The Senate is the most Democratic legislative body in the World (Update for linking)

I love the Senate, as should all you red-blooded American men and some of you ladies too. The Senate has defended democracy in America in so many ways it’s hard to count them. That’s what accountants are for anyway.

It starts with the filibuster. That’s when one Senator can talk a lot, with the help of Tex Shelters Industries 72 Hour Power Boost, and stop legislation in the United States. It is a great way to stop the majority of America from getting what they want and need.

Only 34 Senators represent 69.15% of the U.S. population. The other 66 Senators represent only 30% of the America. So you can get a Senator from the Alaska, Sarah Palin for example, that represents about 700,000 people, stopping legislation for the rest of America, over 300 million people. Now that’s Democracy! Granted, if you get 60 Senators, 60% of the Senate I think, gang up on the poor Senator from Alaska, Sarah Palin for example, then the mob could take away her first Amendment rights to free speech and end the “debate” and call for a vote. Thankfully, the end of a filet buster almost never happens, and that makes the Senate very democratic.

It’s wonderful how a vote by a Senator in Montana is worth the same as a Senator from California. And since Montana is REAL America, that makes me REAL happy.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/06/democracy-in-america.php

You can be elected U.S. Senator in Montana with about 250,000 votes. Montana leans the right direction even though it’s near the left coast. http://sos.mt.gov/elections/Voter_Turnout.asp You needed about 6.5 million votes to get elected to the Senate in California 2008. Voter turnout was 13.7 million in 2008. http://cbs5.com/local/election.voter.turnout.2.886945.html

Since liberals are all lazy, and California is 100% liberals, they need extra voters to get the job done of electing people. The hard working folk of Montana need fewer people to get the job done. It’s true all over America. Hard working people in Alaska can do it with only 686,000 people. They deserve two Senators because like Sarah Palin, they are REAL hardworking Americans. The unreal Americans in California, lazy hippies, pot smokers and Apple Executives, ONLY deserve two Senators for their 36,756,000 people. If they ran things (having more than 12% of the population), we’d all be gay married and eating tacos. The only REAL state that has a big population is Texas, and people mostly move there to live close to the Bush family.

The Senate can shut up debate in another way too. Back in 2000 when Bush won the election, some black members of the house (Alcee Hastings of Florida) were getting all uppity because Al Gore lost the election in Florida.

Members of the black caucus in the House (no black folks in the Senate that year) had a lawsuit to stop the selection of the duly elected George W. Bush (cause black folks are undemocratic; just look at Sudan!). So those uppity members of Congress brought their suit against the honest hard working white folk and needed to get a Senator to sign on to try to reinstate their votes in Florida.

“…they were all ruled out of order by outgoing Vice President Al Gore because no Democratic Senator would co-sponsor.” So Al Gore did not support their motion to call the vote illegitimate in Florida just cause a few (175,000) blacks were disenfranchised. Thank God there was a white man in charge of the Senate, Vice President Al Gore, and that none of them white Democratic Senators wanted to defend black people and their right to vote. You see, whites are so afraid of the black vote, rightfully so, that not even the man who would be king, Al Gore, would stand up to defend blacks who probably voted for the white man himself.

That led the election of Bush by the Supreme Court and the greatest presidency in the history of American corporations! And when I say American corporations, y’all know how much that helped everybody the last ten  years.

So again, the Senate was on the side of democracy when they refused to consider disenfranchised blacks in Florida. That meant that each white vote was worth more, and thus, it enhanced democracy.

The latest example of the Senate’s love and support of democracy, though there are so many, is health care reform. By its very nature, the Senators in the Finance committee are democratic. They represent a small part of the country, and they can stop health care for everyone. At least they make it almost useless before they send it out of committee. Speaking of UNdemocritc, Ezra Klein writes about this:

“Or take the “Coalition of the Willing” that Max Baucus, the senior senator from Montana, has formed to handle health reform. The first meeting was attended by Baucus, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, New Mexico’s Jeff Bingaman, North Dakota’s Kent Conrad, Utah’s Orrin Hatch, Maine’s Olympia Snow, and Wyoming’s Mike Enzi. As Harold Pollack, a professor of public health at the University of Chicago e-mails, “these 7 states have a combined population of 11.18 million, markedly less than greater LA. They include zero major metropolitan areas. Yet they may be correct in asserting that they are positioned to make or break what can get through the Senate.”” See, only democratic people would be willing to take on health care and stop it despite representing about .3% of the country’s population.

