Seven Sons

In the spirit of the trendy idea of knowing where your food comes from, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, the farm-to-table restaurant The Linkery in San Diego has a blog post that shows (in a s slightly graphic way, since that’s the way life is) some of the staff catching, killing and packing pasture-raised turkeys.

We have a lot to be thankful for in the United States, but odds are that, at least in the last 50 years,  giving a shout-out to the people who raise our food has never been a popular pre-meal prayer at the holiday table. And obviously I’m not talking about the corporate suits at Butterball and Stouffer’s.

I heard about the 32% hike today on CA public university students. I feel terribly for CA residents- as long as they’re not the small percentage who, over the decades, created this culture of state government. I don’t know what CA can do at this point- they’re a microcosm (although not very micro) for the whole country. Taxes need to be raised to keep up basic and necessary state services. But raising taxes might squelch a recovery.

My partial solution? It’ll come as no surprise. Soak the fucking rich. They can afford it. And please- don’t be fooled by their insistence that taxing them will have a negative trickle-down effect on the little guy. Because it won’t. Tax the rich, and they’ll grumble and pay it. Period. So tax them. Up the fucking ying-yang. If they don’t like it, they’re welcome to move to any other developed western country, where their tax rates will be many times higher.

If the last 30 years have taught us anything, it’s that giving the rich more money equals nothing other than giving the rich more money. Milton Friedman was wrong. Fuck them all. In the ass. Oh, and by the way, I’ll entertain no philosophical arguments about how it’s “just wrong” to punish the “successful” either. You’re successful? Great! You’ve been the equivalent of a 16 year-old boy in a whorehouse with a shoebox full of 100’s and a cask of whiskey for the last 25 years. Time to fucking pay up- taxes are the tolls you pay to drive the highways of American life. Fuckers.

I’ve been reading up lately on how TARP/bailout money is being used by the big banks. Seriously, if people really understood how thoroughly the Goldmans of the world are fucking us, they’d be in the streets with pitchforks. Here’s the progression:

1. The big banks engage in ridiculously reckless speculation on margin from the 80’s on, and they pressure the ‘government’ into relaxing the rules more and more so that said speculation (gambling) can flourish unabated throughout 2007.
2. The house of cards crashes in 2008.
4. The big banks go to Paulson, Summers, Geitner and others, and demand hundreds of billions to avert a crisis in September 2008.
5. Said hundreds of billions are given by the taxpayers to the big banks.
6. The big banks use the money they’ve been given to buy up securities that are (in the fall of 2008) worth a fraction of what they were worth before the crash. So…with our money, the big banks buy worthless securities at bargain basement prices.
7. A Wall Street recovery ensues- the value of the securities bought by the banks with taxpayer dollars increases dramatically. The big banks are now holding securities that are worth billions more than what they paid (with our money). They begin to trade among themselves, and the value continues to rise.
8. Rather than lending TARP money or their newfound gains to, say, a small business in Vidalia, Illinois desperate for a loan, they instead internally speculate within (using our money) and continue making tons of money from each other on fees and transactional costs. And they pay out billions in bonuses.

Scott pointed this out a while ago- there is money being made, but not from money going to produce anything. Instead it’s the same money being sloshed around with little pieces being cleaved off for the players. Not a cent of it is trickling down, unless you count an increase in guys getting paid to shine shoes in lower Manhattan.

The system is rigged- beyond belief. Why anyone does anything with their cash other than putting it in a mattress or buying precious medals is beyond me.

God Bless the USA.

Trained the prosecutor on this case. He’s about 26 and this is his first case. He’s doing a damn good job. The case is a tragedy. Step-father on daughter, although the daughter grew up thinking he was her bio father.

The victim is now 14. Abuse started when she was about 10. She finally disclosed to her mother last year. Not the best disclosure circumstances- she was ’sexting’ a boyfriend and mom found a compromising picture of her on her cell phone. Girl started crying and said that she felt all screwed up, partly because her father had been doing x, y and z to her for years.

Of course there was a ready-made defense at that point- she made it up to avoid getting trouble for sending pictures of her breasts to some kid. It’s rarely a viable defense; most kids don’t make up sexual assault to avoid getting out trouble, even major trouble, let alone display the ability to concoct text-book grooming behavior and a years long progression of abuse. But it works surprisingly often. And unfortunately, a lot of kids disclose exactly when they get in trouble for something else they did- usually some small thing, and particularly a sexually involved thing. They do so often because a sense of justice kicks in, or they make on some primitive level the connection between what they’re driven to do and what’s happened to them. So they just leak it all out. And it creates a ready-made defense.

Thankfully this guy pleaded guilty and admitted to just about everything. And there was compelling medical evidence and DNA- the last assault was only a day before she finally disclosed. He’s looking at 25 years- we’ll see. I’d have been lucky to get 18 months for this case in the Bronx.