Count the Empties

How many homes are empty on your street, in your community, or across the country?

The USA has nearly 15 million empty homes (link) --
these blank gaps are 11.4% of all housing. Headlines in the UK declare (link) a million empty homes. Vacant homes are often "owned by the bank" though the bank's money was taken from the public. Citizens also pay police to evict the homeless.

We should pay more attention to the wider tragic picture of financial crisis and hollowed-out communities. Many homes are emptied by foreclosures or a midnight escape by the grossly indebted. How many? Count the empty homes near you, and better understand housing ripoffs.

Vacant or abandoned properties harm neighborhoods. They're a safety & fire hazard. Someone needs to pay for:

• Trash removal & cleaning
• Yard maintenance
• Utilities
• Boarding/securing the building
• Repair, hazard, emergency repairs, demolition
• Inspection, vacant property registration
• Taxes, etc.

We're living a major political disaster. Maybe spray-painting a big number on the street or building corner (as with other disasters) might mitigate our distress.

Corrupted politicians helped the banks & the rich, who control jobs & housing, and who now squeeze the rest of us, as we shiver in merciless cold.

Joe Metric

U.S. manufacturing is often world-leading, but the primacy of the USA as a market and as a source of products is declining. The rise of China, with four times the people, and other vast swathes of a developing world seem undeniable and almost inevitable. And this is not necessarily a problem.

But the American media is cultivating anti-scientific prejudices. Engineering and the worldwide metric system are denounced as elitist, or foreign, and a threat to Mom & apple pie. Units used in America can confuse - twelve inches to a foot, three feet to a yard. A pound weighs sixteen ounces; eight liquid ounces to the cup. If we switch, the world won't fit... but it don't fit so good now. Pity the nuclear-armed Yankee imperialist & his overweight cannon fodder shock troops... ?

Occupy Our Parks

Hey Bully:       Shut Down     Occupy Afghanistan !

Filet of Filly: Eatin' Hoss

Horsemeat is not part of the American diet. It would be difficult for people to eat horse, even if they wished to, as horse are not legally slaughtered in the USA for human consumption. I'm quite surprised.

Just around the corner from my home in Stockholm is a restaurant specializing in horsemeat; we go there often (great french fries). Perhaps my first taste of horse was 30 years ago in Japan, eating 'sakura niku' or raw horsemeat - basashi 馬刺し. Tasty! The odd thing of that neighborhood was its big horse racing track, and we regularly joked we ate the slow ones. Disappointed gamblers perhaps enjoyed revenge when ordering that dish.

I've surely eaten many odd foods over the years. Jellyfish in Chinese food is one. All creatures great & small, but I'd forgotten horse was odd.

Visit Japan for Fraudulent Food

Many Chinese tourists in Japan seeking a taste of world-famous Matsusaka beef have been served lesser stuff. Over the past five years, several dozen tourists each month were sold 180-gram ¥3700 servings (US$48 or $120 per pound) of mislabeled inferior meat. One restaurant under investigation, Barato Garden North Hill of Ishikari City, Hokkaido, admitted deception (link). But the firm's president Shigeru Oka insists Japanese customers for the well-marbled wagyū were never swindled.

Cheat only the tourists... Terrible. A great way to torpedo trade.

No information about how the scam was uncovered. What penalties should be imposed? The heifer themselves would be happy if their hand-massaged, beer-fed, tasty flesh were in less demand. But does such news damage producers of the beef? Or will the attention and publicity raise demand? Advertisers elsewhere in Japan recognize mislabeling fraud, sometimes insisting "Proof of Origin Supplied!"

Tears from the Pepper Spray?

Shameful violence in California:
(video here)

UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza defended the indefensible, claiming officers used force in concern for their own safety.

Claudia Morain, spokesperson for UC Davis, explained the pepper spray was used because campus police "needed to get out of there" (link). "The police tried to use the least force that they could" but in any case, "We are just not going to allow a tent city. Just period."

But as other evidence mounts, these explanations evaporate from corporate news archives. For analyses of the incident, see:
(link) UC Davis Prof. Bob Ostertag
(link) Jon Weiner at The Nation
(link) Student Activism report

PS - UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza recently won National Campus Safety Director of the Year Award, citing the fact that (link) "Although her department’s budget was cut by 8 percent, the cut was accomplished with little impact to workload at the front line and without impact to the community"... mmmm.

Arrogant Authority

Brutality & use of chemical agents on non-violent, unarmed civilians mocks democracy. To smother reporting is more offensive.

Arrogant restrictions on the press have already undermined the USA's self-definition as a beacon of freedom for the world. How should journalists, Occupy participants & supporters respond as political bullies attempt to club, muzzle & gas them into submission?

And the world is watching. (link)



(quote below)
New York, November 15, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by today's reports of New York City police mistreating and detaining journalists and obstructing them from covering events at the Occupy Wall Street protests.

"We are alarmed by New York law enforcement's treatment of journalists covering the eviction of Occupy Wall Street today," said Carlos Lauria, CPJ senior coordinator for the Americas. "Journalists must be allowed to cover news events without fear of arrest and harassment. It is particularly disturbing that government officials sought to block any coverage of the event at all." ...

Worship the Bunghole of the Rich

The oligarchs control most media. They show us reality, and
often we believe.

Have you visited an Occupy assembly? What do you know of what's going on? You may be scared to question authority -- will our rulers take away the little you've earned?

Why did our neighborhood cops become paramilitary?
...looking & mobilizing like a Darth Vader unit?

We're told those clubbed on the streets by our stormtroopers are dirty rabble. They are gassed and electrocuted for "talking back" or taking photos.

But arresting the public won't solve the vampire banking crisis.

Did the marchers cheat my community of trillions of dollars?
If I work hard, won't the system treat me fairly?
Are our leaders corrupted by the megarich?
Can't wealth buy-out equal opportunity?
Have our recent wars done any good?
Time to wake up, asskisser.

apathy ain't cool

Busted By Billy: Billionaire Bloomberg

"The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out - but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park..."
    -- "Billy"   New York City billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg

Billionaire Bloomberg now barricades himself against the city.
Mayor Billy lies in luxury, but it's beginning to end...

He's harbored Wall Street, a nest of vipers -- corrupt financiers who robbed us of trillions of dollars. Billy's a gimpy poster boy for corporate media, which seeks to scare, mislead and constantly tease the public. They consider us dumb beasts. Sheeple. But the abuse stops now - we're not gonna take it anymore.

Meanwhile Pres. Obama senses trouble & scurries away.
Obama turns tail to Australia & goes Down Under...