Montana’s senior Senator Baucus is the most democratic:

But Baucus, a senator from a sparsely populated and conservative Western state who is serving his sixth term, stands out for the rising tide of health-care contributions to his campaign committee, Friends of Max Baucus, and his political-action committee, Glacier PAC. Baucus collected $3 million from the health and insurance sectors from 2003 to 2008, about 20 percent of the total, data show. Less than 10 percent of the money came from Montana. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072003363.html

You can see how democratic Baucus is; he let’s corporations and people from ALL states influence how he votes instead of just limiting it to the people in the state he “serves” in Montana. Good for him!

Continued…
But Jerry Flanagan, a health-care analyst with Consumer Watchdog, a California-based advocacy group, said the tide of campaign contributions amounts to “a huge down payment” by companies that expect favorable policies in return. “That is the cold reality of big-money politics,” he said. (ibid)

Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. You would think that Californians would learn by now; you can’t beat a hardworking Montanan like Baucus.

So you see, a Senator from one of the least populated states in the United States can stop, or water down, legislation that might hurt one of his patrons in the health care industry. And that 3 million dollars in donations from the health industry for Baucus goes a long way in a sparsely populated state like Montana where advertising costs are low and there are few people to target with calls and mailings.

The Senate is also democratic because they spend more money on campaigns for election, and money increases democracy. Because each state has equal power in the Senate, it keeps military spending high. Every state has military contracts, and if you just had a House of Representatives, there may be districts not in the pockets of the military contractors. But states are all involved in the military; therefore, so are the Senators that represent whole states. So that $711 billion spent on the military a year, not counting additional spending for our two glorious wars, is protected. I hope they democratically keep health care from the people. That might cost $75 billion next year. That would cut the military spending UNDER $700 billion. And who can afford that when you have people to kill.

People who want to get rid of the Senate are as crazy as those that believe Obama was born in the United States. There is no way we could give the Senate functions to the house, or increase House membership to give less populated states more House members. Besides, the Senate is one of the only institutions left between us and the maddening crowds, between us and chaos.

Links
http://www.democrats.com/the-black-hole-option-abolish-the-senate

Abolish the Senate
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/06/reminder_the_senate_hates_demo.html

Another?
http://onthehustings.blogspot.com/2005/03/how-undemocratic-is-senate.html

http://thehill.com/markos-moulitsas/undemocratic-process-2009-01-27.html

http://electionlawblog.org/archives/hasen-nuke.doc

The Senate Democrats are worthless
http://www.democrats.com/the-black-hole-option-abolish-the-senate

Democracy in America
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/06/democracy-in-america.php

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~perspy/2009/04/bicameral-blunder-destroying-the-senate/

Convicted Felon Senator Stevens given an ovation
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/20/stevens-ovation/

Yours,
Tex Shelters

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other Official State Items We Need in Arizona

Arizona Now has a state gun. It’s the Colt Single Action Army Revolver the state firearm. While that’s a great historic firearm, it’s tame next to today’s standards. (link)

What we really need for the state gun is the Pfeifer .600 Nitro Express Magnum. (Learn more here) Not only is this gun the most powerful handgun on the market, it costs more than $17,000 in 2008 dollars. Since the Arizona is all about helping the rich with tax cuts and arresting the unclean, shouldn’t the state gun be one only the rich can afford?

We have a state gun in Arizona, and that’s what’s important.

States have flags, official flowers, official animals, official plants, official foods and other official items.

However, we need some other bills creating new official state items to represent an over changing state.

