Bogey,
Any candidate whose platform promises to vaporize the Department of Education, turn the Pentagon into a Museum of Military Stupidity and order Harry Reid, John Boehner, Barak Obama and Rush Limbaugh stripped naked, put in stocks and pelted with dogshit by disabled veterans might not exactly be electable - but could be the inspiration for a screenplay.
Network II – Apoplectic Now
I thought of this thread yesterday afternoon when a (I use this term loosely) “customer” showed up with a cashier's check for a truckload of product. Their credit is F-minus and I refuse to give them anything without upfront payment.
The odd thing – although it is not a mystery – is Asian and Hispanic companies with hideous credit have to constantly be admonished not to bring us bricks of cash to pay their invoices. Why it is so difficult to compete against them? Part of the answer is that the playing field is not level – especially when taking into account that their insular, underground economy flagrantly evades taxes.
The State of California is like a giant octopus, ruthlessly persecuting and prosecuting any and all targets they can harass with excessive fees and onerous, expensive regulatory lunacy – all except the underground economy. That is because they have been unable to crack the vault. There is a reason that foreign nationals often confine their business activities to other foreign nationals.
They know that it is a lot easier for the State to hold up legit companies; we are an easy target and pulling the lid off the money laundering scam and tax evasion by foreign nationals would require those lazy, entitled nitwits who work for the State to get off their fat asses and actually do their jobs for a change.
They are all in on it - and therefore, nobody narcs out their neighbor. It is like the Senate Sewer Aisle, everybody is dirty, so nobody calls anybody out – beyond churning out meaningless platitudes and sound bites targeted at brain-dead soccer moms who watch Oprah (oooooh, it's for the children) and jingoistic nitwits (Let's kill the towel-heads!) who actually listen to Sean Hannity.
Princess Smartypants plopped down at the kitchen counter last night with her Social Studies homework. The assignment – and I had to laugh right on the heels of the above – was to analyze the effect of NAFTA on both the United States and Mexico.
The worksheet questions did not address Canada, which I also thought amusing. The lesson plan assumed that business relations between the two nations is above board and totally transparent, which goes to show how naive young teachers are – newly indoctrinated and brainwashed beboppers with no concept how the real world actually operates.
I explained the economic birds and bees to Princess, starting with “mordita” and how this form of local extortion is a drop in the graft bucket when compared to the outright bribery, criminality and systemic collusive corruption between multinational corporations and the two governments.
She endures my professorial pontifications with good humor – though mindful that her Dad's take on things (though often vehement) are not strictly objective. I've taught her a healthy distrust of authority, which acts as a counterpoint to her mother's congenital, lockstep conformity and blind faith in malicious institutions.
Smartypants left her schoolwork binder open and I read her answers this morning. Regardless of the subject, there is normally little doubt which parent helped with her homework, but her treatise on NAFTA read like a scathing indictment against amoral alliances, corporate subterfuge and unscrupulous politicians on both sides of the border. Follow the money and all that.
Princess will volunteer to read her responses to the rest of the class and I'll be interested to find out if the teacher was overcome by the vapors. With any luck, Network II – Apoplectic Now will one day be a reality show instead of a movie.