaganda is funny that way, if the people believe, it may just come back to bite the money class in the ass.

If waterboarding is fine, why dont cops do it?

If waterboarding is okay, why dont we let our police do it to suspects to learn what they know?

If waterboarding is okay, why didnt we waterboard [Timothy] McVeigh and [Terry] Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombers, to find out if there were more people involved? Whats your answer to that? he asked. We only seem to waterboard Muslims.

They want her out because she (Pelosi)  lied? asked Ventura. Why didnt they ask for Bush and Cheney to go out when they lied about why we went into Iraq.

“You Give Me a Water Board, Dick Cheney and One Hour”

After Madison increased bus fares 50 cents to $2 last month, Metro Transit is now proposing to use some of that new revenue to boost service.

Metro wants to restore Route 10, which would link the Near East Side and UW Hospital and create 15-minute service between the UW-Madison campus and the hospital.via WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL.

Screw Metro. This is class warfare at its worst. Come on, it costs over $400 a year to send 1 child to school on a bus, and that’s if you buy the passes.

Today, I find out the working poor were required to pay 50 cents more a ride to subsidize Madison’s newly emerging gentry class.

University employees and students both get their passes in bulk (at a much cheaper rate). Since the city is incapable of bartering a better deal with the university, it raises bus taxes on citizens with limited income and the worst bus service in the city.

It is one thing to have a screwed up bus system, but quite another to be forced to pay for improvements on a gentry line I’ll never use. I’ll bet you another thing, these gentrified busses are not whored like the busses that go past my house.

Liberals wonder why there is so much angst at the notion of an RTA. We get enough class warfare from Madison Metro, we certainly do not need it from a RTA.

Screw Metro, Take a Cab, now that’s a bumper stick I’d buy.

She just had me cracking up. l loved the Rush being the missing 20th hijacker because he was strung out on oxycontin comment.

The morning news shows – even Fox – referred to it as over the top. What’s so over the top, its just funny.

It seems one thing the left (not liberal) and right (Ron Paul variety) can agree on are these bank bailouts are misplaced priorities. The bailouts are full of incentives and rewards to those that got us into this mess. In addition, bailouts  propped up large banks who took way too many risks with taxpayer money , while the government simultaneously shut down median and small banks who were not “too big to fail”.

Tasini is the latest on the left to question Obama’s wisdom, or lack thereof, in continuing to bailout the banks.

I understand why the Administration had been working overtime to try to prop up major banks–but understanding does not mean agreement with the long-term strategy. In fact, the question worth asking today is not whether the stress tests are accurate or whether more taxpayer money will be needed to shore up the major banks. It is actually this: why are we not using this crisis to create a new banking system? via Let Insolvent Banks Fail To Make Way For A New System – Working Life.

As I mentioned yesterday the reason those hedge funds did not want to play ball with Chrysler was because of the belief they could be bailed out with Tarp funds. The Chrysler bankruptsy is the perfect example of moral hazzard. The hedge fund managers could avoid the economic consequences of the free market because of a goverment policy of bailing out the wrong doers.

What Tansini is hinting at is these bailouts are doing exactly the oppossite of what we should be doing policy wise. We should be propping up a system where banks are smaller, local, and accountable. These bailouts are doing the exact oppossite. Bank of America and these other banks today are much larger, global, and less accountable than before the bailouts.

Thomas Frank hits the bulls eye again.

In truth, however, the verdict has been in for years. Pay for performance systems, at least as they exist in many places, are a recipe for disaster.

What they have “incentivized” executives to do, in countless cases, is not to perform, but to game the system, to smooth the numbers, to take insane risks with other people’s money, to do whatever had to be done to ring the bell and send the dollars coursing their way into the designated bank account.

via Frank: Let’s Move Their Cheese – WSJ.com.

Sadly Obama does not seem to be helping much in this regard. Just recently he went on a tirade (faux rage) about off shore tax loop holes while simutanously pushing for the Panama Free Trade Agreement. Another example is those hedge funds that pushed Chrysler into bankruptsy will most likely get a bailout by Obama.

Yes, its time to move the cheese.

Monty Python Upperclass Twit of the Year

Oh, this these timely. We have twits running all over the place these days.

Sales Tax Increase Would Fund RTA:

First as Cap Times stated there is no accountability to citizens or taxpayers.

Second, this would take a big chunk of local transportation spending off the city dole, and I don’t trust the city giving money back to taxpayers.

At a minimum bus fares should be slashed in half. Why should I pay $300 in sales taxes and then another $500 in fares for a bus system that sucks. The majority of health clinics are inaccessible with a bus during large chunks of the work day. I remember when busses had letters and one could get anywhere – on the half hour – from 6 am to 12 pm.

Lastly, I see the city playing the same games with the RTA as they do with my water bill. In other words, transportation will become so loosely defined RTA money could be used for a variety of purposes that are currently funded through property taxes. .

What it all comes down to is trust.

April Fools!

Yes, I could hang with that. This is simple, whose side are you on. Do you stand with the bankers or the people. Today, Obama chose the bankers.