1. We need an official state torture. I suggest water boarding while listening to Glenn Beck and eating a Joe Arpaio month old baloney sandwich. Any torture can be our state torture, for they are all good.

2. Atlas shrugged can be the official state book and the Bible can be the official non-fiction book.

3.  Official state motto: “Arizona for Arizonans, the White Ones!”

4. The official state disease: Valley Fever.

5. The State Missile: The Cruise Missile made right here in Arizona.

6. The official state border crossing; changes weekly.

7. Official State Religion: Mormonism

8. The Official State Prison: Maricopa Country Jail or where ever Joe Arpaio is currently working.

9. Official state lost job: construction worker.

10. Official Endangered Species: The Moderate Republican. There are a few left, but they are in hiding waiting for the other gavel to drop.

Please comment and add your own. It’s easy and you won’t be “registering”. You might even win a prize.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

Accepted Assumptions that are Wrong: A Healthy Stock Market Means a Healthy Economy

Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains the disconnect between the stock market and greater good when he said on Anderson Cooper’s show, “If we give money to the banks, the stocks will go up. That’s not what we’re concerned about.” (link) Well Mr. Stiglitz, apparently that’s all some people are concerned with. Media talking heads and free market economists see that stocks are doing fine and see a healthy economy. What they ignore is unemployment rates and stagnant wages, increasing poverty and income inequality as well as the increasing number of part time workers that want to work full time.

Americans outside the brokerage and banking industries, outside of the Forbes 500 and their cronies in D.C, are suffering. The stock market doesn’t gage whether average people are doing well, it is a gage of what speculators think they can make from betting on, or against, a certain stock. It is a false indicator of prosperity, unless you look at the holders and manipulators of large stock portfolios. Stock markets tell us what investors think, can be a catalyst, of sorts, for an economic down turn, but seldom is a rise in stocks an indicator of recovery. Was it an increase stock prices that got the U.S. out of The Great Depression? Helped by the new deal and brought forth with the need for labor in WWII, it was near full employment that got us out of the great depression. It was not tax cuts; in fact, taxes went up in WWII to pay for the war effort that brought us out of the depression. It was employment.

Overproduction of goods after WWI and buying on margin (public debt) led to the great depression, and the stock market was a symptom of the unregulated credit and lack of a European markets for ever productive U.S. industries. Overproduction of houses and other goods, over extended credit (subprime mortgages) and a lack of a market for the overproduction of housing led to The Great Recession we are still going through. Neither tax cuts nor a revived stock market will bring us out of it. Cutting the deficit will not help us in the short term either. Only jobs will bring us out of our current recession, and the hope for those jobs is not on the horizon with the focus on deficits and budget cuts. And if you care about deficits, make the tax evading corporations pay their share, end the wars and cut the military budget.

Every NPR news day begins and ends with a stock report. Reports on the health of the economy begin with how the stock market is doing. The economic indicator that is at the top of the government’s assessment for the end or beginning of a recession is GNP followed closely by the stock market.

The media’s over-reliance on short-term fluctuations in stock prices to evaluate policy initiatives or the strength of the economy is a symptom of that kind of the mindless short-term thinking that Obama complained about. (Ibid)

On a daily basis we hear that investing in the stock market is a way to make money. What about the trillions of dollars that were lost in the latest market bubble, this time in housing stocks and mortgage backed securities?

When the Dotcom bubble burst, the stock market lost an estimated $8 trillion dollars. That money is still floating somewhere in cyberspace with the pets.com sock puppet.  (link)

Then in 2008, the world stock values world wide dropped $30 trillion from a high of $60.1 trillion. Now, the markets have recouped about $20 billion of its value. That means nothing to the typical citizen of the world. The rise in values was for corporate investors who benefitted from the bailouts of the large investment firms like Citigroup and Bank of America.  Workers have lost 30% of their market investments, or $2 trillion in the recession. And I was told you couldn’t lose investing in the market.

What of the recent upswing in the market? Has that helped retired investors recoup their losses? How solid is that gain? If the stock market shows a healthy economy, why is official unemployment still at 9%?

There is a myth perpetuated by the purveyors of Wall Street that most people have money in the stock market and that everyone benefits when stocks rise. The fact is, the top 1% own 42% of all financial wealth in the United States. Furthermore, 93% of the financial wealth is held by the wealthiest 10%. (link) So, when the stock market increases, the wealthy owners of the major media outlets, where we get a majority of our news, do benefit. And it’s news because the owners and their investors see it as great tidings. For the 15 million or more unemployed in the U.S, it does nothing to bring prosperity.

The stock market is not the answer, only more jobs, public and private, will end this recession.

(Please comment on what you read and subscribe if you like it, it’s easy and no spam will come your way)

More Market myths.
http://www.bobwaldrop.net/?p=105

Peace,
Tex Shelters

Accepted Assumptions that are Wrong: Our public schools are failing

Our public schools serve millions of students each year and millions of those students graduate or advance to the designate grade level. Their success rate with students is much higher than the rate of successful mortgages, yet we don’t want to close all the mortgage brokers and make them public, do we.

By most measures, except for the high stakes testing measures that are used to punish schools and teachers, our schools do a decent job. Can schools do better? Yes. Are there students that are not learning the skills that might serve them later? Yes. But when you take a harder look at the reasons students drop out, it has less to do with the school than the economic circumstances of the children and a family that is unable to support the students with their schooling because of difficult financial and demographic circumstances. How many students in two parent upper middle class families in well off school districts need school “reform”?  A robust economy fuels student achievement; a sick economy hurts school achievement.

“…we should understand that student achievement — how much students actually learn in school — is less the cause of economic growth than its consequence. It is not student achievement that drives the economy but the economy that drives student achievement.” (link)

In “The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America’s Public Schools”, Berliner and Biddle accurately take about the myth of the failing United States schools. Why does the United States lag behind other nations in standardized test scores? It because in the United States, unlike Japan, Germany and most other nations, we teach students until they are 18, we accept everyone in the high schools, but most nations select only the top students for high school. Of course we had a more homogeneous nations, a nation with fewer language good and less cultural diversity, and we only sent the top students to high school, the United States might be able to compete with these smaller nations with homogeneous populations. The fact that the U.S. ranks twenty-first in testing is not a cause for alarm, for we are more egalitarian and diverse. Besides, test scores are not the end all and be all in education.

Even if you accept tests as a way to compare countries, the United States with its challenges of diversity, multiple languages and a huge population, ranks in the middle of a survey of 24 nations.

What the numbers show
According to the TIMSS, the United States is not “dead last” (as journalist Charles Krauthammer so colorfully put it) but “dead-middle,” or a smidgen above. In 2003, overall, it scored higher than 13 countries and lower than 11 others. The countries beating us included Latvia, Hungary, and the Netherlands. The ones we beat included Norway, Iran, and Slovenia. It’s hard to see a pattern that correlates definitively to economic competitiveness here. (link)

Every time we have an economic crisis, the schools are blamed. When the Soviets sent a rocket into space, we were lagging behind. When Japan and Germany started to thrive in the 70s, our educational system was failing us, not the managers of the car companies or other U.S. manufacturers. Now China and India have outpaced out GNP. It must be the schools that are to blame not the inevitable outcome of the world’s two most populace nations prospering. It’s time to stop blaming teachers and the schools and look for the real causes of our problems and work together for solutions.

Dropout rates 2009 in the US were 8%. (link)

Mortgage defaults were between 10-20% between 2001-07.
An analysis of subprime mortgages shows that within the first year of origination, approximately 10 percent of the mortgages originated between 2001 and 2005 were delinquent or in default, and approximately 20 percent of the mortgages originated in 2006 and 2007 were delinquent or in default. This rapid jump in default rates was among the first signs of the beginning crisis. (link)

So why were the heads of these lending organizations such as Bank of America given big bonuses for the financial disaster but teachers who not even the heads of the schools or district, get fired for an 8% drop out rate? It’s because of the arbitrary and capricious high stakes testing and the myth of the failing public schools.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

Up Next: The Stock Market Myth

We Must Investigate the Questionable People (Muslims) in Society

Peter King, Grand (Republican) Inquisitor of Long Island and the Homeland Security committee, has decided to up the ante on the newest American scapegoat by convening terror hearings on Islam. Peter King is demonstrating the best of American bigotry and religious stereotyping by invoking what Americans fear the most, Muslims. King will hold hearings to investigate Islamic terrorism at a time when millions are unemployed without the jobs needed to turn this economy around. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/08/stoking_irrational_fears_109143.html

Representative King is well aware that we are in a dangerous time when Americans might unite under class issues and not racial lines. The uprising in Wisconsin and other states and municipalities highlight a dangerous trend that must be nipped in the bud before it flowers. What better way to get our minds off our wallets than calling on our American tendencies to react irrational to things we don’t understand? Communism no longer invokes the needed fear response, so in this case, King calls on our Islamophobia to bring us back to what our founding fathers wanted, support of the elites who will protect us from the boogie man.

Liberal supporters of Jihad want to distract us with facts such as most Muslims reject jihadist forms of Islam, or that most terrorist organizations in the U.S., the KKK, the militias, the armageddon cultists in their armed enclaves, don’t follow Islam. But those arguments from the left show that King has won. He has distracted us from the economic crisis and the battle in Wisconsin and all over America for the rights of workers and the economic inequality of the budgets that they are being forced on the workers of America.

Contact King and tell him to STFU:
Washington, D.C. Address
339 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: 202-225-7896

Here to you, Mr. Robinson, for the inspiration.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_american_inquisition_of_2011_20110307/

Peace,
Tex Shelters

What you have to believe to be anti-choice

There are several posts, articles, and blogs circulating around the Internet about “what you have to believe to be a Republican” or conservative. There are also posts about “what you have to believe to be a liberal”. Both rely on stereotyping, especially the blogs about liberals. The fact that someone would conflate being a Democrat with necessarily being liberal is one common fallacy. The other is calling Obama a liberal.

When I say “anti-choice”, I am referring to people that want to take the decision of whether to carry a pregnancy to term from the woman. I am not referring to people that are “anti-abortion’, for no one is “pro-abortion”. I am anti-abortion in that I would like them to be rare, but I am pro-abortion because at times, abortion is the best option. That is why I say I am pro-choice.

What you have to believe to be anti-choice

1. Women have little or no capacity to decide what to do with their own bodies and they need help.

2. Choosing to have an abortion is a decision that women callously make without delving into the ramifications of their choices. Thus, they need counseling.

3. Women get abortions “on demand”. First off, no one demands an abortion; they have procedure out of necessity. Secondly, no one just gives abortions on a walk in basis like order at a fast food restaurant.

4. Women would be better off if they kept their pregnancy. In 2004, 73% of the women in the study by Finer, et al said they choose an abortion because they couldn’t afford a child at the time. Having a child you cannot take care off financially doesn’t make your life better.

5. Women use abortion as birth control. Fact is, women have an abortion when birth control fails (58%).  http://www.msmagazine.com/aug01/pas.html It is misleading to say that women use abortion as anything but and emergency measure.

6. Adoption is an option. Yea, if you can afford to carry a baby to term and disrupt your life. Sure, if you don’t have health issues carrying the baby to term. Sure, if you are having a white baby, because those are in high demand. Don’t get me wrong, I fully support a woman bringing a pregnancy to term if that is her choice and then putting the baby up for adoption. However, it is about her choice, not my or your feelings.

7. Abortion is America’s Holocaust. Comparing anything to the holocaust is ridiculous. Beside, you are equating the murder of millions of human lives with fertilized eggs.

8. Women who consent to sex are giving up their right to control what happens to them if they get pregnant. This ignores the accidental pregnancies when birth control is used.

9. You must believe in the fabricated diagnosis of “post abortion stress syndrome” given women who have terminated pregnancies by anti-choice activists. http://www.msmagazine.com/aug01/pas.html There is no such diagnostic in the DHM-IV. Presenting a couple of women who regret their decision to terminate their pregnancy does not prove such a syndrome exists. Having an abortion is stressful, but most women interviewed are relieved by their decision.

10. You must believe that a potential life, a fetus, is more important that a woman’s life. Anyone, like Christine O’Donnell among others, that believes it’s okay if a woman dies during pregnancy to save a fetus is not “pro-life”.

11. You must believe that rape and incest are no big thing and it cannot be used as an excuse to terminate a pregnancy.

12. You must believe that life begins at conception. This is very misleading. In fact, life begins before conception. With this logic, every egg not fertilized in a woman is a murder and all masturbation is murder. In addition, even if a man doesn’t masturbate, he loses sperm through his urine. Are we going to charge him with impraved indifference murder?

12. A fertilized egg is a human. If you believe the spirit enters at conception, then you believe a zygote is a human. There is very little human about it. Your dog or cat is more human.

13. You must believe that you know what is best for a pregnant woman.

14. You must believe in your own moral righteousness and infallibility.

There are laws against late term (after 22-25 weeks) abortions, and in most cases, I agree with these laws. There are, however, exceptions for healthy life that one must consider in all cases of pregnancy.

Most people in America want abortion available for health reasons. Some people want to ban abortion for unwanted pregnancies. The ABC polls shows that 57% of people think abortion should be legal in all cases. (link) If more people knew the facts and effects of an abortion ban, fewer people would want to control women’s bodies. It’s up to you to educate people on the margins. The fundamentalist and myopic religious right is a hopeless cause. They are too self-righteous to let facts change their opinions.

Study on why women choose abortion
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/psrh/full/3711005.pdf

A summary of the study here: http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_why.htm

Go to the “Words of Choice” pages on how to counter the anti-choice rhetoric.
http://www.rcrc.org/pdf/Words_of_Choice.pdf

More on the rhetoric
http://www.philosophylounge.com/charles-rulon-asks-antichoice-americans-babykilling-rhetoric/

Abortion facts—reasons, demographics
http://women.webmd.com/tc/abortion-reasons-women-choose-abortion

Peace,
Tex Shelters

We need to Act Now While People are Down and Deficits are High by Tex Shelters

“The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein is a great primer for all carpetbaggers and disaster capitalists around the world. We need to take advantage of the latest economic crisis to a much higher degree than we already have.

The banks did a good job parleying the on-coming crisis into cheap, government-guaranteed loans that they turned into record profits. That model of how to make a profit off a crisis will be taught in business schools everywhere in years to come.

We also have the “blame the teachers and their unions” movement led by Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan, Michelle Rhee and others who want to use the perceived crisis in education to privatize schools and make profit centers while gutting teachers unions. Teachers in unions make too much money to make a profit off the schools. As soon as we can bust them, we can make a profit.

Republicans are further taking advantage of the manufactured debt crisis by calling for cuts in those “entitlement” programs that help people that won’t vote for Republicans, thus don’t matter. Good job cutting jobs programs and pensions and assistance to losers (the poor) and keeping the military budget intact with only a few minor cuts. Good job making the poor pay for not working on Wall Street.

There are also the collection agencies that are making a buck evicting people and the security agencies that need to be hired to protect the rich from protesters like the teachers and students in Wisconsin. Though I have my money tied up in the prison industry and offshore oil, I also have made a major investment in a new start-up called “Strike Crushers Allowing Business Success” or S.C.A.B.S. It is business innovation that takes advantage of people’s hardship that makes America great.

We can also use the current crisis in the Middle East to boost my offshore oil profits. What I mean is that American needs a reliable source of oil, and I have it right here for you at Shelters’ Petroleum Industries Limited Liability corporation, or S.P.I.L.L. S.P.I.L.L. is dedicated to bringing oil to you using whatever means necessary.

America’s corporate leaders have to act quickly to separate the American people from their money while the getting is good. Let the Koch brothers, financial backers and leaders of the union busting forces in Wisconsin and America be our role models as we work to squeeze money from pigeons in the U.S.A.

First, we should privatize pregnancy. Women have been getting pregnant and having babies for far too long without having to pay corporations. We can ally ourselves with the anti-choice movements and force women to have babies even when they can’t afford them or they might die (another source of money), then get the government to pay for the care of the pregnant women at our government subsidized baby farms. After the glorious forced birth, we can sell the babies to adoptive parents whether the biological mother changes her mind and wants the baby or not. The hussies were only going to abort them after all.

We must also privatize all non-profit adoption agencies for “public health” reasons. Using the state health service for profit is okay as long as they don’t interfere with my profit making.

We need to be ready to deal with the global warming crisis that we tell the media doesn’t exist but we exacerbate with offshore oil drilling. To do this, we must first, collect all trash from our friends in the waste management business, buy islands in the Northern climes near Siberia, Scotland and Finland, and use the waste as land fill to build up the islands as resort destinations for wealthy clients and as a safe havens against the rising tides caused by icecap melting. This synergy among various parts of the economy, construction, waste management, real estate, and finance, will take us through the next millennium.

We are behind the curve in addressing the coming (occurring?) global food crisis. Taking cues from the Yes Men’s “Reburger” project (video below), we find there are all sorts of profit making opportunities with the world hunger crisis.

Reburger http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkTG6sGX-Ic

Reburger is good start, but corporations are behind non-profits in providing nutritious foodstuffs. “Plumpynut” is a substance that is created and promoted by the socialist organization “Doctors without Borders”. Plumpynut is first, cheap to create, and second, it addresses the food crisis. These are two things corporations can’t abide. And we shouldn’t let socialist doctors control the means to production and steal profits from the mouths of agribus and producers of processed foods.

Plumpynut is a remarkably simple concoction: it is basically made of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. It tastes like a peanut butter paste. It is very sweet, and because of that kids cannot get enough of it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/19/60minutes/main3386661.shtml

One thing we can do to stop these non-profits from providing a free lunch to the starving of the world is to buy up shares of the ingredients to these Plumpynut concoctions and any other possible combination of ingredients. We can also call on the true heroes of agribus, Monsanto, to buy up all the patents on peanut genes and make a genetically modified version so that any person who wants to plant peanuts must buy it from them. As President of Tex Shelters Industries, I have already started buying peanut futures in order to profit off Plumpynut. We must do everything we can to make starvation a profit center.

I have also ordered the Tex Shelters labs to come up with food substitutes using packing peanuts as a base as well as utilizing other American waste to feed the poor of the world. Again, I will call on my friends in waste management for assistance in this noble cause.

Another area we have yet to fully exploit is prison labor. That is why with a newly repatriated House of Representatives (controlled by Republicans, of course) I have renewed my push for the Chinese Free Labor Exchange Act (C-FLEA). In this trade pact, we exchange prisoners for goods and services and a reduction in our trade deficit. It’s a win-win proposal.

The Chinese can reeducate these prisoners, something they are good at, and put them to work. We can send them an endless supply of prisoners for their factories, something we are adept at incarcerating. I am sure Jan Brewer with her contacts with Corrections Corporations of America (link) can help me push this plan. Perhaps we could help her get rid of those pesky immigrants in the bargain.

Please call Jan Brewer and your congress to support the Chinese Free Labor Exchange Act.

Governor Brewer:
Telephone (602) 542-4331
Toll Free 1-(800) 253-0883 (within Arizona only)

Please call and urge the White House, your Senator or Representative to sponsor the CFLEA:

President Obama
CO/ The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC 20500-0004
or phone: (202) 456-1414

Or send note online:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Congressional switchboard 800-828-0498

Just ask for the office of your Senator or Representative

House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/house/house_comments.shtml

Senate: http://www.senate.gov/

Peace,
Tex Shelters